 Brothers to the end. Both the Lambent and the COG are on their last legs. Unfortunately for them, the Lambent have come and are making a mad attempt to consume all life on earth. This one's for all the marbles. Either humanity wins the war or is exterminated forever.
1. Gameplay
 Who wants toast?! For those readers unfamiliar with the series, let me make something very clear. The Gears of War games do not paint war in a positive light. This isn’t some Call of Duty-type action game designed to make the player feel like Rambo on steroids. The characters in Gears of War are in a constant battle for survival against insurmountable odds. Every kill they make is necessary, and every major action has heavy, often terrible consequences. The COG that manage to survive the major decisions of the war often pay for them in horrible ways.  Horrible, horrible ways. It’s hard to believe that a game with so much killing could be so unbelievably dark, so let me give an example. The storyline of Gears of War is based off of the idea that an enemy race known as the Locust dug tunnels underneath the Earth’s crust and decided to emerge from these tunnels and attack the human race. Billions of people died in the attacks and the humans were almost entirely unable to deal with the size and strength of the Locust forces. So the human leaders had one desperate plan to try and stop the Locust, use the massive orbital lasers to burn the Locust to death. Unfortunately, the action also killed millions of innocent civilians in the process (and ended up being entirely useless), but the COG still pay for the consequences decades after the Hammer Strikes occurred.  Ouch. In this game, every advance is a last resort and every combat loss is extremely costly. Gears of War 3 represents the final attempt to destroy both the Locust and the Lambent for good. If the COG don’t win this time, there isn’t going to be a next time.  This miniature version of the Hammer of Dawn packs only a fraction of the punch of the full-sized model. Gears of War is a game that is well-known for its cooperative capabilities, and Gears of War 3 has built upon that even further. Previous titles in the Gears of War series featured a 2-player fully cooperative campaign that was a lot of fun to play with a friend. Gears of War 3 now features a 4-player fully cooperative campaign, which increases the available strategies the player has to employ against an increasingly difficult array of enemies. Playing this game alone is fun, but playing it with friends is awesome.  Double the bloodiness, double the fun! Be aware that the Gears of War series has always been very violent. The primary weapon in the game is a fully automatic rifle with a built-in chainsaw. If an enemy gets too close, players can rev up the chainsaw and slice the enemy in half in a very bloody, gory display.
The extra game modes made up for the lack of campaign. The developers of Gears 3 made a complete overhaul of the Horde mode, which greatly adds to the difficulty and the fun of the mode. In Horde, players must survive against wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies. The new version of Horde gives the players cash for every kill and at the end of every round that the players can use to build defenses. These defenses are then used against the next wave of enemies. The game also includes an extremely fun game mode called “Beast Mode”. Beast mode is a bit like Horde but in reverse. The player picks from a variety of Locust units and controls that unit to kill all of the human forces on the map. As the player progresses, he will have to face increasingly stronger human forces but will be given stronger Locust forces to play with. Almost every type of unit the player fights against in Horde will be available in Beast.  Big, scary, and ugly. That's my kind of awesome! Campaign, Horde, Beast, and the Versus multiplayer game modes can all be played online. There’s a lot of content to work with, so gamers should be happy for quite some time.
There are two issues I did have with the game. First, Horde and Beast mode allow the player to play alone against computers, but the game doesn’t take into account how many players are participating. One gamer will face the same number of opponents as five gamers. This may not seem like much, but one of the advantages to playing with multiple allies is that the enemy isn’t always shooting at the player. It means that the Beast and Horde modes with a single player are almost impossible, while with five players they’re almost too easy. Secondly, it felt like the developers included too many playable characters in the main campaign. The first game featured six characters total, Marcus and Dom (the main pair), Carmine (dies early on), Kim (dies early on), Cole, and Baird. This continues on to the second one (adding on another Carmine who also dies). However, in this last version the playable characters include Marcus, Dom (who dies), Sam, Anya, Cole, Baird, Dizzy, Jace, and a third Carmine. It was far too many characters and I never felt properly introduced to most of them. The familiar characters were great, but I was always left confused by Sam, Jace, and the third Carmine. The game never explained where they came from and the natural tension that normally occurs with new squadmates was never discussed or even present. But overall, those are just small gripes. The game itself is extremely smooth and enjoyable. 2. Parental Notices
 Anyone remember how to lift a bloodstain from clothing? Par for the course in this game is a liberal amount of blood and gore. The Lancer, one of the default guns, has a chainsaw that can be used to slice through enemies.  Welcome to our tutorial on how to cut a steak. The Retro Lancer, a version of the Lancer that includes a huge bayonet instead of a chainsaw, can be used to impale enemies for an instant, very bloody kill.  If you look really closely, you can see the bayonet coming out of the back of the Locust (on the right). There is one gun called the “Oneshot” because it can instantly pulverize almost any enemy in a single shot. And I don’t mean they get a big hole put in them, I mean they completely disintegrate into a red powder with a few chunks of meat.  It's tough to see, but that red mist used to be a Locust. Each of the weapons has its own unique execution. If an enemy is damaged enough, he will go down and begin crawling around. The player can run up to that downed enemy and, using whatever weapon the player is holding, decimate the downed enemy in a particularly bloody fashion.  Blood, blood everywhere! The most gruesome of these is actually the least bloody. Players can take the Scorcher (a flamethrower), kick the downed enemy onto its back, spear the Scorcher into the enemy’s stomach, and then let loose with a torrent of flames that emit from every orifice and limb the unfortunate enemy has.  Now remember, your Thanksgiving Locust should reach a core temperature of 3000 degrees. And these aren’t rare occurrences. Players don’t have to perform executions, but there’s very little chance of a player completely avoiding them when playing this game. An average player will see and perform these executions dozens of times throughout the course of the campaign alone. The likelihood of these executions increases with online gameplay as well.
 But Locust aren't mammals...
3. Other Factors
 It would be a pretty picture if it weren't for the huge imulsion (oil) pipeline going along the right side. There is also a scene where Dom prays to his dead wife Maria. 
However, because the COG is all but destroyed, there is no real law enforcement anymore.
 Yes, I was dead at the time. One problem that I saw in the beta (an early test version of the game) that was fortunately solved was the ability for the players to indefinitely “execute” a foe. For example, for the last kill of a match the winning player could go up to the downed enemy and continuously punch the enemy’s face. There was no end to the punishment. It was extremely aggravating no matter what side you were on. If you were an enemy, you’d be thinking “Alright, I get it. You won. Stop rubbing it in.” If you were an ally, you’d be thinking, “Why do we have to sit here and watch you do this when we could be playing another round?” Either way, this problem was fixed. The previously infinite executions now have a time-limit and I haven’t seen many players use the executions anyway.
The game introduces “Lambent Humans” who have been infected by the Imulsion parasite. These lambent are basically zombies that can explode at times.  Put a couple of back up dancers here and you could easily recreate Thriller. Kamikaze In one section, Dom (one of the main characters), saves the rest of his friends by driving a truck straight into a container of fuel. The fuel explodes, killing all of the enemies that had surrounded his friends but killing Dom in the process.  Suicidal, but effective. Kidnapping There were two specific instances of kidnapping. First, the leader of the COG (human) forces, Chairman Prescott, reveals that he had kidnapped Marcus’ dad, Adam Fenix, in order to try and force Adam to create weapons to solve the Locust and Lambent problems. Secondly, Dizzy, one of the COG forces, is kidnapped and held as a “performance guarantee” by a Stranded to ensure that Marcus and the rest of the main characters get the fuel that the Stranded want.  I think the guy on the left is wearing Dizzy's hat. Language Language in this game is a serious factor. Every character will end up swearing multiple times within any given segment, especially while in combat. One character, Griffin (played by Ice-T), was especially liberal with the use of the “f-bombs”. It wasn’t necessarily distracting, but it was definitely obvious.  Griffin at his finest. Weapons of Mass Destruction One of the cities the main character will have to travel to was hit by the “Hammer of Dawn”, large-scale orbital lasers that completely scorched the earth. The ashened, hardened remains of civilians stand as a testament to the horrors of the Hammer strikes. Think Pompeii, but much more recent and thus much more somber. It’s not a happy place.  Hiding in the climbing equipment. Not the brightest idea.
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