Videogame News

Gears of War: Judgement is Revealed! Character Classes in Multiplayer!

Epic Games and People Can Fly officially unveiled Gears of War: Judgment during E3 2012, and with the announcement came the first opportunity to not only see the game in action but also take the game’s 5-on-5 competitive multiplayer mode Overrun for a hands-on test drive.

Overrun is essentially Gears of War 3’s Beast Mode and horde mode smashed together with a sprinkling of class-based characters. For one round, we played as humans defending a power generator, and for the second, we played as various Locust variants trying to destroy the generator. Pretty straightforward stuff.

The classes add a nice strategic touch to the frenetic and oft gruesome gameplay, especially with the addition of class-specific secondary abilities. For instance, Baird is an engineer capable of dropping sentry turrets (pro tip: if you enter cover and then drop the turret, you can actually put it on top of whatever piece of cover you’re pinned to, giving the turret some added height and widening its viewing angle) and repairing damaged fortifications like barbwire fences. Cole is a soldier, and can drop ammo boxes. Sofia is the medic who drops a health-dealing gas cloud. Paduk, the scout, drops a beacon that reveals enemy positions on the map.

On the Locust side, you have a variety of gnarly beasts at your disposal, assuming you have earned enough cash to unlock them throughout the match that is. A lot of the characters appeared in GOW3, like the wretch, ticker, and kantus (no berserker though), and each one offers an entirely unique play style and ability. Seeing the chaos that ensues when the two teams collide is just ridiculous, especially when the fortifications fall and everyone just swarms into the central battle zone. Pure, bloody madness.

The gameplay is classic Gears, and the texture and sound work are about as pleasing as you could hope.

This article comes straight from G4 who is at E3 now.

Gears of War Prequel Trilogy!

First, I want to make it clear that I encourage everyone to visit the following website where I wrote the article below. A lot of people are visiting this excellent new forum to talk about gaming: http://www.theaskeweffect.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17

For quite a while I had some inside information about the new Gears of War trilogy. But then my source started to remain silent and I wasn't quite sure what was going on. Also, from that point on when I talked to my source online, it became clear that he was not answering my questions and sharing information clearly the way he previously did. I noticed that my source started communicating with me by answering my questions with riddling questions of his own -- but were still potentially valid answers and volunteered thoughts.

Here is what I personally believe Microsoft and Epic have planned for the next trilogy of Gears of War:

* Gears of War is definitely going to remain the primary Title of the game. Believe it or not, this was originally not the plan that everyone agreed on. In the same way that Activision wanted to start a new series titled "Modern Warfare," the strong sales of Call of Duty forced Activision to market the game as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. This is what we will see with the next Gears of War trilogy.

* The Pendulum Wars was (and possibly still is) definitely the name Epic staff members used when talking about the three games in this trilogy.

* At this point in time, the first game in the new Gears of War trilogy is apparently going to be titled Gears of War with a subtitle making a reference to the word "Pendulum." I would not be surprised if the game was actually called "Gears of War: The Pendulum Wars"

* The star of the next Gears of War trilogy is going to be Adam Fenix -- the father of Marcus Fenix

* There definitely will be a Campaign Mode in the next Gears of War game. It will be all about how Adam Fenix discovers what is going on, first contact is made, and his science is used to develop strategies to fight The Horde

* Microsoft and Epic did consider releasing the first game in the new Gears of War trilogy for the Xbox Infinty (which still has a chance of being called Xbox 365). Microsoft and Epic both realize that Gears of War is the game that is associated with raising the standard in graphics this console generation.

* Microsoft and Epic now realize and 100% agree that Gears of War is a game series that has just as much of a loyal following as the incredibly successful Halo game series. This is the reason why Microsoft and Epic are going to follow the success they enjoyed with the Halo series when Microsoft and Bungie released the first two Halo games for the original Xbox, and then released the final sequel for the Xbox 360. Halo 2 had one of the all-time best "Cliffhanger" endings in the history of the videogame industry, which is actually one of the reasons why Halo 3 became the most successful game ever released when is launched in 2007.

* Microsoft and Epic plan on releasing the first game in the new Halo series and the first game in the new Gears of War series for Xbox 360, and then releasing the sequels for the next Xbox console. The reason this strategy will be used is because the Xbox 360 will have over 70 million owners by the time those games are released. This will give the new Gears of War series and the new Halo series plenty of time to be played by an incredibly large audience of gamers. This will also help the games sell incredibly well, make a very large net profit, and take advantage of the opportunity to actually help the next console by ensuring that all of those gamers remain loyal to the new series.