Gears of War Multiplayer Beta

On April 25^th I booted up Bulletstorm and squealed like a happy piglet when I saw the option for the “Gears of War 3 MP Beta” was active. The next four weeks were going to be good...

I’ve been a fan of the Gears of War franchise since the first title, but the online play has always been a bit “iffy”. Gears 1 had immense gameplay and gave birth to the cover shooter genre but far too often the multiplayer would suffer from players glitching, a poor connection to the host or the dreaded “Host Shotgun”. Even with these issues though, more often than not, I was always satisfied after a whirl online.

Gears 2 suffered from having massive online issues from day 1, the lag was so bad that I actually gave up playing online competitively until a couple of title updates later. Kudos to Epic Games, they stuck with their product and supported it (and still do) until it became much closer to the awesomeness the original had.

The issues the second title suffered may or may not have had an influence on whether to put a beta out for the final game in the trilogy and I am incredibly thankful that Epic did. Gone are the issues of lag that plagued the second game, thanks to dedicated servers every game plays as smooth as a piece of varnished ice. It felt great and puts every player on an even footing.

The visuals in the beta are breathtaking; I honestly can’t see how much more polished Epic can make the finished product. I imagine that as the game was delayed from the April release to September, we’re playing the “finished” April product. Gears’ has been a flagship title for great visuals and the power of the Unreal Engine and this one has clearly raised the bar again. The graphics on these small sandboxes are so impressive it makes me wonder just what Epic has got in store for the campaign.

There were three game modes available for the beta period, the first one to be unlocked was Epic’s take on team deathmatch. Both sides have 15 lives and when they have been spent it reverts back to good old one life left gears. The ability to respawn is a nice one but i’m glad that it has a low life count as personally I enjoy the knowledge (and maybe the fear) that one wrong move can be my last. Next to be unlocked was King of the Hill, this was my favourite mode of the beta for a couple of reasons; I quite like objective based game modes, I love to kill things dead don’t get me wrong but I like to know that I am doing it for a reason. Which leads me nicely to my only complaint, people who play this game mode tend to ignore the objectives and just rush straight in, kill/be killed then run right back into the battle in some type of vicious circle of mushy body parts. I know that this isn’t a problem with the game but it’d be nice to see some form of score balancing to encourage people towards the objectives. The last game mode to be unlocked was “Capture the Leader”, Epic’s take on capture the flag. It’s the mode I spent the least amount of time playing and to be honest, i’d be happy to never play it again. The issues stem from the VIP being human and not an inanimate flagpole. 80% of the time my “leader” would charge headlong into the opposition and be downed and captured before i’d had time to get my bearings. Very much like my issues with king of the hill this is a human problem and not a development or coding issue which makes it very hard to think of something which could be done to limit the frustration of “Rambo” style leaders.

The weapons were mostly all familiar to regular Gears players except a couple of new additions. One of these is the retro lancer, to look at it’s not much different to the normal lancer, the main difference being instead of a chainsaw bayonet it has a great hulking blade as a bayonet. The weapon is powerful but has a massive amount of recoil and movement when firing which I think is adequate enough to balance out. Now onto the aforementioned bayonet, as a melee attack it’s equal to the Torque Bow and only takes two hits to down a player, but its real attack is the retro charge. By holding down “B” players roadie run towards a (hopefully) unsuspecting opponent and drive completely through them, it looks supremely impressive and is very satisfying to perform. The new addition to the shotgun family is the Sawn Off, it’s best to think of this as a melee weapon as the range leaves a lot to be desired (with damn good balancing reason). Basically if there is a person infront of you when you have the sawn off there’s a high chance that the opponent will become locust/cog soup very quickly. The gun has a firing arc of roughly 180 degree which is where I would like to see some amendments, at the moment if you’re in range of the gun regardless of if you’re on the outskirts of the blast or dead centre (no pun intended) you end up being scraped off the ground. I’d like to see the power phased to do say, 70% damage if you’re hit by the edges of a shot to at least give a fighting chance. The third new weapon is completely new, and quite fun once you get used to it, it’s the Digger Launcher. When I first picked it up, I fired it at somebody hiding behind cover and was pleasantly surprised to see them splatter into a complex jigsaw puzzle of meat. This weapon weeds out the campers like nobody’s business, it adds another layer of tactics to offensive play rather than barrel rolling in with a shotgun and hoping for the best. I was lucky enough to get a hit on somebody before the “Digger” had fired into the ground and was treated to a quite disgusting impalement and explosion. I heartily recommend you try it.

I don’t feel that’s it fair or right to give the beta a points score as regardless of how polished it was it is still an unfinished product. I had great fun for the time it was up and running and it certainly made me want the full product more than before I had played. I actually went to my local Game shop and pre ordered the limited edition based on the quality I had experienced. There is no doubt that Epic will be under massive amounts of pressure from Microsoft to deliver from day one after the debacle of Gears 2 and i’d say they’re certainly on course for a massive hit.

-Dave

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