Gears of War 3 - Catch All

SallyNasty wrote:

Had a great time last night with Nel, Garden, Trashie and Clem!

Cube - I sent you an FR, but never saw you online!

Plan is to go back in there tonight around 9 central - if we have a full 4 I am happy to go earlier (all depends). We will be looking for a 4th - and at the last chapter of act one.

Sorry I didn't join last night, was just getting in and wanted to play through the game in order.

Lets do some Horde mode. Gamertag: Godwuzhere. Invite me if you see me on. Had a blast with the first few hours of the campaign with some friends last night. I'm amazed how much better this game looks than the previous installments.

Got through about 6-7 hours of the campaign last night (near end of Act IV). I have to say I'm enjoying it quite a bit. As expected, it looks fantastic and the new baddies are a nice treat. The levels have been quite diverse and the openness is a nice change.

What I'm probably enjoying the most though is how thoroughly the story integrates with the novels. While they weren't spectacular, the books were a nice diversion with familiar characters. But now I'm truly glad I read them as there are numerous references in the game to characters and events that occurred in the books. As I understand it, the GoW3 story was written by Karen Traviss, the author of the novels.

I feel kind of bad that the vast majority of GoW3 players don't have that back story to flesh out the game.

Did anyone else here read the books?

I continue to be impressed by how much further developers keep managing to push the 360 graphically. Nice work on Gears 3, Epic!

We were talking about this last night during the campaign. I'm not usually a graphics guy, but what they've done is incredibly impressive. Everything is crisper. They've added water effects and fire effects. I haven't noticed nearly as much pop-in. And it runs incredibly smooth with 4 players.

I played a little Horde mode last night, I love the tower defence aspect!

Finished the campaign. Stayed up til 4:30 am -- haven't done that for a game in a looooooong time.

Clemenstation wrote:

Finished the campaign. Stayed up til 4:30 am -- haven't done that for a game in a looooooong time.

That's intense. It certainly has that "Ok, I can squeeze one more chapter in" effect but I made it a point to shutdown at midnight.

SallyNasty wrote:

Had a great time last night with Nel, Garden, Trashie and Clem!

Cube - I sent you an FR, but never saw you online!

Plan is to go back in there tonight around 9 central - if we have a full 4 I am happy to go earlier (all depends). We will be looking for a 4th - and at the last chapter of act one.

Yes, good times! I was lucky last night cause the wife came home before she had her girls night, so I was able to squeeze in an extra hour of fun with Sally before we really got going. But tonight I may not be online til 9:30 central. Feel free to start without me if you guys get impatient. I had 39 friends online last night and 30 of them were playing Gears 3, so I'm sure I won't have problems finding a pick up game.

nel e nel wrote:

I was lucky last night cause the wife came home before she had her girls night, so I was able to squeeze in an extra hour of fun with Sally before we really got going.

Giggity.

Normal is definitely easier. I find myself being very reckless. I'm pretty sure I've chainsawed more dudes in the first two acts than I did in the first two games. That's not to say that I'm not getting downed a lot. Those big lambent guys that hurl big globs of imulsion at you and the diggers are real pains in the ass. It's a good thing Atras joined my game since he revived me about 20 times.

Started solo campaign in Arcade mode, because I liked the way Halo Reach handled that. Didn't realize it only saves chapters completed, so no mid chapter checkpoint saves that you can resume later.

Just a warning. Should have probably started on Normal.

MannishBoy wrote:

Started solo campaign in Arcade mode, because I liked the way Halo Reach handled that. Didn't realize it only saves chapters completed, so no mid chapter checkpoint saves that you can resume later.

Yeah, I figured that was the case so I just went with normal campaign. I've been leveling up anyway so I wonder if it works the same way but it just doesn't tell you what points you're getting.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Normal is definitely easier. I find myself being very reckless. I'm pretty sure I've chainsawed more dudes in the first two acts than I did in the first two games. That's not to say that I'm not getting downed a lot. Those big lambent guys that hurl big globs of imulsion at you and the diggers are real pains in the ass. It's a good thing Atras joined my game since he revived me about 20 times.

Interesting, when I left, I swear it said it was Hardcore - I wonder if it kept the individual difficulty levels for players from the previous games. I sent you a message to see if you minded a drop-in, then got impatient and went for it without knowing, so I am glad I could help (when I wasn't getting myself killed).

Sorry for the invite spam... I've made note to myself that that button really does mean "invite every friend currently playing Gears" and it really does do it now with no hesitation or confirmation.

Issued some friend requests to some folks from the last couple pages of this thread. My friends list was low on GoW3 players.

Shoot me a friend invite as well:
cube135

People can feel free to send me friend requests as well. Particularly those that want to play co-op and horde and beast modes. Additionally, anybody is more than welcome to jump into my game if they see me playing campaign.

I've finished the SP, and barring my co-op group showing up to finish the latter half of the game I'm thinking I'm going to be looking for some Horde games over the next few days.

Finished the campaign (except for the first half hour that I need to go back and play at some point). Good times with Garden Ninja and Cpt Glanton last night. I'm especially impressed by the network stability. No lag or any problems that I noticed, even with a full group. It's good, but I didn't feel like it reached the same levels of inspired craziness and variety that Gears 2 had. Also...so many elevators. I still don't care about the story or characters, so nothing they did there had any impact on me.

I hit an unfortunate bug in the last couple of chapters where I couldn't use any new weapons I picked up - their spot on the weapon-selection pop-up just became blank. Reloading caused the weapons to reappear, but the bug still recurred whenever I picked up new ones. Fortunately, my co-op partner was able to carry the load during the last few fights.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to trying more campaign on harder difficulty levels (though the lambent are such bullet sponges already on Normal that I worry about ammo on higher difficulties). Also need to try Horde and Beast and versus and all that other stuff in there.

I finished Campaign last night. The level design, weapons, and enemies I found to be generally exceptional (although I could have done with fewer encounters with one boring enemy type). The story is a massive upgrade over the other games', but unless I slept through it, they still didn't explain

Spoiler:

WHY THE LEADER OF THE LOCUSTS IS A HUMAN WHAT THE HELL EPIC.

Anyway, I might be doing some work tonight, but any time I'm online for the next week or two I'll be looking for Horde, Beast, and MP action.

I was initially so surprised to check my friends list late last night and see so many folks playing the campaign as opposed to multiplayer. I guess that makes sense though.

Gears 3 has been a great experience so far. I broke my golden rule of not getting a second copy of a game and traded in a few titles that were getting dusty in my closet for a second one. That money was spent long ago... so at least I jumped the hurdle of no new green out of pocket for copy #2.

Last night my sons and I ended up playing private local warzone games, supplemented with a roster of mean ol'bots. It was the first time we were all headset-ted up and playing together across two rooms and all I can say is it was awesome. Imagine the best of Gears and Beers, minus the beer and with your sons just having fun together.

Round after round, match after match. My younger son wanted to be alone on the Locust team as opposed to all being together as Cogs. I was surprised they both didnt team up on me, but I'm sure they are saving that fun for another time.

Their voices sound so similar yet different coming through headphones like that. I'm not sure why it would be any different than talking to them on the phone, but... I guess it was the fun of the moment and just knowing it was the first time we leveraged the technology of a LAN game like that.

I will probably always remember the fun we had system linking up for Gears 3 for the first time. Being a gamer at heart, this was a dream come true.

(Yeah, I know it sounds all warm and fuzzy, but of course there was much reveling in head stomping, chainsawing and downage etc. Still they were well behaved even within the virtual grim future of Gears, it was just innocent fun.)

Though my wife will never read this post, I owe her thanks for giving up both the primary tvs for her three 'boys' last night. (Phew I'm glad she had a new magazine arrive yesterday)

iaintgotnopants wrote:

People can feel free to send me friend requests as well. Particularly those that want to play co-op and horde and beast modes. Additionally, anybody is more than welcome to jump into my game if they see me playing campaign.

If you are cool with that - expect random invites to play through co-op:)

Versus question: I can't play a casual game, it throws me into standard modes immediately.

Is that because I was in the beta?

I kind of suck, so would have liked a bit of a warm up in casual. Been awhile since the beta, and during the beta it took a bit to get my legs under me, so I assume it will all work out and I'll come up to "average" at some point.

I might be wrong, but I think Casual was blurred out for me too. I didn't do the beta, but I have played a lot of Gears 2 MP.

Honestly, to practice for MP, you might want to load some campaign chapters where you face a lot of standard locust grunts and turn up the difficulty. If you can kill those in groups at close range (meaning shotguns and point-blank lancer work) you should be as primed for MP as a Casual MP experience would make you.

If you have played gears 1 or 2's MP - casual is not an option for you.

Played a bit of MP KOTH with Sally last night, waiting for a fourth to show up for campaign, and had two awesome moments.

1) On a turret, getting shot up so I get off the turret and start to run towards cover. Then I notice an enemy player running up the stairs towards, so I rush back to the turret, scramble to take control and swing it towards the entrance and start blasting, taking him out right before he was within shotgun range.
2) Same match, both sides are rushing towards the capture point. I'm rushing (stupidly) with a shotgun when I notice them cluster together. I switch to grenades and toss one at their feet, wait a tick...tick... BOOM! Three dead locust.

I suck at MP (.4 K/D, just from that one match, but still), which just made those moments that much sweeter.

SallyNasty wrote:

If you have played gears 1 or 2's MP - casual is not an option for you.

That's probably it. It's probably looking at Gears 2 levels. I think I'm 27 or so there after playing a bit of Horde last weekend with the 25x XP bonuses. (It was tickers only. Ick.)

This is kind of crazy:

Feel free to friend me up (link in sig), and invite me whenever for whatever. Just keep in mind if you see me watching a video I probably will not get the invite and/or it's my gf using netflix.