varingblaarGears of War 3
Spoiler warning: If you haven't played Gears of War 3, I suggest you do so before going any further. If this spoils it for you, it's not my fault.You have been warned.
Part three of playing through the Gears of War series in co-op.
This is the second time through the campaign, but I haven't touched it in 15 years. We're playing on the Series S and I was surprised to see the game start up exactly where I'd left off on the XBox 360. Achievements I expected, but multiplayer level and unlocked ribbons are all here. That's impressive.
The "previously on Gears of War" clip didn't play, probably because the game decided that I'd played before. I did find it in settings, but would've been nice to have a reminder of everything that happened since Gears 2.
Story
We live on the ocean now. Subsistence farming on the decks and holds of carriers. The enemies are the Lambent now. They don't need solid ground to appear, with their stalks emerging even in the middle of the ocean. Nowhere is safe. Then we receive another message from Marcus's father, but only part of it, and suddenly our mission to destroy the Lambent is back on like it was before!
As part of returning to ground, we get Augustus Cole's backstory during our visit to Cougar Stadium. The fact that he used to be famous, actually helps us get to the people in charge of the Stranded that live there. For a brief minute we get to see Cole be the "NFL-but-future" star he used to be.
Dizzy is back! There's a mission where we need to rescue him, then he helps out for a few chapters until we get to Anvil Gate, and then he's part of the mission to get fuel for the submarine. He also helms the submarine, leading us into the final act.
The Big Scenes
This is the reason I wanted to play through these games in co-op. Dom's sacrifice is even more poignant because we played his character almost every step of the way. Having Mad World in the background was a nice callback to the trailer that launched the whole franchise. The quiet moment at the grave just before this, was a nice goodbye for me after 20 hours with the character. For my counterpart, who is actually playing as Dom most of the time, it was a nice moment but the gravity only made sense in hindsight.
But there's more. Marcus also loses his father. It was a little predictable, and the way his father was speaking leading up to this made it obvious he didn't expect to make it. It's such an anime moment where his dad turns to ash in front of him.
The Queen Myrrah fight is pretty standard. It has waves, during which you're either shooting at her, or at the many enemies that spawn. Then there's an opening to trigger the next phase but hitting her with the Hammer of Dawn. Rinse, repeat. The second part of the fight has her on the building, but you're still basically shooting until she goes down, then Hammer of Dawn. Marcus gets his bad ass up close moment with the villain, ending the fight with a dagger.
When all is said and done, we have celebrations all around. The war is (potentially) over... but at what cost? How do we rebuild?
A Suitable End to the Trilogy
Storytelling in this game was a little different from previous iterations. There was less exposition and more dialogue. Conversations instead of speeches. For the first bit I got pulled out of gameplay for a short 5 second cutscene a few too many times, but I'd have that rather than characters shouting at each other over gunfire anytime. The story beats felt better planned, and it felt like we were building towards the finale, rather than doing whatever needs to be done until the finale presented itself.
Oh I Forgot Carmine
I've mentioned that I got into Gears just after the second game. So I remember the Fate of Carmine campaign. You could buy shirts, either in real life or for your avatar, to vote whether the third Carmine brother should live or die.
Clayton Carmine is a part of your squad for a good part of this game, always in the background. During the final battle against Queen Myrrah, Carmine arrives in a Raven (chopper) to offer support, and gets taken out by her angry wasp (Tempest, apparently). As it goes down in flames, it looks like the end...
... until the final cutscene where Clayton Carmine picks up his helmet from the sand and helps with the post-battle cleanup.
Graphics
5 years after Gears of War 2 and it shows. Better quality textures, and the characters are more proportionate and less action figure shaped. Still a little action figure shaped, but they need to be recognisable I guess. Their armour is also less formulaic. I guess if you've been a soldier for 17 years with a very loose chain of command, you customise your uniform a bit.
Also there's a prominent female character now named Sam, and Anya is a playable character for the latter half of the game (I mean, because Player 2 can't be Dom anymore...)
Light plays a big role in this game. It looks like the entire lighting system was reworked. The Lambent glow, and they emit glowing goop everywhere, and we often fight them in the dark just to make the point. That puts a lot of pressure on the lighting system to perform well, and it is definitely up to the challenge.
Outside beach scenes look amazing, along with a much improved draw distance. I'll get to it below, but despite the actual play areas not being much bigger, the maps feel far more open because you can see further into the distance, and characters point this out. During one of the earlier missions, you're trying to catch a Gas Barge that you can see in the sky, then see it touch down far ahead. It's very impressive.
Gameplay
First things first, TAC-COM is more useful, telling where to go. A little star pops up pointing to the objective, and opening the overlay shows that same star. No more accidentally backtracking because we didn't see the door in the corner. There's still a bit of "press Y to look at things" happening, but in general if you don't want to, you don't have to. The game will carry on without you.
Pretty soon after the beginning, you get to control Cole and Baird. It's a nice change of pace, especially following Cole through his nostalgia-filled adventure in Cougar Stadium. In terms of gameplay it doesn't really make a difference. They both more and play like any other character.
For most of the game ammo is even more scarce than before. It forces the player to get more comfortable with different weapons, because a lot of the time your ammo supply is whatever the enemies drop. Besides less ammo pickups, the amount of ammo held is also less. For example the Lancer holds 420 rounds, down from 550 in Gears 2.
The Retro Lancer is insane. It takes forever to reload, packs a massive recoil and the spread is all over the place, but damn it does damage! The melee is not a chainsaw because this weapon is from the before times, it's a bayonet charge. Essentially a roadie run that kills the guy you run into. You can get in trouble though. If you miss your target, you can roadie run your way right into enemy lines.
Speaking of roadie runs, it feels better. Character seems smaller on screen so you have a better idea where you're going. Might just be a better camera, not sure, but I was using it a lot more.
Enemies
So the Lambent work a little differently. Instead of an emergence hole in the ground, it's now a stalk that stands up in the air. This changes the approach.
The emergence hole in previous games required a player to run in and grenade it, then fight their way back to a defensive position to take out the remaining enemies. It could be closed at a distance, if a player could aim a grenade's arc high enough. But often the target is below the field of view, especially in splitscreen multiplayer with it's super-ultrawide view.
The stalks being off the ground makes it easier to take out the pods at a distance, limiting the number of enemies on the battlefield before engaging them. They do often spawn pods on the opposite side, so they can't all be reached easily, but reducing the initial spawn goes a long way to taking them down.
The Lambent themselves are interesting but a little overwhelming to understand. Most of them are Lambent Locust, standard Locust enemies but they explode. Then there's the Drudge that transforms into different things and basically needs to be "murdered further". Occasionally the head comes after you like a snake...
The Gunker is a Boomer on steroids. It covers the battlefield with thrown bombs and if you get to close it swipes at you. Best to take these out as soon as they appear.
Lambent Zerker is no fun. That's all I have to say.
The Locusts also updated a little bit, like grenades that go underground, but mostly they just played as an additional force during combat to add another flank to worry about. By now we know how they work and can dispatch them easily.
Level Design
Levels feel more open. I don't think they're about the same size as Gears 2 but there's more room for movement, more flanking opportunities, more levels... Gears 3 is capable of 4 player co-op, so there are options. Often if we died, instead of brute forcing it, we could try a different approach. It makes the whole game less frustrating.
Due to this open layout, I did find myself running and gunning more often, instead of sitting behind cover waiting for enemies. Enemies were designed to get you behind cover, forcing you to move around more, so overall a more active experience.
The submarine underwater section really showed off what they could do. In effect it's just another driving-and-shooting scene similar to the run to Mercy, but it looks great. I do feel the dark sections towards the end were maybe too dark, Might be the HDR settings on my TV though.
So... This is it
A suitable end to an awesome trilogy. I'm happy to have replayed all three games in rapid succession like this. It's fun to share the whole story with someone, and I'm happy that it can still be enjoyed with relative ease thanks to XBox Game Pass and backwards compatibility.
It would be a perfectly suitable place to end the series right here. However there's a board game from 2011, I haven't played Gears 4 or Gears 5, and Gears of War: E-Day is slated for later this year...
Update: RAAM's Shadow
I lied. There was DLC for Gears of War 3 that included an additional act. It took some jumping through hoops to purchase it in the today times, and then it downloaded slower than my 1998 dial-up for the first bit, but after an hour we were ready to go.
This is a prequel, about 9 years before Gears 1, 9 years after E-Day. We play as Zeta Squad, most notably Kim who will be the boss guy at the beginning of Gears 1 and Tai the not-really-Pacific-Islander from Gears 2. It's nice to spend a little more time with Tai. His specific style of banter is refreshing.
Young Jace Stratton is here, but he's not in the military yet. He's just a young adult that we come across while doing our job. It becomes an escort mission. Luckily it's background story and you don't actually have to keep him safe. Then he gets picked up by General RAAM himself. Literally picked up. Valeria saves him, sacrificing herself, Jace swears to avenge her (or something) and tadaa he's in the army now. Turns out this is his origin story.
Fun thing, we get to play as the bad guys for some of the bits. Specifically RAAM. He doesn't have weapons as such, he has this cloud of Kryll he sends out and if you hold it over a guy long enough they "pop". It's fun, but not very effective. Other than that the RAAM segments are the same as most COG parts. Go to area, wait for the guy with the spike to hit it into the ground, kill anything that moves.
The voice acting for this one isn't up to par with the main game. I actually have a hard time tracking who's speaking. For most of it, it doesn't actually matter who's saying things as long as you follow what they're saying.
On a technical level, we experienced a couple of hard freezes. First time it was necessary to quit the game and start it up again. The second time it sorted itself out after a minute of random noise.
So in conclusion, glad I played this little act, because it fills in Jace's story and we learn a little more about RAAM. It was a little over 2 hours of extra content.
