ItвЂ™s actually going faster than I initially expected, which makes me want to pop back into Gears of War 2 and Gears of War to grab their respective sets of collectibles. A few of these shimmery items are hidden pretty well, so IвЂ™m referencing a guide here and there. IвЂ™m currently going back to select chapters (on casual, you nerfherder!) to find all the collectibles and lost COG tags because I already stumbled upon a good chunk of them my first time through, so I might as well finish the job. I donвЂ™t have any plans to play through the game again on a higher up difficulty, but I might check out the first few levels once more via the arcade mode, which basically scores every action you do. There are a few vehicle sequences that are merely okay, though I felt like the submarine section towards Azura could have used more punch. As previously mentioned, I played through on the normal difficulty and didnвЂ™t have any problems with the combat, occasionally dying to a well-placed Boomer shot or someone chainsawing me unexpectedly. It also seems to move slower compared to the newest entry, and thereвЂ™s no knife melee kill much to my chagrin. Like, I wonвЂ™t even tell you the number of times I tried to run up to cover and mantle over it. You might also be surprised to learn that it does not exactly play like Gears of War 4 and that I had some trouble switching between the two. Gears of War 3 plays pretty similar to Gears of War 2 and Gears of War. The basic goal of the game is getting to Adam Fenix, with four and three-fourth acts or so of roadblocks that deter our protagonists into other areas first. There, they also learn that Azura is protected by man-made hurricane generators, making the island only accessible by submarine. Upon arriving at Anvil Gate, Marcus and his comrades assist soldiers in repelling a combined Lambent and Locust assault. Marcus and his pals then must fight their way to the Anvil Gate Fortress, where Hoffman possesses the necessary equipment to fully decrypt PrescottвЂ™s disc. Before dying, Chairman Prescott gives Marcus an encryption to a disc, which reveals that his father, Adam Fenix, is still alive, but held as a prisoner on Azura, a secret COG base. So, the Lambent launch a surprise attack. Thankfully, as you saw, it was more problematic at the start and steadied itself by the middle of the campaign, which meant I could focus more on shooting monsters in the face and less panicking every time a cutscene started. Especially for a game of this quality and number of people working on it.

Now, six hard locks on the console might not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it is more than enough to be irksome. IвЂ™m not sure if this was a common happening in the original launch version or has something to do with it being backwards-compatible, but either wayвЂ¦ yuck.Д«ecause IвЂ™m slightly loopy and couldnвЂ™t help myself, I began tracking the number of Xbox One hard-freezes I hit in Gears of War 3: Trust me when I say IвЂ™ve also stared at it a whole bunch because it is this point in time that the game decided to freeze for me on multiple occasions, hard-locking the entire Xbox One and forcing me to do a reboot. You can see this depicted in the picture above.

I beat Gears of War 3вЂs campaign the other night, on the normal difficulty, and the hardest part was at the very beginning, when our gallant troop of four from the Delta SquadвЂ“Marcus Fenix, Dominic Santiago, Anya Stroud, and Jayson Stratton specificallyвЂ“would run up to the deck of the Sovereign and stare in astonishment at a surprise attack from the Lambent.

Gears of war lambent