Got my copy from Amazon today and should be on tonight. Debating if I want to just campaign right away solo or wait till some are ready for co-op. The "Horde" mode is a must.

the game is a blast in co-op...if you can stand it wait....

That's a good idea to play on normal and then play on insane. I started on Hardcore, but may change it to normal.

When you beat the game in insane do you also get credit for hardcore? I seem to remember that you do.

However the game is real smooth, Love that the AI can revive you so now when you play by yourself you are not just dead. makes the game much less frustrating and does not take you out of the action as much.

hasn't that always been the case for all gears of war games?

Not the first one.

I'm always puzzled by people who pay that much for a code right after the release. It would be more affordable to preorder multiple copies of the game at each place offering an exclusive, then turn around and sell the unopened copies on Ebay for $40-45 bucks apiece.

Hmm.. I guess I forgot that in GOW2 the AI would revive you... but guess it didn't matter because it was just you and Dom, and the computer would have DOM run all the way to the firing line and die quickly... so I guess it was sort of like I was playing by myself.

At least in Act 1 you had 4 team mates that could help revive you.

Yeah, the AI is really good reviving you in this game.

I read, from one of the Gears producers/writers, that there are some campaign "spoilers" in horde, so I haven't played horde yet, just in case. It may not be a big spoiler, but just in case.

I finished Act 3 last night.... wow!

Also did anyone else notice that the locust (grubs) go down a lot easier in 3? I used to remember unloading a ton of head shots with my lancer before these things would die.. now it seems that since there are bigger enemies - that these guys go down a lot easier.

Are playing in Normal or Hardcore? I only played Normal in Gears 2, and I'm playing Gears 3 in hardcore and yeah, they seem to be "easier" to kill.

Oh another thing I like about the AI is that they really help you here. You can be in cover most of the time and they will do a lot of the job for you. You still have to do the most important things, but they clear a lot of it. Also, if you kind of get lost they are good at showing where to go. You can also press LB for that too, but sometimes is easier with your team.

I really noticed this last night. During one part, an AI member threw a grenade behind the enemies and then another member threw a grenade in front and blew them all up as they were running forward. I don't know if it was just luck but I was pretty impressed.

I'm playing in hardcore, and also noticed that the AI are more "active" and actually use different weapons. I noticed Carmine was using that explosive bow, and others would throw grenades.

Yeah, I wanted to kill Carmine and take his Torque bow. He was wasting it.

I am playing on Hardcore co-op and I find I am using way too much Lancer ammo. The chainsaw seems useless early on since everyone explodes.

You can move close to any of your teammates and focus on them with LT to trade weapons.

Woke up this morning to see that my "Savage Kantus" skin sold for $30.

I sold mine for $10 and it went in about 15 minutes. Probably should have listed it for more. But I wasn't going to use it, so anything was good.

Finally unlocked the Lancer rifle execution.
Performed it only once, but that was by accident.

So what buttons do you press, on a downed enemy, to do the Lancer rifle execution?

is it me or do horde matches take forever and a day to get into. like upwards of 5 minutes some times.

The first night I tried to play Horde, and after 3-4 minutes or so decided to cancel since it was taking too much time.

Yeah they do. Part of the reason is because you can't join a horde session in progress (i.e., there's no social horde mode). This is also a bad thing when you're in a session, because if people you started with drop out no one else comes in.

Hopefully this will be changed in a future update. Lots of complaints about it on the Epic forums.

For the ones playing campaign, am I the only one that hated the last chapter of Act 4? Probably the worst chapter in the whole trilogy.

My buddies and I knocked out Act 1 last night in about an hour and a half or two. It was fun. Nice pace for me and way more interesting than playing solo.

I couldn't get into a Beast mode game yesterday, but we were able to do about 20 rounds of Horde. The bases are a nice touch.

It was...pretty, I'll give it that. But it felt like playing some other series that isn't GoW.

Played with a party of friends last night for about five hours on Horde mode and it's a big improvement over the earlier one in GOW2.There is some much more and a bit of thinking to do with fellow teammates about spending he money on what and where. A real nice touch there. Even on medium it's no push over especially with the random Boss Battles. Two were able to get the Vulcan Gun up and going...that thing is insane but you do need teammates that know what to do and go along...maybe hard for random. We got up to Level 34 and it got expensive especially if you wanted to buy back in....$6000!