We dive into the upcoming Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta to find some things old, some things new, but very little to make us blue.
Horde mode aside, Gears of War 2’s multiplayer wasn’t a great experience. A lack of dedicated servers and poor matchmaking sent many fans back to the original for their online fix. That the Gears of War 3 beta comprises only online multiplayer modes (not including horde mode) is therefore not only a gutsy move on the part of Epic Games, it’s a statement of intent that this time they are determined to get it right.
The addition of dedicated servers is a good start, but unfortunately these have been down for maintenance reasons for the past four days. Some last-minute tweaking is no doubt underway before the beta officially goes public, and given the volume of players about to invade the servers, let’s hope that this isn’t a sign that they aren’t going to cope.
Under the minimal strain of a few thousand media types playing globally, player-hosted games are lag-free once you are in but joining then is another matter. Even the wait to enter a server mostly populated by bots can take anything from seconds to half an hour. How this hosting system holds up under a deluge of Gears fans should the servers go down again remains to be seen.
The party system from Gears 2 has made a return, so winding up on the same server as your Xbox Live friends is a cinch. Unfortunately, matchmaking remains poor: it’s not unusual to see a team of high level players matched up against a team of lower level players, or one human player and four bots against four human players (bot AI dictates that as a general rule whoever has the most bots on their team will lose).
Three modes of five-on-five are available on the beta once you manage to connect: King of the Hill, Capture the Leader and Team Deathmatch. The first is identical to its namesake in Gears 2 – the aim is to defend a glowing section of the map, and points are accumulated every second that you hold it. However, unlike King of the Hill in Gears 2, you can still spawn when your team holds the hill, and you don’t need to be in the hill zone for points to be accrued – you only need to capture it. Capture is faster with more than one player, but there is no bonus beyond that. The hill changes location several times a match, and the first team to 170 points wins.
Capture the Leader is a mix of Gears 2’s Guardian and Submission modes. One of each squad is assigned leader status and, as the name suggests, the goal of opposing forces is to capture and hold him or her to earn points. As such, the leader cannot be killed but only downed and taken hostage. As leader, when you access your map (yes – a new feature) you can see the positions not only of your squadmates but of the enemies as well. This would be handy were it not for the Select-then-B combination required to access it.
Fortunately, even captured leaders aren’t completely helpless: every so often they are prompted to mash the B button to attempt escape, but we never saw this executed successfully. Fortunately killing a captor is not the only way to liberate a hostage: smoke grenades both force them to relinquish their grip, stun foes in the affected area, and cause them to drop a shield if they are carrying one.
Finally, Team Deathmatch plays exactly as you’d expect, and it’s curious it’s never been included in Gears until now. Each team can collectively burn through 15 lives before respawns are depleted.
In all modes respawn points are swapped each round, and the first team to win two rounds is victorious following which the map will change.
Alongside all the standard Gears weapons, a handful of new ones are showcased in the beta. The digger launcher fires a tunnelling missile; its deadly blast radius is triggered when it burrows in close proximity to an enemy. Shot directly into the ground, it is capable of tunnelling under all types of cover and through walls, but is relatively slow and the way it kicks up the earth en route to an opponent makes it easy to spot. It’s still a good way to draw enemies out of cover however, and introduces a nice gameplay variation to combat.
The sawed-off shotgun joins the gnasher as a go-to short range weapon. It boasts extremely limited range on account of its incredibly wide buckshot spread, but it’s an instant kill if anyone happens to be standing nearby. Alongside the gnasher, this weapon has almost singlehandedly removed melee kills from the game it’s so effective. When shot from the hip at short range it is accurate, much faster than melee and, as mentioned, deadly. You had better kill with that first shot though as the reload time is significant, and it doesn’t come with a lot of ammo.
It’s probably worth noting here that being shot while revving the chainsaw no longer lowers it, but you walk so slowly with it engaged that unless their your target’s back is turned, chances are you’ll get a face full of buckshot before you can chop anyone up.
The retro lancer is an effective short-to-medium range automatic, but has one hell of a recoil and suffers from a long reload too. Its bayonet allows you to charge and impale enemies, but this is difficult to pull off in the heat of combat and often doesn’t outright kill opponents the way other melee attacks do. Still, it’s a nice counter to the shotguns and packs a much bigger wallop than its bigger brother.
Rounding out the new weapons is the one-shot, a super sniper rifle that scores kills regardless of where you hit your target. The downside is that it takes a while to charge, the crosshairs move too slowly and are zoomed in too far for it to be the monster weapon you are probably picturing. It’s still good against targets who stick to the same piece of cover, however.
To keep the game balanced, a few welcome changes have been made to the existing Gears arsenal as well. The gorgon pistol, for instance, is now an SMG – a full-auto, pinpoint-accurate scoped one at that. It’s a joy to wield. The hammerburst has also been given an upgrade in the form of an iron sight that gives excellent accuracy over long distances. It still fires slowly and has a small clip, but the sights and its heavy damage make it a good option over medium to long distances.