Preview | Hands-on: Gears of War 3
As Gears of War 3 draws ever closer to its release date, fans of the series are growing more eager to get their hands on it – to date there are already over one-million global pre-orders. Luckily for me I was able to spend some time with the Microsoft team and play through the first act.
The journey continues on, with our muscle bound heroes once again taking it to the Locust Horde. Playing primarily as Marcus Fenix (although you will gain control of others throughout the game), you are vital to the COG cause. Humanity lays scattered across Sera and the dormant Lambent are stirring again. The game begins with Marcus onboard the Sovereign – a Raven Nest Air Craft Carrier, where he is imprisoned for disobeying orders in GOW2 for attempting to rescue his father.
However a somewhat misfortunate event sees Marcus take up arms as the ship is attacked. You must quickly link up with your team before all is lost. During this period you are introduced to some of the new weapons, enemies and the Silverback which looks similar to the exo-suit from Aliens and Killzone. The Silverback has two modes, in the standard assault mode you move just like a normal character (albeit somewhat slower), or you can lock yourself down into a stationary mode in which armour is deployed providing protection for yourself and any other Gears that choose to take cover from you.
Without giving spoilers you are obviously given lease to continue the fight with a somewhat enforced pardon from the hated Chairman Prescott, who also relays more information about Fenix’s father who was thought long dead. With humanity on the brink of extinction saving family members is more than integral to the story. Gears 3 seeks to answer fans questions around Marcus, his father and the queen and perhaps provide closure.
There’s plenty of frenetic action throughout. In fact it never seems to stop. You’ll face waves of standard cannon fodder and then some big beasties to boot. At the end of the ship sequence you get to face a leviathan that is attempting to tear the ship apart, this is a chance to have some fun with the Silverback. Having survived the aircraft carrier you’ll then move onto with the team to try and find out what happened to Marcus’s father.
In the third chapter we rewound the clock and played Cole to see what he had been up to whilst Marcus was onboard the Sovereign. This part of the journey has Cole searching the islands of Sera for any other survivors. He goes back to his hometown of Hanover. It’s now a ramshackle fortress where the remnants have little love for the Gears, their once heroes who all but abandoned them. Your initial mission is to search for food and supplies. So off to the shopping mall we go, here we faced lambent hordes including some new mutating Drudge enemies. I found that as with the previous games heavy emphasis was placed on the cover system, although you could play the tank and go head on, the game is designed to punish those who don’t use common sense. Ammunition is also of vital importance, it wasn’t long before I was forced to switch weapons and run in search of ammo. It all helps to bring out that sense of desperation of the struggle – something that many games fail to achieve.
The attention to detail seen in the game is exceptional, where you will see once majestic towns and cities that now provide little more than shelter and a place to hide whilst survivors search for a scrap of food and another day to live. If you take the time to look around you can easily see all the work that has gone into making Sera look believable. The extra special care that has been made with the lighting effects helps portray the emphasis on drama.
Although I didn’t get a chance to play multi-player, it’s easy to see that the game will shine in this area (it will also feature four player co-op for the first time in the series). I found that the AI worked fine, where your team-mates would do their best to revive you when you went down. There will also be a new horde mode where you get the chance to play as the aliens and wipe out a human stronghold.
There are a few new Locust enemies including the Grenadier, Theron, Digger Boomer and the Siege Beast, as well as Lambents such as the Drudges, Polyps and Stalks. In regards to the weapons you’ll see the Retro Lancer (bayonet attached), Digger Launcher (fires diggers through the ground before they explode), Sawed-off Shotgun, and the sniper rifle called the One-Shot (yes it generally kills in one shot).
Fans of the third person genre are not going to be disappointed with Gears 3, it repeats the same formula as before, take cover, eliminate the threat, find supplies – rinse and repeat. There are a few extra tidbits in there to add variety such as the Silverback and I am sure plenty more for the finished product.
