XBox 360 Review: GEARS OF WAR 3

Three games in, and we're more than familiar with Epic's particular brand of high-adrenaline, testosterone soaked action, but it is still just as exhilarating to unleash a hail of bullets at a troop of wave after wave of murderous alien foes. That familiarity is in part due to the franchise's position as the reference point for most of the shooting games that were released in the wake of the first installment's arrival, and in many ways Gears of War 3 faces the difficult prospect of having to step up the quality of not just the past two games under its own banner, but every other similar title on the market. It is perhaps most appropriate with Gears to draw a comparison with the Halo franchise, after all, both have been heralded as ground-breaking shooters, and both inspire rabid fan reactions, while simultaneously being slightly sneared at by those outside the phenomenon. While my own experience of Halo's sequels was decidedly hampered by an eventual stagnance or at least a lack of progression, especially in the rogue's gallery of malignant forces, the same cannot be said here. Despite Epic's obvious resistance to total overhaul and innovation, there are enough new elements to divert the attention in this third outing. First up are the brand new toys, which add new ways to enjoy the carnage, the best of which is the exo-skeleton-like Silverback, with its mounted chaingun and rockets, and then there are the new enemies. This time out the COG forces face a more volatile foe, in the shape of yellow Imulsion-laced Lambents. They offer a new level of danger, since their blood is explosive, and damaging, and while there isn't much innovation in the combat (why would you change something so close to perfection?) or in the boss battles for that matter, the new enemy personalities and the way they move the goalposts for Gears veterans who will have honed their style of attack through the preceding two games offer enough to shake things up somewhat. In comparison to recent competitors like Bodycount, Gears of War 3 offers so much more than an obsession with weaponry and brainless action - though that is still a major part of the gaming experience - because the one thing that has defined the franchise more than anything else across all three games is personality. Everything from the most intricate background details up to the huge, snarling behemoth enemy monsters scream commitment to that agenda of personality, and it is no coincidence that the game has a definite, recognisable visual vocabulary that links it to the wider universe of the franchise perfectly. If you missed it, that's just an over-elaborate way of saying the game is as aesthetically on-brand as it could ever be. But not only that, like the most successful and enduring action movies, Gears' hulking exterior belies an intelligence in execution that abandons most competing developers, and which makes sure that the experience could never be accused of being one-dimensional. Executing aliens has surely never been so wonderfully underpinned, and there is a beautiful oxymoron in the experience of blasting your way through a story line and environments that have evidently had so much put into them. When it comes to heavy artillery and heavier action, we gamers are used to a compromise in those areas, but Gears 3 never makes such a compromise. It may be a much-maligned franchise in certain quarters, thanks to a perception that it is a game only for fist-pumping jocks - a misjudgement in my opinion - but Gears continues to dazzle through style and gameplay to such an extent that it transcends the traditional limitations of the hardcore shooting market. And this third installment feels like the polished final result of years of striving for perfection - everything has been scrubbed up so that the best bits from the past two games look better than ever before. Gameplay too benefits from that fine-tuning: there is definitely a slight honing to the already established combat mechanics, which never really needed tweaking anyway, and which still manage to swerve over-familiarity (and contempt) by standing head and shoulders above every other shooter as the market leader in polished war-waging. It is noticeably easier to work the cover mechanic, which is a major issue with most shooters The pacing is also better, with fewer unnecessary cut-scenes cutting up the flow of action, and the shift in tone towards a survival game, as opposed to balls out seek and destroy, adds a little more urgency and an added dimension that keeps the game feeling fresh. Visually, the game is just jaw-dropping, but then you already knew that. It is a Gears of War game after all, and one accusation that could never be levelled at this particular franchise is that it skimps on the aesthetics, even though the universe the action plays out in is a dystopian nightmare, ravaged and ruined by war. As ruins go, it's incredibly good-looking, and the quality carries across the entire game from environments to characters, and in those new, gnarlier-by-half enemies. Story feels like a more pressing concern here as well - Epic have long stated that this game will tie off a lot of loose ends and offer a substantial, satisfying end for the story arcs of the other two games, and there is a definite move to add a little more depth. Yes the dialogue is still terribly cheesy in parts, but who wants a hulk with the silver tongue of a poet anyway? And to give the game its dues, the voice acting and writing is generally a lot better in comparison to the other two games, which means that the obvious attempts to pull at the gamers' heart-strings comes off admirably. All-in-all it's a very entertaining backdrop for the delirious battle set pieces. The Carmine question also adds a diverting extra level to the entertainment - for the uninitiated, Epic Games offered gamers the opportunity to either kill or spare the fourth Carmine brother, Clayton - the result of which I will not divulge, but there are moments in the earlier stages of the game that tease towards a resolution in wonderfully tongue-in-cheek fashion. It would be rude, and downright against the rules of me to say anything else, but needless to say its a great little gimmick. There is already a lot in the solo Campaign side that insists on multiple returns to the game - the difficulty increment is tantalising enough to prick the competitiveness in even the most casual of gamers - but the multiplayer adds even more to the replayability factor. First up is the Versus Mode which allows teams of five players to fight to the death across six different match types - Deathmatch, Capture the Leader, King of the Hill, Execution, Warzone and Wingman - and offers a world of multiplayer-on-player action in the beautiful environments of the game. Next up is the Horde Mode, a co-op mode in which a team of COG warriors fight off wave after wave of attacking hordes, with a boss battle coming along every tenth wave, and rewards based on progress and team revivals that can be traded in for equipment and upgrades like those wonderful Silverbacks. There are also specific challenges within some of the waves that if completed lead to specific rewards such as ammo and weapon drops to mix up the action. Added to those staples is a brand new Beast Mode, which takes the same wave-survival mode and adds a new spin, with players taking on the role of the Locust horde as opposed to the COG side, tasked with wiping out human attackers and rewarded with upgrades in the playable Locust personnel. All together, those three modes and the huge potential of the solo campaign, with its unlockable elements and collectibles that make that 100% Holy Grail completion a difficult prospect all round, the game is eminently playable. So, is it a fitting "finale" for what will long be called one of the defining franchises on the XBox 360? In short, yes. If there are glitches, they didn't present themselves enough to detract for the overall experience, and at the final stage of analysis Gears of War 3 looks to be a definite contender for game of the year.

Gears of War 3 is available to buy on XBox 360 now.