Gears of War 3 Preview

The Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta is finally opening itself up to its rabid fan base, myself included, giving us a much-needed taste of what the full multiplayer will offer. If you're an owner of the Bulletstorm Epic Edition, you can get it now. On the 25th it will open up to the public. Participating in the beta every week will net you rewards including special Flame versions of the basic weapons like the Lancer and Hammerburst. There's a good deal of content to talk about here so let's just dive in.

First off, for a beta the multiplayer is surprisingly bug-free and polished. Granted, this level of detail is expected from a developer like Epic, but it's nice that I haven't had any technical issues after playing quite a bit of this game.

The multiplayer beta offers a taste of three of the competitive modes (sorry, no Beast mode yet). There's Team Deathmatch (similar to the Warzone mode from past games), which should be familiar to any shooter fans as you and your team fight against another team (one plays as the Locust, the other as the COGs) to the gory, gruesome death. The interesting touch here is the limited respawns, so your team shares lives. Once they're out when you die, you won't be coming back until the next round.

The second mode is called King of the Hill, and it's much like Gears of War 2's Annex Mode where you take control of a specific area and defend it from enemies trying to do the same. The third, dubbed Capture the Leader, is like Capture the Flag from other games but in this case you're trying to capture the other team's commander. This was pretty difficult since your target is almost always on the move, heavily protected by their team, and fighting back. To go along with the three available game modes, there are four maps to explore, each with a unique look and layout to distinguish it from the rest. The first is Checkout, a broken-down department store with lots of cover. Shotguns and grenades seemed especially useful here since it has some of the tightest quarters. The second map is called Trenches, and it's a slightly more intimate affair. For the most part you'll be spending much of your time hiding behind and diving between different cover spots. Despite its small size, there's a good mixture of confined spaces and open areas the make it ideal for any type of player; just watch out for those pesky grenades.

The third map is Old Town, and it's the most expansive of the bunch. I don't suggest stopping to look at the scenery (I died doing that more than once), but this map looks especially stunning, as the town you're fighting in is located on the side of a mountain. Ranged weapons seemed to work best here since much of it is comprised of wide-open spaces that are ideal for long-ranged combat. I couldn't even tell you how many times my guy's head suddenly burst in an explosion of gore and brain matter because of the sniper hiding on the other side of a courtyard.

The fourth and final map available in the beta is the destroyed arena that is the Thrashball stadium. Each map is interesting in its own way, but this map is by far my favorite. Players spawn on several spots along the side of the stadium; you can go inside the complex to vanquish any campers or go high and pick off unsuspecting opponents running throughout the court. Thrashball is easily the most original map (not to mention one of the more colorful ones) of the bunch, and I can see it being one of the more popular ones as well.

When jumping into the multiplayer beta, you don't only have fresh maps and game modes to experience, but a brand-spanking-new arsenal of weapons to go along with it. There's the Lancer, Boomshot, and a plethora of other weapons Gears fans will no doubt be fully familiar with, but there are some new additions as well. Some of these fresh faces include the Digger: a gun that launches an explosive that burrows under the ground before coming up and tearing apart any cover-hugging opponents to shreds. If you're one of the unfortunate souls standing in the way of this awful bugger, it's almost always an instant kill; fortunately you have a bit of a warning when one's coming at you.

There's also an old-school Retro Lancer that's ideal for firing in short bursts since the longer you pull the trigger the wilder the shots get. It also has an incredibly brutal bayonet attached to its barrel so you can run up to an enemy before promptly sending them to meet their maker. Another of the major additions is the sawed-off shotgun (it could be seen in the Gears 3 announcement trailer) that reloads painfully slowly but can shred several enemies at once as long as they're close enough.

Gears of War 3 also offers a vastly improved rewards and stats system that honors and tracks your skills and accomplishments in battle. Your games played, won, and lost are recorded as well as your kills, deaths, k/d ratio, assists, incapacitations, and total score. They're all tracked so you can see exactly how you measure up to your friends (or strangers) on the leaderboards.

The rewards system is much like the ones found in Halo: Reach or the recent Call of Duty games as your kills with each weapon, executions, accomplishments in specific game modes, and much more are recorded so at specific milestones you'll receive ribbons, characters, and weapon skins for doing well on the battlefield. For the beta specifically, you can unlock beta exclusive skins like the Urban and Gold skins for each weapon if you play enough of each mode.

This is just a paltry taste of what we can expect from Gears of War 3's full multiplayer, but it already has about as much content as most of its competition. Add to all this more maps, the highly addictive Horde mode, and the brand new Beast mode, and it looks like our third trip to Sera will be the best yet. Just make sure your Lancer's polished and your trigger finger's limber because out there be monsters.