The Gears of War series is AWESOME! What else is there to say?
User Rating: 9.5 | Gears of War 3 X360
I am a huge fan of the Gears of war series. It is a much imitated, and highly praised franchise. And for good reason. There are some, ahem, naysayers who will chide it for being mindless war mongering and senseless violence. To that I say: So What? As Rocky once said, "the world is a tough place and it will beat you down if you let it." Well, in that spirit I say its fun to do the beating every so often. Gears of war 3 is nothing but straight forward, balls to the wall, brutal, action! Gears of war 3 also makes no apologies for that fact either. Its not to say that there is no story. For what its worth the writers continued and finalized the saga in grand fashion. They also attempted to add some poignantly sad moments here and there too, you know to let everyone know that they're human afterall. Its nice that they wanted the story to have some heft and the events of the game certainly mattered to some gamers, but for me Gears of war is all about the action and that's what I care about. You still play as marcus fenix, you still are fighting the locust/lambent, and things are still dire. The game mechanics remain the same if not slightly refined in some areas. The game is a 3rd person over the shoulder perspective. The weapons are all a blast to shoot and the shooting mechanic is virtually flawless in my estimation. There are a couple of new weapon variants and that's all well and good, but when your signature firearm is an assault rifle with a chainsaw attached, it doesn't leave you with anywhere to go. The enemies are fairly smart and definately relentless. There are some great "boss" encounters. The pacing is flawless. These games are designed around the use of cover and the cover abilitiy has become more precise and easy to control. The controls themselves are also very accurate and responsive. The music is solid and gets the job done nicely. The difficulty can be as easy or "insane" as you want it. The extras are also awesome. Horde continues to be one of my favorite extras/multi-player games. Beast mode is also a nice addition to the package. The game never once glitched on me. The graphics are excellent and always looked polished and crisp. The environments were more varied and vibrant that the first two games, which was a nice thing to see.
Summary: No offense to some of the other action/shooters out there, but Gears of War is my gold standard. That says it all.
