Gears of War 3 Review

This is a game designed to be enjoyed and experienced by all gamers, and Epic has outdone itself when it comes to the game's many multiplayer options. The five-player Horde mode, so frequently copied but never actually beaten, has returned, re-branded as Horde 2.0, now allowing players to fend off 50 waves of assorted enemies with the added attraction of building and maintaining fortifications, and the extra stress of fighting off a powerful boss monster with every tenth wave.

A game of Horde can easily spiral into hours, so Epic has added Beast as a complimentary mode, a shorter (think 30-40 minutes) game that switches the players' role and has them reduce humanity to gibs as the Locust masses over the course of 12 rounds.

Finally there is five-versus-five adversarial play - the home for the hardcore - spread out over six Versus modes and ten maps. Make no mistake: Gears of War is easily the most demanding multiplayer game of our times, and not since Counter-Strike have I ever felt so woefully inadequate when matched up against long-time players.

Yet Epic deserves special recognition for its commitment to multiplayer (Gears of War 3 now runs on a solid backbone of dedicated servers, hopefully alleviating the third game from the matchmaking issues which blighted the second) and clear desire to open up Versus play to everyone, tailoring the sawn-off shotgun to new players and including a new Casual lobby that denies entrance to experts. Even so, Gears of War is simply a much more challenging game than its contemporaries - you need to invest a lot of time and dedication to ever stand a chance.

Still, the real strength of Gears' Versus mode is its uniqueness, and your commitment will be rewarded by one of the most tense and satisfying multiplayer experiences money can buy. And while getting blasted into paste by the sawn-off will prove frustrating from time to time, it's exactly the addition Gears of War needs to attract newcomers.

Veterans, on the other hand, will find themselves rewarded with the game's tempting breadcrumb trail of unlocks - new characters, medals, ribbons, weapon skins and weapon-specific executions - which even includes items specific to legacy players alongside space for further inclusions via premium DLC. The game also builds an event calendar right into the game, advertising current and upcoming promotions and handing out enough incentive for players to check back over the coming months.

Few games offer up as much as Gears of War 3, and even fewer manage to do it this successfully. This is quite easily the best Gears of War yet, weaving excellent core mechanics together with the renewed perception of an ever-maturing developer. Once again, Epic has successfully iterated on a series that most other developers are still desperately trying to imitate.