Special Review: Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta (2011).

The first Gears was a great multiplayer game but it still had its flaws. The second game took away many of those flaws, and with the addition of the hugely popular Horde mode (which has now been copied it almost every game to come out since), it give Halo and Call of Duty a run for their money. And now the third game finally has a concrete release date in September and it has a multiplayer beta that is now running. So, where does this game stand in the huge and ultra competitive world of online shooters?

Before you read this review and maybe hear something that displeases you, remember, this is only a beta and not a finished product. The developers can and will change some things between the beta and the finale product.

The Good and The Bad.

Anybody who played enough of Gears 2 will remember that, while the gameplay and maps were great, non of the modes were truly amazing. In its deathmatch mode you had but one life before you were gone for good. Capture the Stranded was cool, but wouldn’t it be better if it were a real person instead of an AI controlling the Stranded? In the modes that they have chosen to include in the Gears 3 beta they have created original and fun new modes.

In Team Deathmatch the team as a whole now has a pool of lives that they can use once they’ve been shot. This also give you more incentive to aid your allies, because every time they die they use up a life of the teams.

In Capture the Leader they combined two modes from Gears 2 (Guardian and Capture the Stranded) and made them into a much better and funner mode. Each round one player on each team is chosen to be the leader (much like in Guardian) but instead of just letting the team respawn (which is all the leader used to do), the are the flag, which the other team most hunt down, knock out, and hold for 30 seconds to win the round. Also they can see all of the enemy locations on their map.

Now, their was another mode up while I was playing (it was called King of the Hill), but I never got a round to playing it.

Two of most famous (or infamous) things about Gears of War, were the Lancer (the chainsaw gun) and curbstomps. The first two games were brutally violent, but now with inclusion of unlockable executions for each gun, Gears has once again found a way to trump it predecessor in the category of violence.

Now that I’ve mentioned weapons, I might as well tell you this. All of the new weapons are awesome, and many of the old ones have been tweaked a little bit too. Now you can go it to first-person zoom with the Hammerburst, and the Gorgon Pistol is now fully auto. At first I thought that the new Sawed-off Shotgun was vastly overpowered been I quickly adapted to find was to deal with it.

Of all of the new weapons I have a tie for favorite between the Retro Lancer and the Digger Launcher. Instead of the famous chainsaw bayonet the Retro Lancer has a regular old spear-like bayonet which allows you to charge into enemies and impale them. The Digger Launcher shoots out a little piranha-like creature that burrows through the ground and then pops up next to your enemies and explodes.

In addition to new modes and new weapons there have been some less prominent changes.

Now instead of simply being able to run past an item and tapping X you have to stop for a second and hold it down. This might seem like a hassle, but it means that gone are the days when you’d be in a firefight and somebody could just run over and pick up a rocket launcher.

It used to be that, aside from giving you cover, a meatshield did little else, but now if you switch to grenades you’ll attach one to the body and then kick it away from you. This means that if your being overwhelmed by enemy forces and your meatshield is doing little to help, you could turn it into a human (or Locust) bomb.

In Gears 2 two all you really unlocked by playing was a little number next to you gamertag. Now as you progress through the levels and kills you’ll unlock things such as: different characters, emblems, weapon skins, executions, etc. This is just one more way of keeping you coming back again and again.

Of my handful of hours playing the only two problems I have with the game are: it took sometimes up to ten minutes to get a match (luckily once I didn’t I could play for twenty or so minutes), and that occasionally during a match the enemy team (sometimes mine too) would disappear and just one character model would be stuck running into a wall.

If the rest of the game is as good as the multiplayer, then Gears of War 3 could be a major contender for Game of The Year.

Visual: This is the best looking Xbox 360 game I have seen so far.

Sound: The sounds of battle don’t get much better then this.

Gameplay: The Gears formula was already great but and all of the additions feel as if they’ve been here since the beginning.

Worth Your Money: This isn’t a finished product so not I’m going to say weather or not it’s worth your money.

Console: Xbox 360.

Developer: Epic Games, Inc

Parental Rating: M/ 17+

Overall Score: 9.75/10