After the public beta release of the multiplayer demo of gears of war 3 that was released this april, many players found themselves grinding around the clock to find out more about this upcoming title). We were given the opportunity at this years Fan Expo to try out some of the features of the game - namely the new version of hoard mode.
Players got their first introduction to the hoard mode In Gears 2. The players could - as the cogs - take on wave after wave of progressively harder enemies of the locust swarm. In gears 3 we are happy to confirm that the feature has returned and with some things were glad to say is definitively an improvement over the previous version.
First on the plus side, in addition to being able to select your starting weapon which was a standard of horde mode in the original - you can also now select your starting side arm as well. This may not seem like a huge benefit but did provide some interesting tactics for the game (there was something satisfying about starting with a shotgun pistol and a lancer).
Gears 3 also introduce a cash system that was that allowed players not only the option to buy better weapons but also upgrade the map with turrets, caltrops and an assortment of other goodies. Cash is earned by kills and how much damage a player had dealt to an enemy before they fall. At first the mode seemed reminiscing of the scoring system from the original hoard mode. Except now earning points has much more to do with gameplay than bragging rights with your friends. Players who played the original hoard should find it relativity easy to simply jump back into the action with these new features.
While this was definitively a nice catch, there were other things in this system that seemed to be a bit of a problem for the more hardcore and co-operative players. The game introduces the feature for players to 'buy back' into the round if they got killed(or in my case, splatered). This seems like a bit of a boon, it also seemed to discourage players from picking up their wounded allies in the middle of a firefight. It was also considerably easier for players to acquire 'power' weapons as they were just available at the shop - and required no classy team base tactics to get too (well, compared too gears 2 anyways). The shop feature also removed the standard weapon pickups that all gears players have become accustomed too. We can assume that this 'ease' may of just been included for the convention demo.
But by far one of the interesting features added in mode was the introduction of new enimies. While there was a impressive number of new locusts foots soldiers to fight and squish, the most impressively ones were the boss enemies that appear at the end each of the tenth levels. In our preview of the game we got to get a little closer to the brumak then many would normally prefer. We've luckily been told by the representatives from Epic Games that if you don't succeed at taking down this behemoth, the boss enemy that spawns at the end of the wave will be different the next time you play - and a whole new challenge.
Overall, were glad to say that on a whole gears 3 hoard mode will be an interesting take on a already classic mode and we are looking forward to release of the game this september.
The above hands on preview was written by Metric who attended Fan Expo 2011.
