Just finished up Act 4 last night, and the game definitely keeps getting better.
The battle at the end of Chapter 4-5 kicked my ASS. The first real bottleneck I've experienced in the game so far.

I had a Boomshot on me, but honestly, it's so slow that 9 out of 10 times the enemies just dodged out of the way, so I quickly discarded it. The Torque Bow works a treat though, and since grenade tossing is also too much of a risk, I just got reckless and tagged the bastards, which also worked out pretty well, provided you can get out of the way fast enough.

On a side note: has anyone else noticed how the AI seems programmed to make people state the bloody obvious? I'll be fighting a group of Lambent and suddenly Marcus'll shout "LAMBENT!" and I'm like "well DUH"...
I found that happening a lot just at random DURING battles (not just when a new wave arrived), and I don't recall this happening in the previous games.

I noticed this, yeah.  It is obnoxious, but I've theorized they did this for the benefit of co-op play.   It's not unreasonable to believe a player would arrive late to the battle when the rest are already in the thick of it.  Restating the enemy type gives everyone in the group a heads-up on what they're currently fighting.

I played a bit of Gears 1 over the last couple of nights. Interesting to see how the game has evolved. While much more drab, the architecture even right at the start is amazing and the game looks really impressive. While it lacks the polish that came in 2 and 3, it could be the best looking Gears first chapter. But the characters and enemies don't fare so well, blending into the background. Marcus looks like a big dark blob in front of you.

In Gears 2 and then in 3, it's almost like the characters have their own lighting. Odd for the first few seconds in either but much, much better and makes the characters much clearer.

But the real thing I was curious about was how much the difficulty has changed. Going between 1 and 3 on Insane shows they are whole other worlds. Gears 1 on Insane is actually totally insane. One mistake and splat. And the enemies take a lot to kill, even the basic grubs - they're a serious challenge. I only got to that bit early on when you're in the fountain area and emergence holes appear all around and, after about ten deaths, I took a break. Seriously punishes the slightest of errors.

By contrast, Gears 3 allows you to take a bunch of hits, even in Insane, and the early enemies go down much easier. And then there's your teammates of course (they're pretty useless in Gears 1). It's much easier.

I honestly don't think I'll have the patience for Gears 1 on Insane but I may drop down to Hard and play through all three again. One thing I really like about the Gears game is that each one offers different experiences so there's still loads to enjoy starting from the beginning.

And what happened the Kryll?

Wrapped up the game yesterday, and I came away reasonably satisfied.
The ending is good enough, and it's nice to have closure (to an extent), and it's also good to see that they made up for the joke of a last boss that we got in Gears 2 with a solidly challenging final battle (although most of the threat came from waves of standard enemies).

Regarding the ending:

- Marcus's dad is "revived" out of nowhere only to be really killed off at the end. This was totally predictable and therefore cheap. It would've been nice if they'd gone the ORIGINAL route and actually kept him alive.

- I can see the whole symbolism of Dom's knife, but I just spammed the goddamn Hammer of Dawn a dozen times on that bitch, and she dies with a simple knife to the gut. WTF!?

In all, a satisfactory conclusion to a great series, even if it's not quite as good as Gears 2.

I've never played any of the GoW games. I might at some point, but then again I'm no FPS fan. At any rate, I'm really curious if anyone picked up the Limited Edition or the really-expensive $150 edition? It looks like $150 seems to be the new price for ultra-deluxe LEs.

Good thing Gears isn't an FPS then

Killed off by.... the Lightmass Bomb at the end of Gears 1, weren't they?

It practically is if you actually think about it; the controls feel exactly like an FPS -- You have no camera stick which has been a staple in TPS games.

What?

What I am saying is that the game could be played in FP and it would feel pretty much identical to how it is now. What are the main differences between the FPS and TPS? The control of the camera. In FPS you cannot run forward and pan the camera to the side. You are stuck with the camera always facing forward. Gears of War has taken away the use of camera and tailored the controls to play exactly like an FPS.

Now I know that the main difference is the perspective the camera takes, but the question is what separates them beyond that -- what is lost in translating a game from FPS to TPS? Gears of War has the build of an FPS game translated into a TPS -- that is why I would tell someone to avoid it if they don't like FPS games.

Only, you know, Gears lets you control the camera with the Right stick.

I don't appreciate what you've 'quoted' from me. There is no need for that. Obviously the camera moves around when you face other directions; it is not static like Biohazard. What I am saying is that it's not a free camera that you can control independent of where your character is facing.

At any rate, I'm still curious if people shelled out the big bucks for the deluxe or ultra-deluxe edition?

I just bought the regular vanilla version.
I don't need action figures and trinkets and stuff like that.