Gearing up in anticipation of "Gears of War: Judgment" next week? You should know what to expect from the multiplayer, especially since it's during those first few days of matches when you get to snuff out the noobs and inflate your kill/death ratio. This is important stuff, we know, so pay close attention. Your COG soldier's many lives are on the line. And if you can't stand text, check out the Baird-narrated "The Guts of Gears: Multiplayer" trailer below. Yup, Baird talks in it, a lot. Oh, you want to read now?
Weaponry:
- Frag Grenades: Old faithful is now a sticky grenade as well, so if you can nail your opponent on the first try, that's an instant kill for you. Congrats.
- Beacon Grenades: See your opponent through walls by throwing these guys into the next room. It's a real-time feed, so they should provide a tactical edge to those with the occasion to use them.
- Stim Grenades: Heal your opponents with the puffy cloud of blue smoke that pops out of these grenades. More useful for team players, naturally.
- No Grenade Windup: Grendades are tossed without a windup now, meaning the time between when you tell your character to throw a grenade and when your character actually does it is greatly reduced. This should speed up gameplay while upping the frustration of grenades by a couple (hundred) degrees. Comboing two grenades has never been easier - uh oh.
- The Markza: A semi-automatic, medium range sniper rifle with a scope. Expect this thing to be used often and with great vigor from the "pros" out there.
- Breech Shot: A high-powered, medium to short range locust rifle with a blade on the bottom for a special execution. Another entry in the rifle class.
- Booshka Grenade Launcher: They really went all out with the grenades this time around. Bounces grenades off walls and floors, and the explosion looks to be just as deadly as the normal frag grenade, if a tiny bit less so.
- Tripwire Crossbow: Set up traps with this torque bow cousin. Getting around those corners is going to be a treacherous as ever.
Modes
- Free-for-All: Yup, this is happening. For years the "Gears" franchise has been about team-play, but Epic seems to be finally recognizing that sometimes you just want to run around with your shotgun and blow away as many people as humanly possible. So now we have free-for-all mode, where executions don't exist and you're all on your own. No worries though, because team deathmatch will be back as well.
- Domination: If you've ever played "Call of Duty" you know exactly what this is. Three territories are spread throughout the map, capturing them gains you a steady stream of points, which means holding the most at any given time is your only chance at winning.
- Survival: A revamped horde mode with two upgrades: classes and something to defend. Instead of before, when you were simply running around the map trying to survive, you now have to defend an objective. To do so you need to use the new classes as a team to great effect. Medics can heal, engineers can repair turrets, scouts can... scout. You get it.
- Overrun: When "Gears of War 3" showed off its Beast mode, where players took control of various locust creatures in a reverse Horde mode setup, everybody kept asking, can you do it in multiplayer? Well now you can. Overrun lets a team of COGs fight against a team of wildly different locust characters as seen in beast mode, not just your human copycats. It's basically survival mode with two human controlled teams. COG players are split up into classes - medic, scout, engineer, etc. - to maintain variety on both sides. The humans must complete objectives over the course of a match and it's the locusts' job to stop them and keep them from gaining points. This mode could be a disaster or it could be the greatest thing "Gears" ever made. We shall see, folks.
Maps:
- Verticality: While it sounds like a bit of a gimmick, introducing a massive upgrade in verticality to the maps, in addition to the ability to pretty much hop off whatever ledge you want, is going to fundamentally change the way people evaluate their surroundings and approach their enemies. Dropping in on unsuspecting foes with your shotgun out may end up being a primary tactic, but using those ledges to escape death sounds like a good idea too.
- New maps for normal multiplayer modes: Gondola, Library, Streets and Rig.
- Maps for Overrun/Survival: Island, Skyline, Junkyard and Estate.
Well that's all folks. I give you Baird's version. It's not as good.
