This is a bit of a difficult review to type as I have essentially spent the past 6 months playing Gears 3... Anyway there's a lot to like about the third Gears, it more or less wraps up the story and characters, lots of neat gameplay improvements, LOOKS tremendously better than the old games. But I guess it isn't as good? Or maybe its the best? I don't really know!!

This was the Gears I had never played and knew basically nothing about (other than, SPOILERS!! DOM DIES?) so I was looking forward to getting to it. That said, it took me 6 months to beat it so I guess I didn't like it all that much, right? The shooting felt good as always, but basically no new guns? Or rather they had some special new ones but I essentially had The Old Standy layout of HammerRifle + Shotgun + bolter/machine pistol. That said it still felt pretty good to shoot up the bad guys... if only it still wasn't the same damn bad guys + some new boring ass ones! The Lambent, which were introduced near the end of 2, show up in full force and they look awesome. Glowy yellow guys who love to blow up 90% of the time, they look very imposing but unfortunately are just reskins of the grubs or just kind of annoying to fight.

Moving to a more positive note, the art direction/level design for 3 is off the charts. This game looks great, a VERY diverse set of levels for each chapter, you're in a brown/grey desert for like a half hour and that's it. And they made a Corpser boss not suck! It wasn't great or anything but... starting off, you're on a big boat and you get to see all the colors of the paintings and items of the crew on board, it feels like a very "lived in" space, and I thought that was great. Also they realized the 'stormy' areas of previous games were the coolest so they decided to end the series on a high note with a bitchin' "Maelstrom" area for the last fight.

However, we do have to talk about the story. The intro was honestly great, set up that General WhoCares had ditched everyone and humanity is on its very last leg - then General WhatsHisFace comes back and everything goes to shit and.... Marcus's dad is still alive?!!? That's nuts, lets go find him!! Then the pacing goes completely to shit as switch to Cole as a main character putzing around the mainland. I actually really like this section, we get a lot about Cole which is great plus we see how "ordinary" folks are trying to get by in this fucked up post apocalyptic world. It just takes WAY too long and doesn't really fit with the stuff they had you do the first hour. And then none of it has basically any pay-off later so.... Also, Dom and Marcus's dad. I thought these would be great scenes, but honestly they felt pretty meh. Dom did a sacrifice to get everyone to safety, but for what? So everyone could get some gas for a dude who had a transport to take them to a town that who even remembers what the fuck is there?

And honestly, that's Gears of Wars story in a nutshell - do a bunch of menial shit, going from random point A to point B to get some menial McGuffin, then mosey your way back to the end point and then NEXT CHAPTER. Nothing feels like it really counts for anything... you feel like a Cog in a machine that stumbles your way into importance. And maybe that's what they're going for, but in the entirely trilogy no one ever calls it out or does anything with that ideology.

THAT SAID - I love the ending. Marcus being a broken shell is a perfect ending, yeah, Lambent and Grubs defeated, but everyone he cares about but Anya is dead... what the hell is left for him? This mirrors humanity in general. Sure the big bads are dead... but what the hell is even left for us?