Gears of war judgement full artical

We have a health boost emanating from between two turrets, a man with a Boomshot, and a sniper in a sweet perch -- we still can’t take down the Locust. I worried that class-based multiplayer, with each archetype bringing his or her own special ability into the field, would utterly break Gears of War: Judgment’s OverRun mode.

It does not.

Even in multiplayer, and as indicated by the debut Judgment trailer, the Locust are very, very scary.Epic refers to OverRun as a blend of Horde and Beast, and they're not wrong. Two teams of five fight for different kinds of control. The Locust assault the COG generator and the humans need to keep them away. Fortifications like fences and mounted turrets give the COG a defensive advantage. Their unique abilities give them the support and offensive edge. The Locust are absolutely at a disadvantage, but it doesn’t mean they’re entirely without the skills to tip the scales.

As in Gears of War 3’s Beast mode, killing COGs and mauling their defenses earns Locust players currency. They upgrade their unit type from Ticker to Wretch all the way up to a Serapede and Corpser. As a Locust, the only real difference is that your COG opponents are people on the other end of Xbox Live, though series executive producer Rod Fergusson tells us that AI bots will fill in for any missing human players.

Those five players either coordinate to protect sentry guns and each other, or they completely crumble. Attackers can brute force their way through the enemy’s uncertainty. Having the means to keep your generator from the Mauler’s flail doesn’t mean a thing if the Medic isn’t keeping the repairman Engineer alive. Likewise, the Sniper needs to be able to keep the team in the know with his enemy-revealing Beacon powerup. Locust can come from multiple directions, and the maps are designed in such a way that they slightly favor the grubs. There’s more cover, hidden paths, and not many places where a sentry won’t get shot down when left unguarded. COGs wind up exposed or forced out of cover fairly easily. It’s an on-the-fly tug of war that just feels right. OverRun is an excellent addition to Gears, and developer People Can Fly has created something so indiscernible from Epic’s own series that it could be mistaken for a Gears of War 3 expansion. It’s early, likely a year out, and even now it’s an exciting and natural step forward.

This is just the first look, too. We haven’t seen the campaign or co-op at all, and Epic Games design director Cliff Blezinski tipped us off to the game also having more "traditional" multiplayer modes. If it’s all as thought-out as Judgment’s multiplayer experiment, expect to get plenty hot and bothered by Gears for a fourth time.