Well I rented the game and was relatively pleased with it; would've been pissed if I bought it though because the campaign ends in a sort of cliffhanger and in the main menu it says "More campaign DLC coming soon".

Obviously trying to milk the cow on the last(?) entry in the series which isn't unexpected but still irks me. I'll probably just end up getting info about what happened in the campaign DLC on a wiki.

There's a lot of different modes to choose from now, like beast mode where you get to control a locust unit and attempt to defeat civilians and "heroes" in a set amount of time. You earn cash and a bonus to the timer for every kill you make but the downside is you have to pay money every time you respawn (you pay more money to become a stronger locust unit).

Then there's Horde mode obviously; this has been revamped up the wazooo from what I can tell. You get cash from every kill you make and you can buy shit with it like automated turrets, barriers; ammo; manually operated turrets and silverbacks (basically a mech suit you can hop into). You can also upgrade the barriers and turrets. The highest level barrier forms a fence of 3 red lasers that cuts shit in half that attempts to walk through it (you can walk thru your own barriers safely).

and there's other stuff like the multiplayer but I can't really comment too much on that as I don't have access to the internet on my console.

Basically the game kinda blows in single player. I suspect it'd be a lot of fun with other people though; no matter what you decided to do.

Im planning to get it this winter as well.

campaign as "Arcade mode" online is kinda fun

Horde mode is def more interesting then before... though I'm going to need to look up on the best way to bring down that boss.... seems like hes invincible except right when he charges... so it seems to me you need 2 players minimum to even hurt him, 1 to bait him, 1 farther back to exploit the weakpoint when he gets baited into a charge.

VS mode is still pretty annoying IMO, BUT at least the lag is gone... so I may actually play it a bit. I still don't particularly think the control scheme is all that great for vs though.

I'm just renting via gamefly... I can keep it for $40 if I want to, or I'll just return it in time to get Skyrim... haven't decided yet

IMO you should just gamefly both Gears 3 and Skyrim, and buy BF3. Gears is a lot more fun with friends (which the only friends you have are on this forum ,) and you do not strike me as the guy who would burn 100-300 hours on a RPG game.

I'm not buying skyrim....

Though I have burned that much time on Borderlands (that's a bit diff though )

I mgiht buy Gears... My bro in Sac really likes Horde mode, so we'll see.

BF3 is pre-order no question there at all

i'm enjoying the hell out it, though I do agree vs can be annoying. I chalk this up to the fact that I haven't played gears since 08. There seem to be some latency issues but it's a huge improvement from gears2, which I traded in shortly after release. Think there may need to be some weapon balancing cause the sawed off seems to win every cq fight. Hopefully will get to try some horde or beast this weekend. It's a fun game and I recommend it...but you may only enjoy it if you have enjoyed past gears game. Lambo says he wasted 65 bucks....should have done the best buy scratch warranty hahah.

Yah, Horde, Beast, and Arcade Campaign are it's best parts IMO.

I just don't think 3PS cover based games make for good VS personally... though some people enjoy it, it's just not my thing.

I'll play it a lil here and there prolly, but I'd rather play BF for my vs fix.

Good co-op game though.

Yah, it wiped everyone but me when we beat it lolol

The problem is getting it to charge AND being able to shoot it with any meaningful # of shots....

You need to get close enough to taunt the charge that you practically have to roll out of the way almost immediately. Another player, farther back, can exploit the opening to open fire...

but if ur on a team with randoms... sometimes setting that up can be difficult at best.

Haven't gotten very far yet having only played with low ranking randoms :-\

Beat all 50 waves once, made it to 40 three times... Playing with friends though.

It'll register some shots even from the sides... It has double the health compared to the normal ones.

I love Gears multiplayer, especially with dedicated servers.
I haven't experienced any real lag yet, even in 4 player co-op.

VS is hard to get into and you always want to play with someone with a mic and wants to work together. You will get raped otherwise, unless you're extremely good/lucky.

Versus = camping behind cover with shotguns... Or that's the impression I've got from the previous GoW games, haven't even tried Versus in GoW3 but I've heard that now it's all about camping in cover with shotguns. Not my cup of tea, Beast and Horde I like and I've only scratched the SP so there's plenty of stuff left to do on GoW.

It's usually power weapon grab -> massacre -> camping. Xyco and I have the camping down to a science, though.

2+ players with lancers > anybody with shotguns in Gears 3.

I'll be getting ti closer to Christmas, when my m8'll be back in town. Me and him love us some Horde.

Overpass is definitely the best map for horde since they only have one direction to attack from (if you establish the base in the middle) and you can have one turret overlooking the stairs that they attack from and one overlooking the road on the right side. Completed all 50 waves on that last night. Silverback on wave 50 = Instawin.

another good map is thrashball; played through all 50 with my bro and a friend this past saturday. You can pretty much post up in that owner's box area and watch the 2 doors. Only took us about 6 hours hahah. We realized that there was really no point in wasting money on barricades and barbed wire and it was more worthwhile to spend on the silverback and turrets. On a side note, has anyone tried the vulcan cannon? That thing is fucking amazing. I just fed bullets to my bro the whole time and it was fun as hell.

Yah, turrets and silverbacks earn you cash as you use them up...

Barriers and Decoys just distract them while they get used up.

Still useful... but I don't bother with laser fences for example... hell spike strips do the trick as a slow down tactic and are cheaper.

Forgot to say that I tried versus last night... Yeah, it's still a shotgun fuck fest... I didn't do too bad for a versus noob though.