10 Essential Third-Person Gaming Shooter Levels You Must Play

10. Rolling Thunder/The Big Push - Gears Of War 2

Technically, Rolling Thunder and The Big Push are two separate levels, but with the former flowing seamlessly into the latter it feels natural to pair them up for this list.

The level kicks off with protagonists Delta squad taking their place in the vanguard of an armoured spearhead sent to crush the Locust horde. But things don’t go to plan, and the vanguard quickly finds itself neck deep in a hellish Locust counterstroke.

The gunplay here is pure Gears of War fare: genre-defining, smooth-as-butter, cover-shooter combat, so that’s not what sets it apart.

No, what this level does well is scale. Its opening sequence, with the gunships escorting the imposing assault derricks as they snake through a narrow canyon, truly makes you feel part of a massive military campaign. And when the Horde begins to swarm, even though you fight alone, you still feel a part of that bigger picture, that your desperate fight for survival is being echoed along the entire front.

Its real Hollywood war film stuff: gritty, intense and cinematic, a true Band of Brothers experience that few games succeed in capturing the essence of, yet is pulled off with aplomb here.