Unreal Game Review: Gears of War 3

The original Gears of War houses some my fondest memories from this console generation. 2006 may not seem like that long ago, but it was when the Xbox 360 first debuted and Gears was one of its most impressive early titles.

I remember being awestruck the first time I played it, as there was simply no way graphics could be this good. As I played through the game, chainsawing through enemies and coating my screen in blood, it was a new level of graphic violence that we simply hadn’t seen before, and my jaw was on the floor through most of the game.

I guess it says a lot about the state of the industry when I have a far more subdued reaction to Gears of War 3, five years later. The game looks better and is more brutal than ever, but it’s not really enough to impress anymore. The last two titles have been the definition of a series that evolves in only the most minimal of ways, and the final title contains few memorable moments that will stick with you, nor any significant gameplay innovations. It’s a decent game, but one I won’t likely think about again after the last word of this review.

First time I saw one? Amazing. The eleventh? Not so much.

The previous two entries in the Gears series have had us trekking around the world hunting down the Locust, a subterranean species living in the earth’s core who decided to come out and play one day. We’ve flooded their tunnels, but that didn’t stop them, and we instead discovered we had a second threat, the Lambent, Locusts infected with a substance called “Imulsion” that makes them glow and be highly combustible when filled with bullets.

The after-credits bonus of the last game was a garbled transmission from Adam Fenix, our hero Marcus’s father, who is supposed to be dead, but is actually alive and working on a cure for this pesky problem of world devastation. We must find him and protect him, all the while being swarmed by enemies who are desperately in need of heart surgery via chainsaw.

The main problem with these games is that they all blend together. I’ve spent the last few days blazing through this game, and even this soon after completion, it’s hard to pick out moments that truly stood out. I remember shooting some evil fish in a submarine. I remember a ghost town full of lambent zombies that would turn into dust if you looked at them harshly enough. I remember a major character death, but only because the game slowed down to a crawl to showcase their sacrifice, making it the only vaguely poignant moment in the game.

“Nope, nope, nope, nope.”

But the rest? It’s a series of battles with 90% of enemy types we’ve already seen in a landscape full of chest high walls. The team has gone out of their way to make their color palate less of a brown-grey laughing stock, and there are in fact brightly lit areas to murder in, but with core combat completely unchanged, it’s just window dressing. Appreciated window dressing, but not exactly solving the root of the problem.

The AI in these games is just funky. Call of Duty campaigns are generally pretty amazing because they feel cinematic, and it feels like you’re in a real firefight. But in Gears? Combat for the most part is either playing whack a mole as you and your enemies pop out from behind cover, or it gets worse when you watch your AI partners try to destroy computer enemies up close. It’s like two ostriches trying to have a boxing match, and the pair of combatants usually run in circles around each other for five minutes before a chainsaw ultimately finds a resting place in an ugly scaled face.

As dumb as the AI can be, your eternal four person squad will make this game entirely too easy. I’m not saying I didn’t die, but I only did so when I had run far head of my teammates so there was no one there to revive me. The combat system in Gears allows you to essentially die twice. Taking too much damage won’t kill you like in other games, it will simply put you on the mat until a teammate can help you up, with no penalty taken. Since the game saddles you with three teammates for the duration, there’s rarely a moment you truly feel in danger as you have your three amigos getting your back all the time. And they’re not too bad of shots either and left to their own devices, can on occasion clear areas without you.

Who are you shooting at Dom? He’s under two feet away from your gun barrel.

The game occasionally tries to break up the merry gang by having two of you go one way, and two of you the other, but it’s kind of a joke as both directions always lead to the same end point two minutes later. And a solo section? Forget about it.

It’s supposed to be some sort of big deal that Gears 3 has two female soldiers in the mix, Anya and Sam, and while I do have to commend Epic’s decision to make their armor as functional and protective as the boys, their appearance is clearly just so the teens can go, “hey look, a girl!” like they’re some sort of hot blond rose growing in a murky swamp.

I do like the goofy nature of the group dynamic in these games, although I found my favorite moment of this new title was when I got to control Cole, who revisited his glory days in his old stadium, and had a brief moment of reflection on the sports hero he once was. Cole is far more entertaining as a lead than grizzled white space marine Marcus, but sadly he is still in the driver’s seat for most of the game, his voice raspier and angrier than ever. “MOVE! LET’S GO!” Or on occasion, “OH YEAH!” when his gun reloads in a particularly pleasurable way.

If I had a choice, I’d pick the Cole Train.

As I said, there is a death of a major character in this game, though if you played through the last one, you probably have a decent guess as to who it will be. It’s the only time in the game where it takes control of the game away from you to do something actually significant and worth watching, and does end up being a memorable moment in a game lacking them, even if the character killed is in my opinion, (possible spoilers if you agree) the one devoid of personality in the group.

Gears 3 just doesn’t feel any different from the last two. It’s not a bad thing, as they’re fun games, but after 30-40 hours of campaigns like this, it just feels repetitive. They’ve tried to change some things. There are a few new enemy types like flying balls of pus with gatling guns, and spiky armored hedgehog locusts who can only be killed by grenades, but there’s no “oh wow look at THAT thing” moments.

They’ve tried to diversify the arsenal as well, but the problem is they’ve made some guns so good that you just never want to stop using them, as ammo is always plentiful and the situation usually requires them. Your two main slots will almost always be filled by some combination of the shotgun, lancer or hammerburst, only occasionally picking up new weapons just to see how they work. The “Retro” Lancer is a less accurate version of the original weapon with a fixed bayonet instead of a chainsaw. This could be cool, but the “bayonet charge” move only makes melee combat even more awkward. There’s a sawed off shotgun that was supposed to be overpowered at launch, but through some sort of patch nerf only seems to work when you have it literally inside an enemy’s mouth.

Annnnd fire.

The gun was said to be OP in multiplayer specifically, but I never really encountered it much during my limited time playing that mode.There is a contingent that likes Gears online, but to me it’s one of the less diverse multiplayer shooters out there. The same problem happens here that happens in the campaign, where there’s no reason to use more innovative weapons when the standards are your best bet. I read a statistic that said something like 75% of kills in multiplayer are made using the gnasher shotgun. I think that would be a pretty clear indicator something’s wrong with your balance system at that point.

It’s not that this game isn’t an impressive display of technical skill or creative violence, it’s just that we’re used to it at this point, and when nothing’s all that different, it’s not that cool anymore. Add to that repetitive combat and a difficulty curve abated by three functional copies of yourself who always have your back, and there’s just not much to the game other than going through the motions.

Gears of War 3 may have tried to go out with a bang, but when the entire series is made up entirely of bangs, this finale just gets lost in the noise.

3 out of 5 stars