Community Review: Gears of War 3 Beta

By grey walrus — May 9, 2011
Tags: beta epic-games gears-of-war-3 review

Theres only a week left in the Gears of War 3 Beta, and now that there's a bunch of extra codes flying around, I'll tell you why you should try to snag one up. Maybe you'll even have a chance in this story. Wink Wink.

The Gears of War franchise has been a pretty big one ever since it was first released, and now the beta is out for the final chapter in the Gears story.

STORY: This is a beta, so sorry guys no story here. It's all online multiplayer, but it sure is fun.

SOUND: The sounds in GOW haven't changed much from the second game. The screams, rolls, bullet noises, grenades, and music all sound about how they did before. Music isn't really a key factor considering that this is a multiplayer beta though, and that will most definitely be something to look forward to more in the full release.

GAMEPLAY: Get ready to see a LOT of the above pictured weapons. They are you're best friends. Just like the other Gears of War games you will be using your shotgun a good majority of the time. Unless you're more of a long distance fighter.

The basic gameplay remains un altered. You hide behind cover, roll, and run your way across maps to defeat the enemies that spawn on the other side. Weapons such as the Torque bow, the mulcher, the mortar, the longshot, and and the new Oneshot all spawn on the map. As do other grenades, the ink, incediary, and the frag. Sometimes picking up these weapons and using them (well) is the key between victory and defeat.

If you haven't played a gears of war game before let me tell you right now that the multiplayer is ruthless. You will be killed without mercy at every turn, and a lot of the time you don't even see it coming. Keep an eye out everywhere and at all times. You are NEVER safe. This adds to the fun of the game though.

One of the new gameplay features that is fun to use is the ability to leap over cover and kick your enemy in the face. If an enemy is hiding on the other side of the same piece of cover as you and you leap over it you'll kick them and they'll be stunned just long enough for you to line up your Gnasher and take them down with a single shot. That being said if you haven't played a gears game before, or haven't played it in a long time, the cover system can take a bit to get used to. You'll get frustrated when you press A a little too soon, and wind up rolling into the wall instead of taking cover behind it, but you'll get it eventually. After a while it becomes second nature, and you're hiding and rolling, and running, and dodging like none other.

GRAPHICS:

Checkout and Thrashball are two of the new maps that you'll be playing on in the beta, and they look fantastic. Personally the graphics don't seem to have changed much from 2, and in my opinion they didn't really need to. That being said I haven't played 2 in quite some time, and my perspective might be out of wack. Even if I didn't notice a change in how realistic the game looks, it does seem a lot more vibrant and bright. Colors seem to stick out more in this game than they did in 2 where everything felt grey and washed out. The grass on thrashball really pops out against the grey cover. Especially when splattered with the blood satisfyingly spilt from your enemies lifeless corpses.

NEW WEAPONS!: Gears of War 3 has added a few new weapons to the fray, and they all take a little getting used to.

The sawed off shotgun. Like the gnasher this is obviously a shot gun. The differences between this and the gnasher are significant though. You only get one shot before you need to re-load, and you only get 5 shots before you need to go and find more ammo for it. The range of the sawed off is laughable, but it's horizontal spray, and massive close range damage are anything but. When you aim with the sawed off the cross hairs take up a good majority of the width of your t.v. so aiming left and right is pretty much un-needed. You need to be pretty close to your opponent, but if they're standing next to eachother you can take out 2 or 3 with a single shot.

The incidiary grenade. This new grenade type is pretty nifty when trying to hold back opponents. As soon as it hits the ground it makes a decent sized fiery square around the point of impact. You get two as soon as you pick them up, so if you're backed against a wall and don't want your enemy to advance on you, you can use these as a temporary barrier to keep them right where you want them. As a bonus, if you score a direct hit with one of your opponents it will kill them instantly, and you can watch them smolder before your feet. It's super satisfying.

The Digger Launcher. This new weapon is a campers worst nightmare. Once fired it burrows through the ground and under any cover in it's way making a terrifying and almost monster like snarling noise as it rockets towards your opponents. Once it hits a wall or reaches your enemy it will detonate, explode, and kill anybody unlucky enough to be caught in the blast radius. You have to reload after every shot, and you only get 3 of them. So make 'em count.

The One Shot. As it's name implies it only takes one shot with this monster behemoth to kill anything in it's path. It's a heavy weapon like the mulcher or the grinder, so if you pick it up be prepared to move slowly, and be super vulnerable. When taking aim with the one shot you zoom in pretty far so it's kind of hard to get used to the orientation, but as soon as you line up with an enemy and pull the trigger they are dead. No questions asked. It doesn't matter if you hit them in the foot or in the head. D-E-A-D dead. It does emit a highly pitched screeching tone to alert the person on the recieving end. So unless they're t.v. is muted they are going to start rolling around and hiding. They will do anything to avoid this weapon.

The Retro Lancer. Last, but not least comes this beauty. The retro lancer is a machine gun, and has some heavy duty fire power. This is by far the strongest machine gun you can use (other than the Mulcher) That being said it's accuracy at a range is terrible. The recoil from the retro lancer makes your crosshairs constantly move upward, so fire in bursts, and takes a long time to get used to. And of course they couldn't call it a lancer unless there was something scary and deadly hanging out by the barrel. That monsterous shank you see at the end of the retro is nothing to laugh at. If you hold the B button you will charge at the enemy screaming with the bloodlust of a thousand men. And if there's a poor son of a bitch on the recieving end. Will.... things aren't looking pretty for them.

FINAL VERDICT: If you want to get into gears, already love gears, and have a chance to find a beta code. PLAY IT! It's good and is definitely worth a shot. There's only a week left though so start bugging your friends. And for sticking it out until the end. One lucky person will have the chance to win my extra code.

I'm going to be doing this on the honor system, so if you already have a code, or don't like GOW don't steal this from somebody truly looking forward to the beta. DON'T BE A JIMMY!

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Gears of War 3