I've been playing solo on hardcore difficulty and for the most part have found the game to be pretty easy. Now this isn't me bragging about skill, because I'm pretty terrible most of the time in other games. What made the game fairly easy was the companion AI. They were killing what I needed killed and reviving me when I needed reviving. I think they are actually a little too good, as other than 2 or 3 parts, I got through everything on the first try.

Now for the problem. I'm at what I assume to be the final boss, and the companion AI seems to have gone to shit on me. They seem to forget to revive me, and the targetting seems to no longer draw their attention. Maybe I just got lucky and the AI was exceptionally good up until now, or maybe its just the chaos of the final fight that is making this difficult (and I realise that the final boss is supposed to be hard) but it seems impossible to target what I need killed while dealing with the madness going on around me and the once useful AI is not really helping me out the way it used to. Consequently, this section is way more frustrating than anything else in the game.

Did anyone else find find the companions as great as I did? Or am I giving Epic's programmers undue credit?

@MildMolasses said:

I've been playing solo on hardcore difficulty and for the most part have found the game to be pretty easy. Now this isn't me bragging about skill, because I'm pretty terrible most of the time in other games. What made the game fairly easy was the companion AI. They were killing what I needed killed and reviving me when I needed reviving. I think they are actually a little too good, as other than 2 or 3 parts, I got through everything on the first try.

Now for the problem. I'm at what I assume to be the final boss, and the companion AI seems to have gone to shit on me. They seem to forget to revive me, and the targetting seems to no longer draw their attention. Maybe I just got lucky and the AI was exceptionally good up until now, or maybe its just the chaos of the final fight that is making this difficult (and I realise that the final boss is supposed to be hard) but it seems impossible to target what I need killed while dealing with the madness going on around me and the once useful AI is not really helping me out the way it used to. Consequently, this section is way more frustrating than anything else in the game.

Did anyone else find find the companions as great as I did? Or am I giving Epic's programmers undue credit?

I died about 3 times cause they would not help me up even know they where all three feet from me.

As much as i love the AI in this game, they have a slight preference for taking out enemies instead of/rather than healing you. So given the fact that those theron guards continually respawn, i can see how they never get around to actually picking you up.

I thought the AI was shit. There was a 30% chance when I got downed they wouldn't revive me.

@Zacagawea said:

I thought the AI was shit. There was a 30% chance when I got downed they wouldn't revive me.

Agreed. They didn't pick me up as often as I thought they should have. That last battle was even worse...

I agree, the AI is incredibly effective at taking out enemies, and I felt it made the game too easy on Hardcore as well. For special encounters like boss battles however, they seem to want you to do the work, and I think that's by design.
 
Also, as a side note, an AI's proficiency in battle isn't really a good way to judge it's quality. It's not that hard to program a hyper lethal killing machine; The computer knows exactly where an enemy is and can aim and can aim perfectly after all. The challenge is in limiting that computer precision in a way that seems realistic, and thus not perfect, but still intelligent. In Gears of War 3's case, I feel that they did a decent job at that, but clearly on the side of being too powerful. It killed a lot of the challenge and the fun and tension that come with that.

Already talked about this in another thread, but absolutely yes. The general co-opness of the campaign which leads to decent bots being required really killed a lot of the enjoyment for me. I didn't have the same issue as you on the last boss though. I died once to something like it, but I think the issue was that I had managed to run off to the wrong side of the house.

The last boss is fucked, no question. It was comical and a little worrisome hearing my younger brother screaming expletives at his screen while fighting a boss I had yet to encounter. Companions suddenly forget how to revive you and enemies have a dangerously huge boner for you and only you. Heck, I had gotten through some intense fights during this game and actually had one of my teammates die on me on my first try, failing the mission. No chance to revive him. No indication that he needed help. Just me obviously approaching the end of the fight and a sudden game over screen because my partner had somehow been instakilled. It was that terrible feeling gamers are familiar with where it felt like the game was actively trying to make sure I wouldn't win at all costs. How'd I beat the boss. I somehow glitched out the game to cause the enemy locust to fire nary a single bullet at me during the whole confrontation till the very end, and by then it was too late. Incredibly lame battle in an otherwise awesome game.

I didn't have too much trouble with the last boss, but it did take a few tries, mainly due to me rather than the AI. One of the problems I did find with the last boss was enemy awareness, I thought I had cover, but then would be caught by their back-up and downed.

Agreed with the comment that the AI definitely let's you take care of the main threat in most boss battles, but I rarely felt too overwhelmed or like my team wasn't backing me up.

I never died once on the last boss, did it on hardcore, but I did get downed a lot. The AI took a while to get to me but at least I never died.

@LiquidSaiyan3 said:

@Zacagawea said:

I thought the AI was shit. There was a 30% chance when I got downed they wouldn't revive me.

Agreed. They didn't pick me up as often as I thought they should have. That last battle was even worse...

The last battle was just a test of patience. You essentially will be down'd every five seconds, and you're at the mercy of your companions. The AI revival routines were worse for me in the beginning, (I tend to charge in quick and end up paying for it), but towards the end they were actually competent. But yeah, if you aren't bleeding out somewhat close to your AI buddies, they totally won't help you, or take way to long getting to you, as you mash 'A' and yell at your television.

I feel like something weird must of happened when I played the last boss. I don't remember it being the slightest bit difficult, just tedious. I'm pretty sure I only went down one or two times on hardcore.

I feel like the NPC AI was horrible throughout the entirety of the game.

It did seem to get worse at the last boss. It seemed as if they just ran around in circles.

I beat it with my roomie last night. Most frustrating thing we've done in a game a long time. When we finally beat it I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment, it was more of a "whoa! what the fuck? what's happening? we did it? finally?" I couldn't tell because I was struggling with balancing like 3 things at once between avoiding her, picking up the AI's slack and fighting for my roomies ground to shoot the queen with the Hammer of Dawn. And even then it was more the sensation of "why did it work this time and not the twenty other times?" I swear we hit her with the Hammer the same amount of times in our previous attempts and she didn't go down. But whatever, that's not what the real issue was.

I totally agree that it was the AI's fault for making us do it so many times. We kept getting knocked down because of the Theron Gaurds and flying turret guys. And when that would happen the AI would have a hard time prioritizing what to do. So then by the time we got up and back at what we were doing on of us were either A.) Surrounded by enemies and be basically down again when we got back up B.) Queen was charging her laser and hitting us with it again thus knocking us down again or C.) she had broken the structure enough to blast Adam to Kingdom Come. It got monotonous and frustrating to say the least and I blame the AI.

What did I learn? I'm NEVER doing that part without 4 people. Ever.

This sequence took me ages. The first part was ok but as soon as shes on the side of the building and the shriekers came I was getting game over after game over. So much shit going on in that section and a whole ton of it seems like luck. I also think only one hammer of dawn hit registers  every time shes on the ground. I have seen two people hit her at the same time every single time and it still takes the same amount of pattern changes to kill her. 
The A.I were pretty good about 75% of the time for reviving me, though I found myself all the way around the other side of the circle more often than  I would have liked because of the Therons and ammo scrounging, that was what usually led to me not getting revived. This sequence is too long and feels way too Lost Planetish.

Insane's where it's at.

I actually feel like the AI should have helped me up less. Hardcore would have been far more challenging.

I feel like calling the AI in this game 'shit' is basically admitting that you don't play a lot of games. Because it's better in this game than most others.

If just going by the end boss, I would say the AI did not help as much as in the rest of the game, but that's because there were just so many enemies everywhere, like literally everywhere.

The AI seemed just about right to me. If anything it was maybe too good on Hardcore, especially when fighting enemies that could one-hit kill you (fuck you, Gunkers!)

After recently playing all three gears back to back, I can say that the AI in Gears 3 is easily the best. I never died on the last boss, but my friendly AI did enjoy getting instakilled by the boss, and at times I was down too long and the objective would fail. But go back and play the first gears and you'll notice how annoying the AI was. They would constantly go down every encounter, wouldn't revive each other, couldn't crawl to you and were bad shots for the most part. Not only that but there was no "getting downed" when you got rocked playing by yourself, it was just game over.

My biggest beef with the game is actually the companion AI. Not only did they occasionally take forever to revive me, if they bothered at all, but they also love stealing my kills. Kinda an odd gripe, I know, but I'm trying to get these damn executions, and I tend to hang back when I play. Oh, they also love to stand in the line of my shots. That's one thing I will give the AI in COD: They all got out of the fucking way.

I played story mode on normal and not only would the AI not revive me half the time, Baird killed me one time when I was downed.

They always got in my way and never attacked anyone I tagged.

There was also one point where I was trying to open a door and Marcus says "I can't do that yet".

I was running around the area looking, then after a minute I see one enemy was still alive quietly standing at his turret surrounded by my squad so I couldn't see him.

It looked like they were all just hanging out, so I killed the guy and that was it.

@Slaker117 said:

I feel like something weird must of happened when I played the last boss. I don't remember it being the slightest bit difficult, just tedious. I'm pretty sure I only went down one or two times on hardcore.

Then here's the other problem I'm having: I'm checkpointed mid fight with almost no ammo for my main gun (hammerburst) and it seems that if I actually spend time trying to hunt for the ammo then I get killed, or the queen gets to adam. I should probably just restart that chapter and pay better attention to what I'm carrying

Your teammates have (for all intents and purposes) infinite ammo.

Every time you find a boomshot, pick it up, walk over to the nearest teammate, aim at them, hit X to swap weapons and then sit back and enjoy the show. They do a surprisingly good job if you equip them well.