By Laith Salama / Staff Writer
Pull out the bigger guns (Games Press)
By Laith Salama / Staff Writer
“Gears of War” was one of the first games to hit the Xbox 360.
Amongst the next generation consoles, the Playstation 3, the Wii and the Xbox 360, “Gears of War” was arguably the first big hit.
The franchise introduced a unique style of third-person game play the world hadn’t yet seen, including a weapon system that entailed a now iconic chainsaw bayonet.
But “Gears of War” was not perfect.
It was, all things considered, an experiment to test out a new style of game play.
While it proved to be successful and one of the most fun games ever made, it had a lot of flaws in the details.
Finally, after much anticipation, “Gears of War 3” has come to us with its arms open wide.
This game takes what was started years ago and perfected it.
In the game, the future is quite bleak. The human race is dying out.
The main character Marcus and the rest of mankind have been abandoned by the coalition of governments and have all become “stranded,” left to fight off the hordes of Locusts, the frightening, alien creatures that invaded in the first installment, on their own.
However, now the Locusts are in a similar situation.
The Lambents have also decided to invade the earth-like planet Sera and have taken over most of the world, leaving mankind and the Locusts to fight in a three-way war.
The progression of the story centers on Marcus finding his father, which shouldn’t be a spoiler since it was in the game trailer.
The story is a little more realistic than the last two installments, and has less ridiculous theatrics, an occurrence that seems to be plaguing more and more games these days.
That was not a complaint about either game, but it was a definite improvement for the third one.
In addition, all the characters from the first two games have been brought into this one and have more depth and feel more human than before.
The characters come into play in the four-player co-op introduced in this game where first-player is Marcus and the next three players shuffle through as Dom, Cole, Baird, Jace, Anya and Sam.
As great as the game play in “Gears of War 2” was, Epic, the creators of the franchise, actually managed to greatly improve it in the third installment.
It’s easier to move in and out of cover, there is a plethora of new weapons to choose from and several new game modes just to add to the overwhelming amount of options available.
Horde 2.0, for instance, is a little bit different from the old one.
Players can now earn money for their kills, and with this hard-earned cash you can buy weapons, fences and turrets, adding a level of strategy that was also lacking in the first two games.
Otherwise, the game has the same objective as the last one: kill wave upon wave of ruthless Locusts and now Lambent scum too.
It’s still as addicting as ever.
And if this wasn’t enough,
“Beast” is a new game mode where the tables have turned and players get to be part of the Locust horde as they take on 12 waves of fortified humans.
This includes the annoying exploding Tickers and the beastly Berserkers that scare the pants off of players.
Well, now players can be the ones scaring the humans.
Finally we get to the multiplayer, and believe it or not, it actually works.
That’s all that really matters in online gaming.
But even farther than dedicated servers, they have improved the overall balance of the game.
The new weapons make it possible to strategize instead of just getting blown away by a shotgun-abusing hacker.
Players will grow to hate the term “sawed-off” after dying from it more times than they care to count.
This is just one of the many ways to die in this game and it still feels as horrible as ever, so expect to be angry for the duration of the game.
But that’s one of the things that just shows how “Gears of War 3” has perfected “Gears of War 2” in every way, shape and form.
Fans couldn’t have asked for anything better than what Epic has given them.
Everything is perfect and the franchise can now kick back and take a well deserved vacation.
