Review: Gears of War 3 Is a Triumphant Threequel

Review: Gears of War 3 Is a Triumphant Threequel

Review: Gears of War 3 Is a Triumphant Threequel

Gears of War 3 begins as the series did five years ago – with series protagonist Marcus Fenix in a jail cell. This time, though, we find out why Fenix was imprisoned. Gears 3 completes the story that began back in 2006, and it does so definitively. Not everyone will survive.

[partner id="arstechnica"]Endings are important, and how a game ends can change how you look at the entire experience that took you to that point, or even about the whole series of games that came before. The final scenes we share with these characters are telling, and the question the game asks is important: When you give everything, what do you do with all the nothing left to you?

It may have been years since you played the last Gears of War title, but don't worry about getting caught up with the story; it's almost superfluous at this point. What matters is that the characters in Gears 3 are at war. It feels like they have always been at war.

The game's huge, muscular characters in heavy armor have not changed, nor has the action. You will be fighting a variety of enemies and using the cover system to gain a better position to take them out. Melee attacks spice things up, and the combat itself remains loud, layered, and often captivating. Between Space Marine and Gears of War 3, the third-person action game has been all but perfected.

The game world has no actual buildings, just wreckage. It has no love, only regret. We don't see characters bonding through suffering or performing heroic feats, but simply surviving, fighting, and remembering the things they have lost. One of the few bonds left between two characters rips apart even as you play, and all that comforts soldiers is the knowledge that war at least remains a constant in this ruined world. So what happens when even that is removed?

Apart from the subtext of its surroundings, the game is often deeply stupid. If Gears 3 were The X-Files, every character would be Scully, endlessly repeating the most basic plot points back to the player, making sure every tiny thing is said out loud multiple times. If you are told to look for a maintenance bay, a character will tell you that the door labelled "maintenance bay" looks promising. Then another character may tell you that this is the maintenance bay you need to explore.

Fortunately, this sort of hand-holding is balanced by scenes that truly work on every level. During one section of the game, you walk through what Fenix describes as a mass grave; it's a haunting moment of stillness in an otherwise loud game. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see movement... and thus begins a tense game of cat and mouse. The characters border on caricature, but the game has some reverence for the ruined planet they stand upon.

The game can also get in its own way in places. At one point, my squad had left a single enemy behind during a firefight. When we reached an easily navigable barrier of barbed wire, Fenix barked that we couldn't go through that yet. Why not? Because we had to go back and kill that one last guy. It didn't make any sense from the perspective of the characters, but the heck with it. What's one more?

The Action Is As Good As It Ever Was ————————————

While detailing some of the new enemies would dip into spoiler territory, I will say that I'm getting damn tired of seeing a certain kind of bad guy in almost every game I play. It was out of place in the end of the new Deus Ex, and it's annoying as hell in Gears 3. In fact, the glowing Lambent enemies in general are annoying to fight, while the combat against the more classical Locust remains engaging and enjoyable, especially in co-op. The selection of enemies often proved to be the difference between getting excited for a large battle ahead ... and hoping a section would soon be over.

Gears 3 also suffers from the perverse need to make every task much more difficult than it at first seems. You need to find a submarine, but when you fight your way to it, you find that getting the submarine to work requires two other items (there are of course piles of enemies between us and those items). Once finished with these two fetch quests, you need to get the submarine to water, but this involves a number of switches and more fights. To do anything, you need to find multiple switches or "go there to do this before that can do the thing you need to do." It begins to feel like one damn thing after another. Still, if it weren't for this endless set of complications, the game would most likely be around four hours long.

As it stands, the game is around 10 hours or so, depending on the difficulty level. This is an important distinction, because the game feels very different when you play with yourself or with friends, and as you climb the difficulty levels or play in Arcade mode. You'll see everything you need to see the first time you beat the game, but multiple playthroughs will be rewarded. Co-op is handled both via split-screen and online.

I was struck by how much imagery in this game was lifted from other sources. You'll see flashes of The Matrix in both the enemies and the environments found in earlier sections of the game. During an underwater level, you'll be forcibly reminded of Star Wars: Episode 1, and very soon after that it looks as if you're fighting through one of the Naboo sets from that film.

I know we're bouncing around from thought to thought, but subject dictates form, and this is what it's like to play Gears of War 3. Connected scenes and moments may or may not have much to do with one another, but the game does consistently show you things that take your breath away. Organic blimps floating lazily over a forest are just one of the many things that will almost force you to slow down and breathe in the world. I keep expecting the next big budget release to fail to impress me graphically, but somehow the bar is continually raised. The game looks incredible in places, and it's filled with both beauty and ugliness.

During one scene, I massacred a Locust soldier before he could grab his horn to call in reinforcements. Then, to my delight, I found that the game allowed me to blow the horn myself. I wasn't ready to quit killing quite yet.

In one amusing scene, we watch as the Locust attach explosives to the back of the creatures that run towards you before blowing up. The finished weapons hang from the ceiling. It's one of the only times in video game history where we get an in-game reason for enemies to hang around near explosive "barrels."

On balance, the game does far more right than it does wrong. The ending battle is long and hard, and I can't imagine trying it on the higher difficulties. By the time the credits rolled, I was satisfied with everything I had done and seen, and I was impressed that the game came to such a conclusive end. This is the rare last stop that makes you look back on the journey with fondness.

The Weapons ———–

Let's talk about the things that make other things blow up.

The Gears of War series has always delivered what's expected from the guns and explosives in a big-budget title, and Gears 3 is no exception. You'll find many of the same guns from the previous games, and you'll also see the familiar execution moves and the ability to hold an enemy in front of you as a meat shield, but the new weapons are worth going over in detail.

My personal favorite is the retro Lancer, a powerful machine gun that sprays bullets in an unpredictable pattern; it's rather crap at long range, but a bruiser at medium and short distances. Not only that, but you can charge towards enemies and run them through with the included bayonet, holding them in the air to watch them die. It's a satisfying move, and a great counterpart to the chainsaw in the Lancer from the previous games.

Then there's the Butcher Cleaver, which is exactly what is sounds like: a large cutting blade that slices through the bad guys. It has only a limited number of swings you can use. (Yes, developers need to balance the weapons in a game, but I always find melee weapons with what amounts to "ammunition" to be slightly annoying.)

The Digger Launcher fires a living round that burrows through the ground, throwing up dirt as it moves towards its target. You can see it coming and dodge when you have your wits about you, but in a crowded firefight it can be a killer. If you really want to mess up an enemy in multiplayer, you can wait until they're fighting off one of your teammates, then shoot the digger launcher at them. If they're distracted, they'll be taken down. This is a whole lot of fun in practice, and even more laugh-out-loud funny when you see it done on the battlefield.

The sawed-off shotgun is already controversial online. The aiming reticule is huge, and with good reason: it's a shredder at ultra-close distances and nearly useless in any other situation. Fun to use every now and again, the shotgun feels especially gimmicky next to the more versatile weapons on this list.

The "one shot" is another gun that's going to stand out. It's a sniper rifle that takes a long time to set up and fire, and you can see the laser scope and hear a high-pitched whine when someone is about to fire, but if you manage to hit your target, it's a kill (hence the name). During the single-player game, you'll be able to take down some impressively large enemies with this, and during multiplayer the sound of that whine is going to send you running for cover. It gives away your location, but it's also an effective psychological weapon.

Finally, the incendiary grenades are just that: they explode and cover an area of the ground in flames, which is useful to control the movement of enemies or to cover your back.

These weapons are all fun to play, and everyone will find one or two favorites. Each one also has weaknesses, and to a lesser extent each one also changes how you move and attack. You can't make a splash in gaming anymore without some interesting weaponry – Resistance 3 may be the gold standard in this area – and Gears of War 3does a wonderful job of updating and expanding its arsenal.

The Multiplayer Modes ———————

The game features full co-op play through the campaign for up to four players at a time, and two-player splitscreen is also supported. It's worth playing through the game in singleplayer once and then co-op,as the game feels very different as you add players.

The new Horde 2.0 mode takes the original Horde mode and adds some defensive and strategic elements. Beast mode has you playing as the Locust, reversing the intent of Horde 2.0: now you need to kill the good guys, and you have limited time to do it. We'll go into detail with these modes in a later post after we've had time to play more on retail code against real people.

From what I've already seen, though, the multiplayer will be a good time, and a big reason why many people will buy the game.

Should I Buy The Epic Edition? ——————————

The game can be purchased in multiple flavors, and the price goes up with each successive edition. We were sent the $150 Epic Edition for review, and this rather large package came with goodies that should appeal to the hardcore Gears fan, although the $90 premium over the standard price of the game is hard to justify.

The biggest draw for many will be the Marcus Fenix statue, which takes up the most space in that box. It's large, non-articulated, and features Fenix looking all kinds of moody while resting his weight on a Lancer. This is a statue for display, and the detail work is suitably impressive, but do you really want to bring a date home and show her your collection of video game statues? Is this something your wife wants in your living room?

(I'm not judging. I have one storm trooper and one Optimus Prime helmet in my living room.)

If you do think you're in the market for a Gears of War statue, this is just the thing. The detail is very impressive, it's a good size, and looks good on display.

The package also comes with an art book featuring text by Tom Bissell, and it's worth a read for fans of the series. There are some great thoughts here by the creators of the game and from Bissell himself, and the book was put together with much more care than what we're used to with this sort of package. I personally dislike when these collectibles are just a collection of sketches and concept art; I want a look into the actual process of creating the game. This book provides insight as well as art. It may be my favorite part of the package.

The game itself comes in a heavy box that's held shut by hidden magnets, and you'll find a heavy medal inside the cover that reproduces the medal given to Fenix's father in the game. If you hold it up to the light, you'll see an Xbox Live code. Put that into your Xbox Live account and you'll unlock Mr. Fenix as a character for multiplayer. Slick!

Under the game itself, you'll find a silk flag wrapped around a series of letters and documents from the game's world. While this stuff is interesting, I'm at a loss as to what you're suppose to do with it all. It's kind of neat for ultra-fans, but once you've looked it over, that's pretty much it. Years from now, you can show your kids snapshots of video game characters you got for paying $150, then tell them what a terrible recession we were in at the time.

Here's my rule: the bigger the box, the quicker the sale prices start. Retailers hate having their back rooms stuffed with these things. If you can hold off, you'll most likely be able to find one of these for under $100 sooner rather than later. If you're already salivating at the things you get when you purchase this edition, you'll likely be happy buying now.

The Best I've Ever Had ———————-

The game has some problems, and the best parts of the campaign are often balanced out by tiresome enemies and fight sequences. That being said, the length of the game makes the single-player game a great value, especially once you consider how many times you'll want to replay it with friends. Arcade mode turns the co-op into a competitive race for kills and score, which is yet another way you'll want to play.

The multiplayer modes add another layer of complexity and options to the package, and the addition of the new defensive elements in Horde 2.0 and the all-new Beast mode work very well. This isn't a game you'll be bored with in a month, and it will last many fans years, especially as more content is rolled out.

This is a well-designed and executed final chapter to one of the best franchises on the Xbox 360. We know there will be more sequels—no series this popular spends much time in mothballs—but the team at Epic will have to begin an entirely new story after this game. And that's the way it should be.

The Good ——–

  • A great single-player campaign, and a wide variety of multiplayer modes mean you won't run out of things to do
  • Good variety of fun weapons and ways to use them
  • The classic formula still works
  • Beautiful graphics
  • A siege battle with multiple layers? So much fun
  • One of the most important characters in the series goes out with a whimper, not a bang. It's entirely appropriate.
  • Multiplayer is full-featured and expansive
  • The series comes to an end, without dangling a sequel in front of you

The Bad ——-

  • There are still some questions left unanswered
  • Some of the enemies are more annoying than scary and/or satisfying to fight
  • Sometimes the game's levels get bogged down in fetch quests
  • The dialog is often stupid
  • The underwater scene was so close to Episode One I kept expecting to see a Gungan

The Ugly ——–

  • Check out how they make that animal-barge move forward. I felt bad for it.

Verdict: Buy ————

See Also:- Gears of War 3 Grinding to Stores September 20