Gears of War 3 semi-review and thoughts

I am not going to do this review like I normally do them as a list of likes and dislikes but rather I want to talk about its theme, so let’s get rid of the basic stuff first.

Is it good? Yes, absolutely! Great? Oh yes! Do I recommend buying it? Yes I do.

Okay, for those not in the loop, Gears of War is a 3rd person shooter about humans fighting a loosing war on some far off planet. While being a very solid game in itself, Gears of War distinguish itself by two elements, first of all its active cover system which I love and second, it’s gritty universe and the tone of its storytelling. As a whole, the game feels very much like playing an old war movie where the heroes are holed down trying to survive against all odds.

Thematic gaming

There’s a theme to GoW3 and to an extent the series and whether you will enjoy or hate the game will rest a lot on whether or not you get aboard with it. Gears of War is not Halo where you are the lone hero saving humanity all by itself. Here, you are a soldier amongst many, albeit a great soldier, and you’re doing your best to survive and help out however you can. The tone is a lot more down to earth than what we are used to.

Then there’s the theme through this game of war and its effect. That even in victory, war will leave you and the world devastated. Sera, the planet on which the action takes place, is very much a post apocalyptic world due to the constant warfare. In the name of victory, horrible things have been done and you are faced everywhere with the consequences of war. Gears of War doesn’t try to sell you that war is fun like most shooters do. It shows you that ultimately, it leaves nothing but destruction and broken people.

So while you character is nothing but badassery on a level approaching Chuck Norris, in the end the game is all about showing you war consequences. Whether or not you will enjoy this game depends a lot on if you’re open to something different. On whether you can enjoy a game with an actual theme and message. It’s weird to say this about a shooter but when you get down to it, GoW actually tries to make you think for a moment about the actual consequences of blowing everything up without much regard for the consequences.

The list

The monkey loved:
-Great action, fun fights
-Nice storytelling that doesn’t overdo everything.
-Multiplayer: very well done!

The monkey was disappointed with:
-The end fight. I was expecting more of the grand finale and the boss was actually pretty easy.

I plan on redoing the entire series back to back soon to get a feeling on how it plays as a trilogy. I’ll keep you posted about this.

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