Reviews// Gears of War 3 Online BETA

Gears of War 3, the beta of the final, ultimate, manliness-packed, sofa-sized instalment of the trilogy is here. I got to play it. Read on and see if you’d like to too!

For those of us who like our manly men manlier than Arnie in an armoured bacon gun, the trilogous game (yeah, new word, ‘av that) has seemed to take forever to get here. Cliffy B and Rob Fergusson, the little teases, have assured us that the wait for autumn/winter will make this the most explosive, testosterone-fuelled and “the best polished” Gears ever like the arrival of a metal dick in a room full of fastidious nuns.

Now, if I were to tell you that my favourite films of all time were Predator, Commando and Planet Terror in advance of me telling you that I was previewing Gears of War 3, you would no doubt make some assumptions about how I was likely to judge it. I did myself.

The co-op gameplay in Gears never fails to make me as giddy as a rabbit in a hat with a 64 Impala and I’ve been eagerly awaiting it. However, perhaps this is unpardonable (you tell me right there in the comments section), but I’ve never given the multiplayer much time. I play through the single or co-op version, laugh at the antics of Marcus, Dom, Cole and Baird, and then put it back in its box and sell it on, rarely giving another thought to it. I’m now having to wonder if I’ve been missing out on something good.

If you have been organised and dedicated enough to pre-order the Epic Edition, on the 25th of this month (or April 18th for owners of Bulletstorm: Epic Edition) you’ll be able to play the beta, which includes three multiplayer modes: Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill; familiar to fans of FPS multiplayer modes, and Capture the Leader, a sick, twisted love child of Guardian and Submission which made me cry like a baby with no tit.

Deathmatch
The Deathmatch has been spiced up from its more basic cousins with the addition of limited respawns, making the opportunities for tactical playing and last-minute, game-stealing slaughter-fests much more plentiful.

All the pre-release kids have been down on this mode today and yesterday, which is pretty telling: if a bunch of hard-nosed, world-weary games journalists are playing it almost at the exclusion of other modes then it must rank pretty highly in the excitement stakes. Like, more than bingo, or something.

Capture the Leader
King of the Hill seems to be in Classic Coke flavour, so let’s move on to Capture the Leader so I can get this off my ample chest. Tactics, as mentioned before, are brilliant. We humans are pack hunters, and this taps in to some prehistoric bit of behavioural conditioning, or something, in the id which makes us get our pants wet, in a nice way.

But there is a limit. If a game becomes all tactics then there is no game left. It’s as predictable as the path of a gob of spit and, although one could compare the colour, texture or viscosity of it, no one wants to.

I only had the pleasure of playing with bots, but in the one game it became clear that there were going to be leaders camping aplenty; frustrated capturers who cannot pick up bullets, run or, well, enjoy the game while they’ve got the leader; leaders who can’t free themselves being dragged around for five or ten minutes if they, like me, are particularly inept and keep missing the B button. This is where I cried a real tear, trivia fans.

Maps
There are also four new maps to play in: Thrashball, Trenches, Checkout and Old Town.

Old Town has, rightly, got a lot of love. Based on a Spanish seaside town, it’s colourful, pretty and chicken-pecked. I keep expecting to see locals drinking sangria at a bistro table toppling out of their seats as a battalion of hulking, fridge-wearing men and aliens storm past, thick necked and intent. Trenches doesn’t make me want to... frankly, it doesn't make me want to dwell on it give that it's a little dull.

Despite the general adoration for Checkout that seems to abound, I felt it was too open plan (read as: I got shot a lot) and the one zone with all the best guns seemed to be taken immediately by the Locust team every time, making it a more static version of King of the Hill (read as: I couldn’t get to the pretty sniper and digger missile, so sulked).

Now, call me a noob if you want, that’s what the comments are there for, but the other maps seem to have a lot more going on while Checkout makes me feel like one of the disposable ferals in Fallout 3, just an arm-flailing bullet magnet.

Thrashball, the mutated American Football we know Cole loved so much, can no longer be played in this Thrashball arena. The pitch is covered in waist-high hiding spots. The concession stand has a Mulcher, grenades and is a great vantage point for popping off shots from and trying to bring that scoreboard crashing down on whichever unfortunate sucker is trying to grab the Digger from beneath it in the manner of one of those angry grey blocks in Mario Kart.

This area is muchos fun. It seems easy to turn the tables on the other side, you have lots of key zones to control and the destructible environmental features add a bit of extra interest.


Conclusion
Gears of War 3, against all my predictions, seems to have found a sweet spot for serious multiplayer action in a light-hearted game. If you’re fed up of the po-faced, taking-itself-too-seriously CoD attitude, or the heart-breakingly pretty and clever Crysis 2 then this will fill the gap. It’s colourful, fairly fast paced, accessible and a pleasure to play. Get some mates round and get it on.

BETA SPOnG score 80%