I just sent both of you a friend request. I would like to do some co-op as well. Hope you don't mind I'm a 39 year old gamer that isn't great at MP but decent. I also won't cuss like a sailor, throw out slurs, and make fun of you if you don't do well. I will drop the occasional f-bomb if I do bad tho. Just so you know. :-) Gamertag is Barth72.

My limited edition copy finally arrived from Amazon Warehouse today! Can’t wait to crack it open and play some horde mode! I’ll start the campaign this weekend.

Finished Insane playthrough today. A few challenging sections, but overall fairly easy with Arcade mode respawns and good co-op partners. I expected it to be tougher, honestly, but I basically blazed through it.

It would be nice if the campaign awarded more XP. I started my Insane playthrough at level 29 and finished it at level 30. Although, I was using the Super Reload mutator, which is extremely helpful but reduces XP a bit.

Mutators don't disable achievements?

Don't worry about XP. You have a looooooooooooooooong way to go to Onyx everything. Besides, they'll be giving away the XP as "Gears of War: E-Day" gets ready to launch.

No, the mutators don't disable achievements. They only affect XP. Infinite ammo would also be pretty helpful for Insane, but it takes too long to earn.

This was my 4th campaign playthrough. I'll probably run through again when I unlock the Laugh Track mutator. I've been playing with Flower Blood on, which adds a nice layer of ridiculousness to the proceedings. It's hard to get too frustrated with certain swarming enemies when they're exploding in pastel colors all around the screen.

I don't really have any plans to Onyx everything. Have you seen the list of requirements for Seriously 3.0? It's not an achievement that's in the realm of possibility as far as I'm concerned. It'll join Seriously 1.0 and Seriously 2.0 on my "life's too short for this shit" list. And yeah, I can wait for the inevitable XP events, it just seems unbalanced when a 10 minute MP match earns more XP than a complete campaign playthrough on Insane. Though, on the other hand, I guess it's nice to earn any XP at all for campaign.

If you're not going for Seriously 3.0 with all the Onyx, then why worry about XP that much? It's just level 50, dude. That's usually like 10% of the way to level 100.

Not worried about it at all, just mentioning that it seemed like a low amount earned based on the comparative level of effort.

As opposed to the 0XP earned in GoW2? Losing battle here, son

Back on topic, does the game let players split difficulty setting like in GoW2? Like can you have two players on Insane and two on Casual and just power through it or is everyone on Insane?

On standard campaign, yes, it's the same as GoW2 with different difficulties allowed. On Arcade, the host chooses and everyone plays on that difficulty level.

Also, here's a new and really interesting interview with Cliff B. discussing this game, the series as a whole, influences, the industry in general, etc. Good reading, but obviously spoilery.

one of my friends and I got tired of waiting for the other two playing with us so we finally beat this on hardcore...we started up insane already and we are blowing through it...already on act 2...

Question...how much of a boost is perfect reload? So far insane has been easy, but anything that helps....if its worth it I might just boost to get it...though I can only think of a few points in my head I am worried about...actually the ammo mutation might actually be what I want...

Perfect reload gives a beastly boost. Weaker enemies (drones etc.) die with a couple of shots from the lancer, and the bigger guys (Boomers) only take a few more hits. The lambent you-know-whats that swarm you in act 3 explode immediately, and emptying a clip into a crowd of them is extremely effective at wiping them all out.

Cool. I'll look for you this weekend when my Tigers aren't playing.

Added you! :-) Also popped into your game of Horde earlier, but had to get going after a few.

Also, I just beat the campaign solo and felt the ending was a little

as for the ending...




the part I did not like about the ending

Thanks! I noticed that you joined my Horde game. It certainly helped. I thought I might get to the level 50 achievement today but it got down to 3 of us by level 42 so we only made it to 46 before finally giving up. It was way to hard with the levels we are at. I wish there was an easy way to join public horde matches at a certain level. I think I could hammer out the last 4levels pretty easily with 5 people.

What I did love about the ending was...

Gears of War 3 Sells Three Million Copies
Over one billion dollars in sales for the franchise.

Microsoft has revealed that Gears of War 3 sold over three million copies during its first week in stores.

In a new blog post, Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb (Major Nelson) announced the achievement.

"Following more than 22,000 midnight madness launch events, Microsoft and Epic Games today announced that the Xbox 360 exclusive sold more than three million copies in its first week since release," Hryb wrote.

This makes Gears of War 3 the biggest game of 2011, and also means that the Gears of War franchise has earned over one billion dollars in lifetime sales.

"In just one week, Gears 3 has already grossed more than any 2011 video game to date," Hryb added.

By comparison, Gears of War 2 sold two million copies in its first weekend.


IGN.com

So are there different horde modes or something. I was playing in a match on Friday and we died around wave 20. And then, it started right back up on the same wave. Overall we died 4 or 5 times and the last time we died on wave 47, it finally went back to the main menu. Do they give you a certain number of tries now or something?

Maybe the host quit?

I played a round of horde and got to wave 22 or so. Then the host quit The rest of us then had to start on wave 10 again.

Bugs.

Played through it co-op. Liked it more than 2, but not as much as 1. The ending was pretty much a let down but I can't think of an ending that would have been.

Big head mode in multiplayer all weekend

FYI, the Big Head playlist is a Gears Event that goes towards the 'War Supporter' medal.

When you reach Onyx for that medal it unlocks the 'Socialite' Achievement.

... tried it today, Big Head is