Here is a moment that typifies the multiplayer action in Gears of War 3. A lone gunman weaves between two chunks of cover in the centre of Checkout, perhaps the new game's standout map. Suddenly, two members of the opposing team run out at him from either side and simultaneously blast him with sawn-off shotguns; the result is a nuclear apocalypse of blood, spraying at the screen, the background scenery and everywhere else within a five-metre vicinity of the collision. Over the headset comes a torrent of laughter. It is ultra violence as slapstick comedy.
This joyously cataclysmic exchange took place at a hands-on event in San Francisco last week. Surrounded by the world's gaming press, design director, Cliff Bleszinski and executive producer, Rod Fergusson, revealed six multiplayer maps from the closing title in the Gears trilogy, due out on September 20. Apparently, this is only a selection from the final line-up, but the half-dozen arenas revealed here gave a good indication of what to expect: frantic, gore-splattered mayhem.
My first experience of the game is with the aforementioned Checkout, a ruined supermarket, complete collapsing product displays, rusting shelving units and an array of smaller departments leading off from a central shopping floor. It's an ultra-compact map, designed for close-quarters combat – and that's exactly what you get. It's here that one key new weapon comes into its own: the sawn-off shotgun. This spiteful little maniac has terrible range but within a few feet it's explosively deadly. If you stumble across a group of enemies, you can take out three with one blast, which is indecently messy. Also handy here is the new Retro Lancer, a version of the standard Lancer assault rifle that features a secondary bayonet rather than a chainsaw. Hit B and you'll perform a charge, bolting up to an enemy and skewering him with your blade. The timing and direction require practise, but get it just right and your victim can be lifted from his feet and waved in the air like a gory flag.
On the same scale is Thrashball, a ruined sports arena, flanked by locker rooms and surrounded by collapsing seating units, which provide handy overviews of the central area. The court is strewn with low and high cover objects, so you get these miniature wars of attrition as sides edge toward each other through the debris. However, the side areas also allow for pincer movements so there are pockets of violence continually exploding throughout the stadium. It's another fun map, especially with the giant scoreboard suspended high above, which records each kill on the digital readout. This can also be shot down mid-bout, making instant jam out of anyone caught underneath.
Set in the locust dead lands, Trenches provides a slightly larger field of play, taking place over a desolate and scarred landscape. Here, a trench line extends through the centre of the map, with various lookout points dotted around and above it. It's a real heavy weapons zone, with a Mulcher spawnpoint at the bottom and a 'One Shot' at the top. This devastating newcomer features a laser target that scans the area looking for enemies; if anyone strays into its sightline, they are seamlessly converted into a thin red mist. As the converging red lines sweep across the sandy surface they create plenty of amusingly hectic activity, with soldiers diving for cover behind any stunted tree trunk they can find.
This level also boasts another interesting feature. Several minutes into each bout, a horn sounds and suddenly a sand storm rolls in reducing visibility to a few feet. Cue several seconds of tension as players creep about, blasting at any object that looms into their sight line. This is also a useful opportunity to test out another new weapon, the Digger, a projectile that tunnels beneath the ground, before popping out and exploding. It's designed to get beneath cover objects, but as it moves beneath the ground it leaves a pretty obvious dirt furrow in its wake, usually giving intended targets a few seconds to get away. But in the midst of a sandstorm, it's not visible, leaving stationary players extremely vulnerable.
Overpass, is a similarly mid-sized map, with a suspended roadway heading over the central area. Slap bang in the middle of the environment is a high turret in which you find four Retro Lancers, perfect for laying down a suppressing fire and controlling the area. As the bout progresses, the overpass supports slowly sink into the mud, altering the playing field and sending architecture crashing down.
The last two maps we played were Old Town and Mercy. The latter was described by Fergusson as a Spanish-style version of Gridlock, a favourite map from Gears 1. It's a series of overgrown garden areas, divided by decorative arches and overlooked by a crumbling church. This map provides a more tactical, slower-paced encounter, in which long-range and heavy weapons (several of which are ironically stashed away inside the place of worship) come to the fore. Old Town is an urban map, with lots of smaller streets and alleys arranged around an open marketplace. "It's great for territory-type modes," says Bleszinski. "It's one of those maps where people get down the sides and you have these great gun fights; people are running back and forth through the middle, while other players are flanking them." It also has chickens running around. Which you can shoot, naturally.
Within a few minutes of play on any of these maps, you'll spot several little tweaks to the familiar Gears system. The 'tap and hold' controls have been simplified to improve usability. If you tap X you'll revive a teammate or take a passing enemy as a meat shield, but if you hold it, you'll pick up a weapon. The system is designed so that, when you rush in to save a buddy, you won't just grab a nearby shotgun by mistake – there's even a little timer display that shows how long you've held the button. It takes a while to get used to, but when every microsecond counts, it soon becomes a vitally useful function.
There's new functionality in other areas too. When you spot an enemy player, you can hold down the left analogue stick to tag them, allowing your comrades to view their position. "We really tried to find ways for the player to communicate with teammates without having to use voice comms all the time," explains Fergusson. Also, pressing the left bumper button at any time will reveal all the weapon spawn points on the map – great for newcomers or those of us who have trouble memorising such locations. Elsewhere, players are now able to change their load-outs before a match, and after they get killed, allowing better control over weapons and tactics than previous Gears titles.
Gears of War 3 is also refining the very basic experience points system from Gears 2, adding a variety of unlocks for veteran players. Each weapon, for example, has unlockable (and suitably bloody) Execution modes, which only become available to players who have proved their proficiency with the relevant firearms. There are both short and long execution manoeuvres, selected by either tapping or holding the button – these go on the official scale of visceral brutality from 'ugh, that must smart' to 'argh, my eyes!' and contain scenes of chest-bursting, neck-throttling and skull-smashing which may be unsuitable for, well, anybody. You're also able to access new character models and costumes as you reach key milestones: completing five matches might give you access to Baird or a new Savage Theron, while 70 earns you Coltrane. For the beta test, starting in April, Epic Games has created a gold version of the Retro Lancer, available to those who play 90 matches. Get 100 kills with it, and it yours to keep and take into the retail version.
After about two hours exposure, I can confirm that the savage delights of Gears remain undimmed. The mismatch at the heart of the series is still weirdly compelling – these giant, graceless characters who find themselves lumbering into sudden, hyperkinetic gunfights. The new weapons add extremes of range to the action, with the sawn-off at one end and the deadly One Shot at the other; and there are useful modifications to familiar equipment – the powerful Hammerburst rifle, for example, now features iron sights for greater accuracy. "You just click the right stick to go into sight mode, It's really effective at range," explains Fergusson.
Of the various multiplayer modes, I played and enjoyed the tweaked Team Deathmatch the most. Here, each five-man team gets just 15 respawns per round, and matches often end in a pitiless manhunt, with packs of players legging it after a lone survivor from the opposing team. Turning around this deficit and triumphing against the odds is enormously satisfying. The other options available in our hands-on were a modified, more fluid version of King of the Hill, which no longer requires players to stand in the target area once it's taken, and Capture the Leader, in which players have to grab the other side's leader and hold him for a set period. The aim with both has apparently been to simplify the notion of objective-based multiplayer, making it more appealing to newer and more casual players.
And behind it all are those magic words – dedicated servers. Epic has made the switch to this more reliable method of delivering online gameplay (though apparently peer-to-peer options will be available), and fans will no doubt be delighted. But those fans have a long wait – anyone who doesn't make it into April's beta has til September before they can experience the carnage. This later release date has been put to good use though, according to Fergusson: "the extra time has allowed us to add extra polish. This is going to be the most polished Gears of War game we've ever made. It's going to be the best in the series…"
