I hope there aren’t any more lambent wretches in the remainder of Gears of War, because after finishing Act 3, I’m going to scream if I ever see another one. I managed to get past that first fight I was having trouble with yesterday after a few more tries, but it turned out to be only the first of various encounters with them. They’re small, quick, hard to see, and often appear in large enough numbers to swarm you quickly, and finally beating them felt more like a matter of luck.

At one point I had to cross some floorboards, many of which would break and drop you down into a pit full of lambent wretches below. Fortunately I’d already heard about this part ahead of time and took it carefully enough that I didn’t fall in. After that was another well-worn cliche, riding in mining carts while under attack by, of course, lambent wretches, though it wasn’t that difficult. And near the end there was a battle with a large ‘corpser’ enemy, though the corpser itself was the easy part and I mostly kept dying to the mid-fight waves of…lambent wretches.

Other things of note: although you can be commanding a group of up to three other soldiers, quite often the game finds some excuse you split you up into two separate groups that can’t help each other out. Even if you’re only separated by the flimsiest of doors or windows.

And although there are plenty of checkpoints, some of them could be better placed. If you fail the final big battle at the end of the act, you have to waste time redoing one part where all you do is run around a bit, pick up a weapon, and have some NPC chatter. If I hear “Lookit all that juice!” one more time…