WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Gears Of War 3 Impressions

For many gamers, Gears Of War 3 is their most anticipated title of 2011, finishing off the shooter trilogy with a bang as developer Epic Games draws the various plot strands of Marcus Fenix's tale to a close. At the Gadget Show Live, the multiplayer beta (due out April 25th on Xbox Live, or next Monday if you bought Bulletstorm and/or preordered this) was being tested with players, and while I couldn't get hands-on with it, I can assure fans right now that it's going to include everything they know and love, ramping up the visual flair and scaling down the number of glitches and online lag just as players had hoped. You either make your own character or play as a pre-set COG member, facing off against each other with cool weapons like machine guns and futuristic sniper rifles, or alternatively you can try playing as series antagonists the Locust in Beast Mode, the polar opposite to last year's Horde Mode (but that's included too, testing your teamwork and survival skills against masses of enemies). The graphics are simply amazing this time around, really honing in why Microsoft are pushing this as their major hardcore exclusive of the year and certainly enough to have PS3 fans quaking in their LittleBigPlanet Sackboy costumes, while the game-play is by far the most accessible and equally consistent we've seen in Gears before. All that remains now is to see if Epic can handle thousands of their followers racing onto the servers next Monday when the beta goes online, but if this is the testing stage of the multi-player alone I can't wait to see the finished product with a full single-player campaign!