Meet Team Zeta (L-R): Alicia Valera, Tai Kaliso (Gears 2), Lt. Kim (the first Gears), Michael Barrick (Gears comics)

The upcoming story-driven DLC for Gears of War 3 may kick it old-school by telling a prequel tale — rather than continuing after the end of the most recent Marcus Fenix–starring chapter of the series — but don’t expect it to phone in the experience by leaving you to simply toss frags to seal up Emergence holes like you did throughout Gearsand Gears 2. Sure, there’s plenty of E-hole plugging going on, but there’s also a good handful of newness afoot as well.

As the members of Zeta Squad — composed of Barrick from the Gears comics, familiar COG faces Lt. Kim and Tai, and original character Alicia Valera (voiced by actress/comedian Aisha Tyler) — you’ll battle your way through the evacuation of post–E-day Ilium City with a scant four hours (not real-time, mind you) to do so before the sky fills with deadly Kryll. But cigar-chomping Barrick and his cronies aren’t the only playable characters wandering the threatened streets of the Locust-ravaged town: at set points during the DLC, you’ll switch to controlling the lumbering General Raam and his small fleet of Locust Elites consisting of Maulers and Tremors. If you’re the host in a co-op runthrough, you’ll be the lucky duck who gets to play as Raam himself, as he’s bossed around by the disembodied voice of a non-present Queen Myrrah to chase down each and every human — COG or no — left alive in Ilium, including Barrick and company.

General Raam doesn't need no roadie run.

But that doesn’t happen until Chapter 2 of the DLC’s five-chapter runtime. Chapter 1 is spent unveiling some clever asides to what’s to come after this prequel runs its course — in other words, Gears through Gears 3. The biggest of these is the quasi-origin tale of Jace Stratton, the fresh-faced warrior who joins up with Marcus at the outset of Gears 3. In RAAM’s Shadow, he’s little more than a feisty teen, swinging a bat at encroaching Wretches from the relative security of a bank vault that Zeta stumbles across during their search for survivors in need of evacuation. After you find him, he begs you to locate his estranged dad, Dr. Wisen, who’s trapped at a nearby school. You’ll spend the bulk of the DLC chasing him and his school-aged charges to get them to safety.

As far as new weaponry, on the COG side of things, don’t expect any drastic additions. The only truly new weapon here is one that you’ll operate right at the outset of the prequel — a prototype Hammer of Dawn that’s controlled via a stationary monitor screen. While its appearance in the DLC’s first two chapters is rare at best (we found it only once), it’s a blast to wield, and using it to obliterate multiple Reavers clumped together on the battlefield never loses its thrill.

Other clever snippets of gameplay on the human side of Shadow’s equation include a Boomshot-required tussle with Seeders and a grumpy Brumak. The big fight with these beasts isn’t unprecedented per se, but it does offer an inventive twist on how you take out the Seeders, and it shows the consequences of not demolishing the Brumak quickly enough. All told, you'll experience some unique gameplay moments that feel different from Gears 3’s main campaign.

You can play through the campaign in Arcade Mode and ratchet up points and multipliers.

But playing as Raam, where you can call down a pinpoint flood of Kryll to devour puny humans, is what provides the freshest spin on the Gears formula. This attack takes a bit of getting used to: you charge it up briefly before aiming a flock of the carnivorous winged creatures at a string of helmeted chumps, dragging your reticule over them for a destructive line of blood spray and gibs. In fact, playing as Raam or one of his flanking Maulers, you'll have a bit of an adjustment period as you acclimate to the controls — these baddies don’t have firearms (unless you rob an enemy of his Silverback and hop into it yourself; Maulers only!), and they’re much, much slower than their COG counterparts. If you’ve played any Beast Mode, you’ll have an idea of the small learning curve in adjusting to Locusts' beefier gait.

RAAM’s Shadow is an interesting experiment in the realm of blockbuster titles — if it succeeds in coaxing Microsoft Points out of Gears 3 owners’ pockets, could it signal more developers committing to campaign or single-player DLC content on a more regular basis for triple-A, multiplayer-dependent games? Will we see a better balance between these types of game add-ons and the ubiquitous multiplayer map packs? We'll have to wait and see how the latter three chapters fare in Shadow before we can make an educated guess. But after getting two chapters in, and even with the lack of any sort of COG Tag–type collectibles or new, dedicated multiplayer modes (arcade mode is on-hand, though), we haven’t been disappointed yet in Shadow’s retelling of Zeta Squad’s last dash for the finish line.

PUBLISHER: Microsoft Studios  •  DEVELOPER: Epic Games  •  MULTIPLAYER: 2–4 in co-op over Xbox Live, 2-player co-op splitscreen  •  COST: 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15)  •  RELEASE DATE: December 13