Review by: Tom Chick

No one will be seated during the thrilling final levels of Gears of War, when our neckless heroes have to run down box-filled corridors to flip three switches, then turn five valves, then destroy three anti-air emplacements, then flip two more switches, then shoot the weak glowing spot on the final boss. I hope none of those was a spoiler. For all you know, I could have been talking about any of the previous games.

Gears of War 3 isn't bad so much as cloyingly familiar, like a houseguest who keeps telling the same stories and doesn't notice you making a show of looking at your watch. You've played this game a couple of times already, and here you are shelling out another 60 bucks to play it all over again, with only minor improvements, and with the same shortcomings it's had all along. The word that keeps springing to mind as I play is "competent". When it's all over, the reaction is a shrug.

Not to say developer Epic has been slacking. They've been very busy and it shows. You can tell they've been playing a lot of Resident Evil, Lost Planet, Halo, Left 4 Dead, and Bioshock. I'd even surmise they've been watching Breaking Bad, given that an absurdly broad-shouldered Walter White look-a-like is one of the two new characters in Gears of War 3. The other is an absurd Ice T cameo. But there is nothing here that doesn't feel perfunctorily borrowed from somewhere else. The world of Gears 3 is a derivative grab bag of stuff done elsewhere, and often done better.

However, to be fair, Gears 3 is mostly derivative of Gears of War 1 and Gears of War 2. Gears 3 features the same characters, doing the same things, having the same ridiculously earnest moments and the storyline involves figuring out yet another doo-dad that will save the world. Even the villain is entirely recycled. The gunplay is Gears' trademark cover-based pop-and-shoot, with the same beefy bullet sponges stomping around growling loudly so you know they're there. All that's new this time are some zombies, including one right out of Resident Evil, which is right out of The Thing.

At least the combat model still has its own distinct feel and pace, based on cover and flanking, and making tough choices among weapons, and weighing when to hang back against when to rush forward. Ideally you'll play it cooperatively, this time with up to three friends. If not, the AI will fill in for the three other players, and it's quite capable of playing much of the game for you. Gears 3 is very forgiving on the default difficulty level, and mostly reasonable on the harder difficulty levels. There are a few new weapons like a digger (grenades go under cover instead of over cover) and a retro-lancer (bayonet charges instead of chainsaw clashes),but nothing substantial has changed in the gunplay.

The engine looks good enough from a technical standpoint, but the level design consists almost entirely of hallways littered with conspicuous boxes for cover. Corridor after corridor after corridor, some wider than others, divided into discrete sections, each playing almost exactly like the last one, punctuated by a handful of terrible rail shooter sequences. This is one of the worst showcases for what Epic's Unreal engine can accomplish. You could say it's more brown this time. Never has a Gears game been so dun.