Gears of War 3: RAAM’s Shadow DLC review (Xbox 360)

Back in April 2010, I wrote a wish list of fantasy features for Gears of War 3.

Top of the list – Lambent Berserkers, please! – was almost eerily prophetic, as things turned out, but the next two – emergence holes and the Kryll – were, tragically, nowhere to be found when the game launched in September.

UNTIL THIS MOMENT! (Technically, last Saturday morning when I played the Gears of War 3 RAAM’s Shadow DLC).

This is the bit where I tell everybody that after publishing that article, Cliff Bleszinski called me up and was all, like, “Tarryn, I love your ideas, and I’m putting emergence holes and the Kryll back into the game,” except that didn’t actually happen.

So basically, RAAM’s Shadow is a campaign add-on for Gears of War 3 that’s also a prequel to Gears of War 1. I N C E P T I O N.

Gears of War 3 RAAM's Shadow

While you wind your brainstem around the intrepid daring-do of it all, here’s what’s what.

Emergence Day was last week’s big thing, and the Coalition of Ordered Governments’ armed forces are evacuating those people (un)lucky enough to make it through.

Enter our protagonists, Zeta Squad, featuring Lemmy Kilmister lookalike (regional finals) Michael Barrick, Gears of War’s heroic death star Minh Young Kim, Gears of War 2’s heroic death star Tai Kaliso, and the generic ladyperson with vague accent Alicia Valera.

The mission is simple enough – get from A to B, kill anything you see with a grey complexion or objective-limited vocabulary, and win the game. Not the war, obviously, that’s what the sequels were for.

Without spoiling anything then, the bolt-on campaign’ is about three hours long, and you get to play as [REDACTED] and you can [REDACTED] and also [REDACTED] and then [REDACTED], which is totally awesome because all you do is [REDACTED] and everything is pretty much instantly eviscerated.

Pretty much instantly.

It’s always hard to evaluate a good value proposition for DLC, so put it like this – if you’re a big Gears of War fan, this mini-campaign is an absolute must-have; if not, maybe skip it (maaaaaaybe, but if you have some MSP that aren’t doing anything much else, definitely consider investing).