Gears Of War 3 was just released today to the public beginning at 12am midnight. It made over one million pre-orders and is one of the most anticipated games of 2011 and is the final game ending the GOW trilogy. IGN gives it a 9.0 and I give it an A for Awesome. The game play is smooth. Graphics are badass. Just all around great game.

Coming as a Call Of Duty player, the movements are rather slow. However, this is a completely different game so that will be the only comparing to COD I’ll allow myself to do. The movements are practical—you can duck and hide against barricades, pop up while aiming and shoot. You can dash if you hold A and barrel roll. You can hop over things if you’re close enough, but unfortunately there is no jumping. I imagine you wouldn’t get high with all that gear on anyway.

The developing team, Epic Games, definitely prioritized the sound track and audio as much as they did with graphics. It has a very cinematic feel giving you the ultimate gaming experience. The graphics are highly detailed, smooth, clean and fun. Fun in the sense that the gory parts are comic-bookie rather than realistically scary.

The story line and dialog is well written and humorous. You fight as Marcus Fenix, the grizzled war hero and leader of Delta Squad. Eighteen months after the fall of the last human city, the war against the Locust rages on. Meanwhile, deep beneath the surface, a fearsome new threat is infecting the planet from within. With survivors scattered and civilization in ruins, time is running out for Marcus and his comrades as they fight to save the human race. It entertains “a tale of hope, survival, and brotherhood.” In this case, it’s more so brotherhood when you’re playing amongst friends you know, but if you’re playing online with randoms, it’s pretty much a race for the top score.

If you’re unaware by now, Gears Of War 3 is a third-person shooter. It is developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Studios exclusively for the Xbox 360. The competitive multiplayer aspect of the game is powered by dedicated servers and the continuous game play is supported with new maps and game types different from Campaign mode. Here are the four game modes to chose from:

Campaign mode: Standard mode is a cinematic, story-based campaign experience with up to local local players. Arcade Mode allows you to create a private or public campaign game with up to four players.

Versus mode: Play online against other players around the globe. Casual mode means team deathmatch with other casual versus players in a quick match. Standard mode allows you to play competitive versus modes online either ranked or quick match: Team Deathmatch—eliminate all members of the opposing team with respawns, up to 10 players; Warzone—one life per round/last man standing; Execution—eliminate all members of the opposing team using executions, one life per round; Capture The Leader—capture and hold onto the opposing leader while protecting your own leader; King of The Hill—capture and hold objective rings to score enough points to win; and Wingman—two-player teams try to eliminate the other opposing three teams, up to 8 players.

Horde: Fight wave after wave of the Locust Horde with up to four other co-op players online.

Beast: Destroy waves of stranded and COG heroes as quickly as possible with up to four other co-op players online.

Multiplayer includes nine maps:

Dry Dock

Gridlock

Hotel

Mercy

Old Town

Overpass

Sandbar

Thrashball

Trenches

The beauty of Gears Of War 3 is you can play campaign mode or versus mode online or locally, publicly or privately. You can customize the settings on a 10 player private game if you’re hosting—allowing or limiting respawns, number of rounds, number of bots, bots difficulty, bleed-out time, friendly fire, weapon respawn, and map selection (love that they brought this back from Ghost Recon 2—Final Assault & Summit Strike!). Much like it’s competitors in first/third-person shooters, GOW3 was created to keep the fans entertained continuously for a long, long time. It’s a great addition to anyone’s gaming collection.

Check out the the trailer:

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