Gears of War 3: Day 5

So we are now approaching the end of Gears of War 3. And what a slow and ponderous journey it has been. Slow and ponderous progress anyway, as we have only been managing to play our way through the game in small chunks. Anyway we’re now on the 26th Chapter overall and so have about 5 to go before what I hope will be a very satisfying and climatic finish.

Again, as we are now so far into the story I can’t really talk much about what we have been doing without some spoilers. I’ll try not mention anything particularly story related (or at least nothing that is important or is something you aren’t meant to know until the end) but I will mention some things that occur later in the game. So, like in the last diary entry, if small spoilers about unimportant events in the game don’t bother you, then read on! But if you want everything to be a surprise then you should probably try and read something else we have here!

There are two things in particular I want to mention here. The first being the introduction of two new bad-guys that appear in the 5th Act. At least… I think we are on the 5th Act… I don’t remember the numbers… Anyway, the first of the new bad-guys are these giant-ass Centipede/Millipede guys called Serapedes. They are pretty damn big (well… long anyway) with an electrical bite which does hella damage and the only way you can kill them is from the butt forward. They are made of sections so you have to shoot it’s, for some reason glowing, posterior which knocks the furthest back “chunk” off of the Serapede. And then you have to destroy about 10 or so of these chunks. On their own, these guys aren’t particularly hard as the actual destruction of each chunk, up to and including the head, only takes one shot from any gun. But combine them with any amount of supporting grubs and suddenly these guys become absolute motherfuckers to deal with.

The way you deal with them is shoot the back end, but if you do enough damage it will start chasing you and so you have to run away, allowing your team-mates to shoot it until it decides to go for one of them. Because it’s almost impossible to hit the back while it’s coming dead at you, partly due to the back being protected by plates when looked at from the front and partly because when one of these guys starts chasing you then all training and nerves go out the window and you run around like a headless chicken screaming until it goes away. And unfortunately, when you are running around you invariably get shot by the locust. So basically they are tough when not alone.

The other new bad-guy is the armoured Kantus. Now these guys are almost literally like Sonic the Hedgehog, but I will come back to that in a moment. The armoured Kantus is a Kantus (surprise, surprise) wearing (bet you can’t guess…) a fuckload of armour. This armour makes it impervious to most bullets and so if you try and take one of these guys on with only small arms, it takes AGES before the bastards die. They also duel wield Gorgon pistols (uzis) which deals a surprising amount of damage, so they can fuck you up from a distance while you can’t fuck them up. The tactic me and Ali usually go for now is running up and sticking a Grenade on them. Because even other explosives, like a Boomshot or a grenade rolled to their feet, usually only downs them briefly rather than kills them. So they are a pain.

But why are they like Sonic the Hedgehog? Well first off, the armour they wear is covered in spines and spikes. And second off, if you get close enough then they do this rolling attack where they basically roll over you, allowing their spiny armour to deal tonnes of damage. So, much like Sonic… they roll around, hitting us with their spikes. It’s not that good a comparison you say? Well fuck you, I’m keeping it!

The second thing I want to mention is just one of the short chapters in the game. Gears has always had more than just the plain old, objective based run-and-gun type of play. All previous Gears have always had some other types of missions to break up the game rather nicely. One of the chapters we did yesterday was one of these. It involved travelling in a submarine where we were in turrets shooting away giant fish (someone kept using summon bigger fish…). And while Gears usually has nice and amusing vehicle missions to entertain you. This one was just a giant pain in the ass. It was almost literally impossible to tell which direction we were going in, where the enemies were coming from and even which way was up and down at times. It was pretty disorientating and I was rather glad when it was over.

Anyway, that’s it for Day 5! Keep an eye out for Day 6 soon. Also, Day 6 will be followed by a full review of Gears of War 3, including Beast Mode, offline multiplayer (because fuck online multiplayer) and the new Horde. Until then, watch this space!