Gears of War 3 review roundup

Gears of War 3, the third and final installment in the saga of Marcus Fenix and his heavily-armored buddies, hit store shelves this week. The sales are expected to be monumental, even by Gears of War standards. But how does this mature-rated game play? Well, judging by the early reviews, it plays very well indeed. Let's go to the score cards.

The storyline

"As with the first two Gears titles, the plot of Gears of War 3's main campaign is either commendably straightforward or completely irrelevant, depending on how you look at it," writes Taylor Clark of Slate. "Once again, you take the role of Marcus Fenix, a battle-scarred brick in human form who growls his way through post-apocalyptic environments alongside his band of bantering space marines. Fenix is still fighting to save humanity from the Locusts, a race of inexplicably evil underground-dwelling monsters who, despite their admirable grasp of weapons technology, only speak in monosyllabic descriptions of actions in which they're currently engaged. (Crush! Boom! Grind!) And that's pretty much all you need to know."

The graphics

"Visually, Gears 3 is as pretty and sophisticated as any game you’ll see on the Xbox 360," writes Seth Schiesel of the New York Times. "By the end of it, the Gears franchise finally discovers the colors green, yellow and blue (to go along with brown, gray and red), and the lighting effects glitter. It must be said, though, that after playing mostly high-resolution PC games over the summer, I found that returning to the graphically inferior console required some initial forbearance."

The graphics, continued

"The Gears franchise is set in a world that used to be beautiful, but has long since descended into grime and devastation," writes Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly. "The ruined cities resemble war photography from Belgrade and Iraq and Blitz-era London. The third Gears expands the scope of devastation in every direction, sending you on a floating tour of a desert wasteland and on a submarine voyage through a sunken city. The Gears designers cherrypicked their world’s architectural design from various sources — ancient Rome, mid-century suburban London, Blade Runner-ish sprawl — so you feel a little bit like you’re taking a tour through all of human history, a post-apocalyptic safari."

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