Been off the ball a bit recently with the ole blog… Have been a bit under the weather and have had much of my spare time sucked from me by the awesome The Last of Us on PS3… I will most certainly share my thoughts on this brilliant game in due course. I had hoped to originally put all the posts on the 7th gen consoles systems and the new 8th gen in the Nottro section, but it will end up reading like one big post… so Welcome To Last Week! This will be a regular post article when I’ll discuss some of the 7th & 8th gen games I’ve had the pleasure of playing.

Whatever the game being discussed will be, you can rest easy that IGN, C+VG, GameFAQs, Edge, Kotaku etc etc, will all have done and dusted with whatever it is I’m bleating about… but I’m sure I’m not the only gamer out there who, for whatever reason (time? money? life? family? put your excuse here), cannot be queuing up at Game at midnight every time there is a major release, dashing home on a cocktail of ProPlus and Red Bull, playing through the game and then posting a blog and/or You Tube video before most of us have even had breakfast and put our underpants on.

With the image of breakfast and underpants lodged firmly in your minds we’ll swiftly move on to something that, frankly, has very little in the way of either – Gears of War 3. Released just over two years ago on Microsoft’s Xbox 360, this is, thus far, the final chapter in the original Gears of War story (last year’s GoW: Judgement is not part of the main story arc).

I really enjoyed the first Gears of War, and GoW 2 was a worthy sequel, expanding and improving on the original. I purchased both either at, or shortly after, their original release dates, so even I was a little surprised that I had not jumped on the GoW 3 band wagon a lot sooner. Why it took me so long to purchase it I’ll never know, but at the seemingly give-away price of £11.00 on Amazon for a new, sealed, copy, it looked like a bargain in the making.

Fortunately, the game delivered plenty of bangs for my bucks.

Gears of War 3 throws you straight into the action, as you once again assume the role of Marcus Fenix, partnered with his bunch of motely crusaders, in the fight to save the planet Sera from the clutches of the Locust Horde.

The first half of the game has you mainly dispatching waves of Lambent, mutated forms of Locust, who have similar attack AI to the Locust but also have some new tricks up their sleeves too. There is also a section of the game where you have to face a new type of enemy (I’ll keep that bit quiet so as not to ruin the story), which helps throw a good twist into the plot and also sees a rather poignant end to one of the series’ main characters. New weapons also make an appearance to help you vary your attack strategies, my favourite being the awesome Vulcan. The duck and cover mechanic the series has become renowned for, remains as accomplished as ever – many have tried to imitate Epic Games combat system, but few can get close to the masters of this style.

The action is fairly relentless at times, which wouldn’t be so much of a criticism if the game was just a little shorter than what it is and therefore the action a little more varied. Although there are now the Lambent to deal with as well as the Locust, once you’ve hit your umpteenth wave of either you pretty much know what to expect. Now, if you’re going to end a popular trilogy you want to do it with some style, so GoW 3 does not fail on that count, but I do feel that making it like the sci-fi version of Ben Hur in scope makes it a little bit of a chore occasionally. The dialogue is also a bit naff, but seeing as the game was, for me, sandwiched between stints on Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us I am perhaps being a little snobbish… you’re not going to get Oscar winning material in a game of this ilk, but perhaps the dialogue is a bit too coarse for its own good.

The graphics are excellent throughout with some superb lighting effects and fluid animation, certainly some of the finest visuals I have seen so far on the 360, and well worth taking in when you’re not too busy dodging bullets. The musical score is also of a very high quality when the cinematics are called for at various intervals. The AI is also of a high standard, meaning that not only are the enemies no push over to defeat, but that the console controlled members of your team generally react in an intelligent and logical way to whatever you’re doing rather than running round like headless chickens and getting slain every five seconds, much to your own chagrin.
There is also, of course, a healthy dose of multi-player content, which really is not my thing, and therefore I won’t be going into further details on this. Suffice to say, those of you who like your multi-player action will not be disappointed; and there’s DLC map packs to add into the mix too.

If you enjoyed either of the first two entries in the series then GoW 3 is a real no brainer. While not quite faultless, GoW 3 does provides a substantial and entertaining one player campaign, offers plenty of re-play value for Achievements or to best personal goals from previous runs, and has strong multi-player content to boot. Certainly one of the finest Xbox 360 action games you can buy, and overall the best game in the original trilogy – never easy to keep besting yourself, but, Epic have done a damn good job of achieving this. I just wonder how long it will be before Epic/Microsoft make an announcement about the franchise crossing over to Xbox One…