It was painful. We wanted to tell you about all the never-before-seen Gears of War 2 levels, modes and gameplay features we sampled at Microsoft's Redmond office recently, but we couldn't because of those bloody embargo thingies.
Breaking the embargo would probably have gotten us all killed, but now the chains are off we can finally reveal Gears of war's E3 secrets.
First up is a new mode that had us sat in front of the screen, wide-eyed and unflinching for hours: the brand new five-player co-op mode called Horde. You and up to four other players, in any multiplayer map, get to fight against waves of CPU-controlled enemies.
Microsoft described it as Gears of War meets Geometry Wars. The various beasts in the single-player campaign spawn into the map, coming at you and your team from all angles and forcing you to work together to defeat them, with each wave being tougher to beat. Like co-op in the first game's campaign, players can revive each other an unlimited number of times, but if you all die in a single round it's over.
It sounds simple but it's more ingenious than you think. It's all about working together and staying close to each other, but you're each individually scored on the number of enemies you kill, giving the hot-headed players a competitive element to enjoy.
It's bloody tough though. In earlier waves you'll only have small groups of Locust Drones and Wretches to deal with. But a few waves later you'll start to feel the strain. Imagine taking on two Boomers, a pack of explosive Lambent Wretches, three or four Torque Bow-wielding Theron guards and the odd Drone or two packing a flame thrower or sniper rifle. It's mental without including the new enemies (more about that later).
An enemy count in the top left corner of the screen tracks how many beasts left in the current wave - usually between the 15 and 20 mark at the most. When you kill the last enemy of a wave, you hear that distinctive victory chime and it all goes quiet for around a minute before the next wave turns up.
We loved these parts the most. It's tense - you have no idea what might appear next, or where it'll attack from, but you have no choice but to break off and scout around for ammo. It's a moment of both calm and uncomfortable vulnerability.
You'll soon know when someone has wondered too far from the pack though - first you hear the grunt of an enemy who's spotted his prey, followed by screams of your pals on XBL headset as the four of you rush to their rescue.
It was in Horde mode that we got our first glimpse of some of the new enemies you'll see in the single-player campaign. If you thought Wretches were a pain in the ass, you'll have to deal with another race of agile little beasts called Tickers, named after a constant ticking sound they make with their teeth.
They're like giant demonic caterpillars with explosives strapped to their backs. One well-aimed shot can make them explode, but they're nippy and dart from one point of cover to another so fast you barely see them. All you hear is that tick getting closer and closer.
On the bigger side of the scale, Boomers mean business in the sequel. There are now multiple variants of Boomer that carry different weapons. We saw Boomers with the flame thrower, which are so tough that you can't always take them down before they get close enough to torch you to a crisp.
Another attacks with a giant melee weapon and a shield, guarding themselves as they slowly move close to you, then charging you at the last moment (and they're scarily quick) to smash your face in.
They're not the biggest enemies either. Bloodmounts are bigger. They're like land versions of Reavers - those tough flying beasts that the Locust Drones ride on in the fifth act of the original game. They stomp around with long legs, the Locust riders shooting at you from the saddle high up. Get too close and their pointy legs double up as spears which stab through you. They're nails.
It's when those guys turn up that you might want to use one of a new class of heavy weapons MS revealed during our hands-on session. They work a little like the gun turrets or laser cannons in Halo 3. Grab the Mulcher (a heavy chain gun) or the Mortar (which lobs explosive grenades into the air) and you'll fend off larger swarms with no worries, but suffer from a loss of speed and the ammo won't last long.
We couldn't talk about the new maps last week either, but now we can and what we saw was awesome. MS debuted two new maps: Day One, set in city streets with an arcade game interior you can enter; and Avalanche, set at the bottom of a snow-covered mountain.
Avalanche was particularly awesome because it contained one of those environmental hazards that Cliff Bleszinski had told us would play a much bigger a part in the sequel.
While playing you'll suddenly hear a siren, which is your cue to get the hell out of the main courtyard outside and into one of the buildings off to the sides. Moments later a rumbling avalanche comes crashing down the slope, covering the level in eight feet of snow.
It's brilliant - even if you make it to safety a blinding white fog descends over the entire stage, making it almost impossible to see opponents until you pretty much bump into each other. Some chaotic shoot-outs come out of that.
And of course when the storm settles, go outside and you'll see that the landscape has been changed by the snow that now covers the stage. It's been cleverly designed so that new areas and weapons, like a Mulcher that's on the roof of a central bandstand-style structure, are only reachable once the snow has crashed down and raised the floor level.
Fantastic stuff. And you won't even need friends (or Xbox Live) to enjoy all this multiplayer goodness because there'll be full bot support for all multiplayer modes too (except Horde), which will be great for getting in some practice before taking on the world.
As we said before, we're super pumped for Gears 2's multiplayer - all the faults of the original have been ironed out and all the new tweaks and additions are coming together to make one incredible game.
We'll hopefully get to see more of the single-player campaign soon. For now though, if you missed it you should check out our previous write-up which packs brutal in-game footage of the multiplayer mode and some of its new levels and weapons, plus new screens. And there's an interview with CliffyB right here, too.
I remember something similar to my days of playing Clone Wars on the Gamecube with my mates. I can't tell you how much of a blast it was! I hope this will be the same experience.
sounds good. alot more games are taking on enviromental interactivity, think that'll be the next big thing that will be included in games to come.
Yet again theres so much concentration and emphasis on the multiplayer and little coverage on the single campaign, hope this doesnt reflect on the final product
After watching the reaosnably good quality capture of the E3 presentation on XBLive last night, I'm actually a bit worried about GoW2..
There were an awful lot of quite severe framerate drops in the level Cliffy Bellend played at E3. On top of that, does anyone else think the visuals for the flame thrower look decidedly weak?
And another thing I wasn't impressed with was during the arty 'rendezvous' trailer, the particle effects looked truely awful. I'm just starting to question how much of a rush job getting Gears 2 produced has been?
Don't get me wrong, I'm really looking forward to it, and when it's good, it looks utterly stunning, but there's a lot of rough edges that need sorting yet.
does anyone remember the documentary on the bonus disc of gears 1 were cliffy b was going on about his relationship with that girl who was way younger than him and how it split up! i mean what the fu*k!!
does anyone remember the documentary on the bonus disc of gears 1 were cliffy b was going on about his relationship with that girl who was way younger than him and how it split up! i mean what the fu*k!!
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