Gears of War 3 (Xbox 360)

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Description

Gears of War 3 takes place 18 months after the end of the second game, and picks up on the on-going story from the Gears of War books, the last one being Coalition's End.

After sinking Jacinto in order to flood the Locust Hordes' subterranean homeland, the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) was forced to relocate their entire population to their former island stronghold and navy base on Vectes via Port Farrell. The growing threat from the emerging Lambent, however, has now forced the COG to abandon Vectes Island as well. As a result, the COG has been disbanded, and its population split up into smaller communities to avoid drawing attention from the Lambent. The player will once again assume the role of Sergeant Marcus Fenix, leader of Delta Squad, currently aboard the flotilla of ships housing the survivors as they deal with the relocation and fight off the lambent threat.

Gears 3 retains the shooter gameplay used in previous games, using over-the-shoulder third person system, as well as a cover system that allows players to move from cover point to cover point, roll and blind fire weapons/lob grenades. Players are now able to knock down opponents as a result of vaulting over short cover points. Players can also do a 'roadie run', which is essentially a sprint, except in a crouched stance to reduce profile. Also making a reappearance is the active reload, which speeds up reloading if the player hits reload again quickly enough, or a damage boost and a quick reload if the player times it to perfection.

New to the Gears series is the ability to play with four other player's over Xbox Live, with the three other players taking on the role of Delta Squad. Gears of War 2's five player co-op Horde Mode also gets a revamp to Horde Mode 2.0. Also included is the new Beast Mode, the opposite of Horde, in which players fill the shoes of a member of the Locust Horde attempting to survive wave after wave of COG soldiers. In addition to these, all previous multiplayer game modes return.

Screenshots

Part of the Following Groups

• 3D Engine: UnrealEngine3
• Gameplay feature: Chainsaws
• Gears of War series
• Middleware: FaceFX
• Middleware: Scaleform GFx SDK
• Middleware: TriOviz for Games Technology

User Reviews

I expected nothing less

Pixelspeech (955)

The Press Says

Joystiq	Sep 15, 2011		100
Xboxygen	Sep 18, 2011		100
guardian.co.uk	Sep 15, 2011		100
Xbox360Achievements	Sep 15, 2011	97 out of 100	97
Xboxdynasty (XD)	Sep 16, 2011	9.6 out of 10	96
gamrReview	Sep 15, 2011	9.3 out of 10	93
Canadian Online Gamers Network	Sep 24, 2011	91 out of 100	91
Metro.co.uk	Sep 15, 2011	9 out of 10	90
Lens of Truth	Jan 05, 2012	8.5 out of 10	85
The Telegraph	Sep 15, 2011		80

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Trivia

Carmine's fate

The fate of Clayton Carmine, one of the games secondary characters, was decided by on online 'vote' between July 29th and September 2nd by Epic Games. Two avatar items were placed on Xbox Live, one which read "save Carmine" and one that said "Carmine must die", with whichever one that sold the most would determine Clayton's fate.

The vote resulted from a outcry by some Gears fans after it was announced that another Carmine brother would be appearing in a Gears of War game, with the 2 previous games both featuring one of Clayton's three brothers, with both dying, and some fans wanted to see a Carmine brother survive an appearance in a Gears game. There was also several real t-shirts made and then sold for $20 at Comic con 2010.

The company raised about $150,000 and all profits made from both virtual and real t-shirts were donated to the charity Child's Play.

German version

While the German version is supposedly uncut, blood effects were removed in the German trailer.

Awards

• GamePro (Germany)
  • 2011 - #3 Action Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)

Related Web Sites

• Gearspedia (Game page on Gearspedia, a Wikipedia style database about the Gears of War series (English))
• X360A Achievement guide (X360A's achievement guide for Gears of War 3. (English))