Review - GoW3 Fenix Rising DLC

By the time the inevitable sequel rolled round, Gears of War 2 ended up having an extra 19 multiplayer maps through DLC. That’s a none too shabby amount for any game, massively expanding the amount of arenas on which to pit locust against human, or fight with your brothers and sisters in arms against ever-increasing numbers of gradually tougher enemies. It just didn't have a great deal of spectacle either: more maps are nice and all, but the little taste of Campaign DLC – the 'Road to Ruin' deleted scene – was enough to prove that expanding your game doesn't always have to mean just knocking together a few maps and charging a fair whack for them.

In Gears Of War 3’s case, RAAM's Shadow was the ultimate example of how to build on the success of a game. With the maps in the first pack ultimately becoming a gift for the entire Gears community, the Campaign DLC expanded the Gears universe, twisting the gameplay formula by letting you play as a villain. While we’re now back to the old formula again though – five new maps and four new multiplayer skins – there's still something very special in it for dedicated Gears.



It's the addition of the ‘Re-up’ system that's the most interesting new feature, even though it’ll mean almost nothing for casual players. Essentially it's akin to Call Of Duty’s Prestige option: once you hit the maximum level (which is an insane level 100 in GoW3), you can reset your XP and rank to zero while keeping your TrueSkill intact – although thankfully, it doesn't reset any of the counters for kills or ribbons. You can Re-Up up to three times in total, each time changing your rank icon colour from Bronze to Red, Green to Gold, with a new weapon skin each time you go back to ground level.

Of course, there are bound to be some of you out there itching to get that Gold rank icon and weapon skins, but it's hard to see why a feature that's now becoming commonplace in most multiplayer games should be a big feature of DLC. There's a huge number of players who’ll never get to the triple-digit MP level: it should have been there in the first place, to reward the dedicated and give them a proper, natural incentive to come back. For so many then, it's meaningless.



The maps themselves are far more interesting bunch, a bit more varied and interesting than the five Booster/Horde Command maps, all tying in with Marcus and his family history and legacy. Four are new but one is a remake of a classic: Escalation, the original Gears map that takes place on the steps outside the Fenix estate. It's as strong a map as it always was, balancing weapon placement against the high ground advantage, although it's a bit thin and spawning's a bit predictable in TDM. It's a lovely moonlit night though, giving it a stunning contrast to the bright, daytime maps but still showing off the game's gorgeous lighting.

Academy returns to the sunshine, with a neatly packed courtyard and a brief academic indoor area. It's a solid map, with sightlines making it a constant struggle for and against coverage and height differentiation, but it's perhaps at its best in Horde mode. It's a little dry and anaemic, unlike Depths which takes the action back to Azura, but goes all Rapture and takes place in an opulent underwater processing centre. It's a well-balanced map and the constant shimmer effect from the water gives it a neat glow too.



Anvil, part of the Anvil Gate fortress, is a good close-range map with plenty of room-to-room combat throughout the decrepit, half-broken structure. Although the only striking part of its look is the view out to see, the crumbling walls of Anvil Gate hold within them plenty of tense firefights and tricky Horde and Beast adventures. Finally, The Slab returns to the opening scenes for the franchise, heading right back to the prison Marcus was rotting away in before Dom busted him out. It's a grim, tightly-packed place with oddly spaced cover, making it a good mix of ranged and close-quarters fights. It doesn't seem as imposing or oppressively bleak as it did in the original game, however.

It's a pretty good mix of maps, offering more for your money than most titles do. You also get skins for a Limited Edition ‘Thrashball’ Cole and a ‘Recruit’ Clayton Carmine, as well as a Savage Marauder and Limited Edition Savage Kantus although quite why they're limited when they come with every DLC purchase of Fenix Rising, we don't know. And, if you have the time, there's the three Re-Up weapon skins too. The only disappointment is that it's such a big step down: RAAM's Shadow was just too good to leave us satisfied with more maps, devoid of new character and giving us nothing truly different. If the fourth pack isn't something special, there's going to be quite a few gamers not exactly chuffed to bits with their Season Passes.