The Seran city slowly crumbles around you as onscreen captions frequently appear to tick off the minutes until an approaching Kryllstorm arrives. The story unfolds in two parallel threads, with Zeta Squad working to aid in the evacuation of Ilima City while Queen Myrrha directs RAAM and his forces in their sustained assault. You also get to spend some time tromping around in the shoes of Locust General RAAM and his Onyx Guard protectors. Minh Young Kim (of Gears 1 fame) and rounded out by Michael Barrick (from the Gears comics), Tai Kaliso (Gears 2) and Alicia Valera, a brand new character. The focus of this adventure is on Zeta Squad, a foursome of COG soldiers led by Lt. Fenix is nowhere to be seen, not even in a cameo.
The five-chapter campaign will take the average player roughly three hours to push through, give or take an hour depending on the difficulty and number of players (four-person co-op returns from the Gears 3 campaign). This week brought the first story-expanding downloadable content pack for Gears 3, a prequel tale called RAAM’s Shadow that drops players into the early days of the post-Emergence Day conflict.
Epic Games brought the saga of Marcus Fenix to a close in September with the release of Gears of Wars 3, but none of us ever thought for a moment that it would be the end of our time fighting in the human war against the Locust Horde.
