Gears of War is awesome yet it never hit the top of the live usage charts and it gets criticized like no other even after 4 title updates. If Epic could make the following changes/additions, I think this would easily be atop the usage charts and dive deeper into the hearts of the average gamer.

Focus On Online Quality BEFORE Releasing the Game

• I know much about how coding,servers,etc. I do know is this: Gears of War 2 has shown the world how to drop the ball in regards to competitive multiplayer. If so many other games can prevent host advantage, massive lagging or map exploits, why has it been so hard for Epic to do so as well? Get on your QA and come out guns blazing with a stable online service. I guarantee you’ll see a massive boost in players.

We Find Out About Adam Fenix

• He was mentioned, but only briefly in Gears of War 2 and now it’s time for the veil to be removed from what exactly Adam Fenix was up to prior to Gears of War 1. We visited his former estate, we’ve heard the Locust Queen speak of him as if she’s had some kind of interaction with Marcus’s father and the final few seconds after the credits have finished feature a great voiceover from Adam himself. But even still, we know essentially the same information as we did at the end of Gears 1. It’s time we find out exactly where Mr. Fenix’s allegiances lie.

Bigger, Better and More Open Gameplay

• Rather than just throwing players into straightforward encounters with wave-after-wave of Locust creatures, give us a more thrilling experience with enemies surrounding our quartet of heroes whenever possible. Gears 2 was too much about marching forward without looking around because there were no threats less those in front of you. Gears 3 should not only include enemies from every direction for designed set pieces, but it should also allow the player to design their route to combat. Opening the environments only slightly and rethinking the way cover is laid out could change Gears gameplay for the better.

Better Boss Fights

• Gears of War 2 had some interesting, new, and cool boss fights. Skorge was introduced with about a 5 – 10 minute boss fight with chain saw duels, but some people were a little disappointed because it wasn’t all that hard unlike the RAAM battle in Gears 1. It seemed hard, but after you beat it, it just seems easy. Skorge is presumed dead, but if he does or doesn’t come back, we want a harder finishing boss battle. The Leviathon was pretty cool as well. I liked it and it required strategy, so there might or not be some of them in Gears 3. Some people are wondering what happened to the Beserkers in Gears 1? People really liked those and maybe there could be a chapter explaining those in Gears 3. Also, people liked the Corpser battle in Gears 1, so it could be optional to put it in Gears 3.

Fight a Brumak For Real

• This one kind of goes hand in hand with the “Harder bosses” but needs to be done. Now piloting a Brumak was cool the first time through and there are plenty of on-rails scenarios where Brumaks pop up for players to fight in Gears of War 2 but for Gears 3 we want to fight one of those suckers on-foot. Marcus and company laying into a Brumak with nothing but grenades and lancer fire sounds like an orgasmic experience to us and the fact that PC gamers to play exactly that in Gears 1 feels like a slap in the face.

Add More To Horde Mode

• Horde Mode was great, don’t get us wrong. We loved marching through 50 waves of tough-as-nails enemies across all the maps, but we couldn’t help but feel like it could have been better. For starters, can we not have the same mix of enemies every ten waves? Yes, they level up, but they’re identical in number and variety. That gets boring really quick.Make Horde only maps! Put Reavers in horde to really up the difficulty. Also, the 50th wave should feature some sort of boss fight that is unique to each level.

Add a Four Player Campaign

• Simple enough. Allow 4 players to play cooperatively in the main campaign. This is a very popular feature with the few games that have enabled it and could speak well of Epic’s respect for fans of teamwork and camaraderie. Imagine rolling out as Marcus, Dom, Cole, and Baird controlled by your friends, it would be simply…epic.

Customizeable Gears in Multiplayer

• Instead of having millions of Carmines and Theron Guards running around why not have a create a character feature for the online play? You could start from a base model and go from there.. with different armors/weight & height etc.

Female Gear

• Maybe there could be a tough playable female gear in the campaign and multiplayer which would be pretty cool.

Well, in a nutshell that is one average man’s view on what would help the Gears of War series get back not only onto the top of the Live usage charts but into many gamers hearts as well.I can only hope someone at Epic has had this same brainstorming session and implements at least one, if not all, of these ideas.