Gears of War 3: Beta: First Impressions

 

It’s time to grab your lancer and head back into the gears universe and battle the locust… or battle as the locusts of course. The first thing I noticed about the Beta was how quick it loads into a multiplayer match, already a dramatic difference over Gears 2. The core feel and gameplay elements from Gears of War 2 are present in Gears of War 3 but have been vastly improved for the greater of the good. An addition execution/beat down kills are now implemented with the Y button.

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Within the beta, there are three playable game modes: Team Deathmatch, Capture the Leader, and King of the Hill. I don’t think I need to explain Team Deathmatch as its pretty self explanatory and just consists of you killing the enemy team as a team. Capture the Leader which was also present in Gears of War 2, and lastly King of the Hill which also appeared in Gears of War 2 and requires you keep a part of the map under your teams control for as long as possible to score points. During the Beta I played all of the modes averaging around 3-4 hours each, and I still continue to play.

There are a total of four playable maps in the game: Oldtown, Trenches, Trashball, and Checkout.  All the maps are expected to be in the final build of the game. I need to point out how beautiful the maps look and the details gone into the maps is great. The team of 5 aside works much better in these maps compared to previous as there is a bit more depth to them. The spawns are also fairly balanced and came across no spawn camping issues.

 

After playing the game for about 3-4 hours I didn’t come accross any major bugs, so at the moment I can only report a few minor ‘server issues’ that cause’s the game to lag.  I will do a complete final impressions piece with any issues I have come across towards the end of the beta, along with a short video.