Gears of War 3 MP Beta First Impressions

Before we get rolling on this, I would like to make it clear from the get-go that this is an opinion of a project or game still in development and is still in its beta testing phases and doesn't represent the final product. These are my first impression thoughts.

That being said and out of the way, we've finally gotten our hands on the Gears of War 3 Multiplayer Beta with the actual retail game itself shipping on 20 September 2011. When the Multiplayer for Gears 3 was announced, its Design Director Cliff Bleszinski spoke of the importance of the games online multiplayer mode in relation to the Gears of War franchise. He said:

"Bad Multiplayer in Gears of War 3 will kill the series."

He mentions this and he feels the absolute future for gaming is multiplayer. Valve have hinted at the probability of leaving behind singleplayer and developing games that are multiplayer based. The Gears of War series has been all about that since day one. There hasn't been a single Gears of War campaign that has been singleplayer based. Its intentionally designed to be playing cooperatively with a friend able to jump in and jump out practically on the fly the game is designed around that, while its competitor Uncharted 3 on the PlayStation 3 is designed around its story and the flow of the story keeping it a single player experience with cooperative missions that can be played with friends but aren't backed by such an in depth story.

Epic Games hopes that Gears of War 3 will find success and whether at launch the multiplayer succeeds or not isn't going to stop them. They've invested so much time, money and advertising backing such a successful series that they aren't going to let it fall. It almost causes one to think if its all just business talk to help hype the product. But truth be told Epic, you're not really competing with Halo anymore, as we've mentioned in earlier articles. Gears of War is the 'Halo' now.

It had also been mentioned in the same interview, that Epic Games had never before released a demo of their games. That Bulletstorm was their first release. The Beta Epic has released isn't really even conceived as a Beta to them but rather considered a "marketing exercise." But, what exactly is happening in the beta now.

Multi-player Beta looks beautiful and detailed

HOW DOES THE GAME LOOK? Lets go ahead and get the big one out of the way first. The question that's always on everyones mind is: "How are the graphics? How does the game look?" Well, if you click on the image you're going to find out. I think this is a pretty good representation of what we can expect from the final product when the game ships. Granted, the weight and pressure placed on the Xbox 360's hardware will drastically change when the singleplayer campaign is booted up as environment size and action going on are going to present themselves in greater abundance as they did in Gears of War 2. Environments were massive with explosions going off left and right, Brumaks all over the place and Panzer Dragoon-esk type moments riding on the back of a Locust. (Gears of War 2.) At the end of the day, its clear that Epic have found a way to step their game up and really polish up the games graphics this time around. When you place the two side by side, you really can see a world of difference.

Gears 3 (Top) Gears 2 (Bottom) Wow....

When you place the two side-by-side you can really see where the current Unreal Engine 3 shines. I had figured that Bulletstorm would have been using the newest version of Unreal Engine 3 techniques in its development, perhaps Epic Games had learned more about their engine they didn't even know they could do through the Bulletstorm development, but I see a lot of similarities. Still, Gears 3 manages to continually find something more. Its clear the lighting in the game has been tweaked which seem to allow the colors to pop much more and even allow for some textural detail to shine through. The anti-aliasing has been blasted up and the resulting product looks smooth and beautiful. Now, having not played the singleplayer campaign and only seeing footage of the singleplayer campaign at last years E3, I couldn't see any texture pop-in which is phenomenal! We'll see how those pipelines hold up when the game ships later this year. What surprised me even more, is that I always have this obsession with walking up to a wall or looking at the ground just to see how close I can get before the texturing looks flat. With Gears 3, I was able to get pretty close and it still held up. It seemed much better than Crysis 2 was able to pull off.

What's with the haze?

My only real gripe with the graphical fidelity of the game, is that everything still looks hazy as though someone had lit a fire and smoke came pouring through the windows or something was kicking up a lot of dust. Kicking up dust isn't really the case. There is one stage where you're battling outside and at one point its sounds like someones blowing the Riccola horn and a sandstorm blows through. Eventually the dust settles if you've survived, but there is still this haze that's irritating and the result is that even though the colors popped more than the previous games, it still seems to fade the overall look of the graphics colors which is kind of too bad. But! Leaves look like leaves. Another gripe with Crysis 2. Shrubbery just looks trashy but Gears 3 nails it. Plants look stellar!

GAMEPLAY. IT ANY FUN? Obviously, a game can look beautiful and play like trash. This is the whole purpose of the Beta that Epic Games have their fingers crossed that gamers will get something out of and really enjoy as remember, "Bad multiplayer in Gears of War 3 will kill the series." I wouldn't really say that's necessarily true. I love a game with a great campaign telling a great story. Cliffy B. had mentioned in an interview with Eurogamer shortly after his talk at the Game Developers Conference this year. (He was speaking about Japanese developed games, but the question answered of how he felt about Japanese developed games in today's world, is clearly relevant to Western developed games too) He said that if you're going to ship a game, you're going to have to make it worth the $60 that gamers are paying to play your game because $60 is a lot of money for a game. Especially if its a year full of exclusives and they're short on cash. (i.e. Gears of War 3, Skyrim, Metal Gear: Rising, Uncharted 3, Mass Effect 3, InFamous 2, Twisted Metal PS3, etc.) you're going to have to give them a lengthy singleplayer experience with lasting appeal driving them to want to replay with sixty-plus hours of gameplay, or you're going to have to give them a lasting singleplayer experience with replayability of a six to eight hour singleplayer campaign backed by a solid and lasting multiplayer experience. Gears history is about an eight hour max singleplayer campaign and is in fact dependent on its multiplayer though I've found myself playing, through the singleplayer campaign several times.

Well, the answer to the question of the multiplayer gameplay and whether its any fun a this moment is pretty simple. To be dead honest with you is simply that its a bit of a let down with all the hype it has been given. Now, keep in mind that we're still in beta phase. This is Epics moment to run the beta through its coarse and get some feedback and then to take that feedback and run the numbers. Cliffy B. stated that you can trust that user feedback about eighty-percent of the time because things are happening maybe gamers aren't seeing that maybe are so caught up in the moment that they may have missed. (I'm assuming he's mentioning glitches rather than play mechanics)

So far, I'm pretty let down and I was concerned that perhaps I was one of those so caught up in the moment that I was missing something. I quickly jumped on the boards to leave my feedback and in the process looked at what others were posting and was able to breathe easy. Others were feeling just as disappointed thus far mostly speaking with the game mode itself. I felt a little differently within other areas as at this point, it must also be remembered that the only two modes available are 'Team Deathmatch' and 'King of the Hill.'

I had mostly played Team Deathmatch predominately and a few things stood out to me as far as the overall goal of Epic and their formula for success. Epic has staked their claim that they're just not Call of Duty fans. In fact their goal, as it Electronics Arts goal, is to beat out Treyarch and Activisions Call of Duty multiplayer experience. EA has claimed Battlefield: Bad Company as their Call of Duty killer. But it seems that in order to do so, Epic have put together a formula of a mix between Battlefield: Bad Company mixed with a hint of Uncharted and some Call of Duty. "That's right, if you can't beat em, join em."

The system works off experience points as well as you level up, you unlock things. Character skins, weapons, finishers, etc. It gives you a reason to come back and keep playing which is great. I actually found myself at the start tearing through match after match trying to just get through it so I could unlock what I needed to and then I could move on and actually enjoy the experience. It was a nightmare and things got old really fast.

There are about three or four maps you play on that I can remember. The first was in Dom's Thrashball arena, the second seemed to be in this village (beautiful cobblestone and water), in some sort of construction area with the horn that blew and the dust that flies all over and in a grocery store. All of these maps got me excited for what the singleplayer might be like and what I could expect from the campaign and with so few maps and only the two modes, which will branch out over the next fews weeks. I actually got pretty bored and just wanted to unlock what I needed to and then could put it down and enjoy the experience with my friends when they have the game and breathe. I still feel that way. Its a lot of the same thing over and over but honestly, that's what beta testing and quality assurance testing is. Playing the same thing over and over looking for bugs. This time however, there's an incentive for unlockable content that caries over to the retail version so, ya gotta do what ya gotta do to get that exclusive content, right? But it really did take away from the overall experience and enjoyment thinking, I've got this set amount of time I have to do this, not to mention, you would finish a match thinking you could tack one on. "Alright! I'm up to 20 matches already! I can have this done in no time." Then you go to your stats screen and you realize you only have 12. "Wait, what happened? Can the game not add? I could have sworn I just got 20 and I'm at 12." To this very moment, I'm unsure what constituted a 'Match.'

My biggest gripe with the multiplayer experience is simply this. When Bleszinski spoke of Gears of War, he talked of how he was out with the crew getting some relaxation playing some paintball and then, the idea hit him. I want to design a game like this. I remember as he spoke of the game he said that it was the sort of game that you couldn't play it like you play most first-person shooters. That you wouldn't run out into the middle of the field and run and gun but rather, you would find a spot, take cover and fire from behind cover. Stop and pop, not run and gun. Well, that identity is long gone when it comes to multiplayer. Its like a Hollywood writer that had this amazing script and submitted it to Hollywood producers and they liked the premise of the story and the director and producers took the idea and then warped the hell out of it because they felt it would make them more money. This is exactly the sort of thing that has happened with Gears of War. I'm a HUGE Gears of War fan and I'm not a FPS fan. This was my big draw to the game. Stop and pop and Cliffy B. evangelized the idea being what he originally envisioned being what set his game apart from everyone else.

Well, that idea seems to be diminishing this time around and its sad. I apologize for this, but the two games are very similar and you can't help but compare the two. Uncharted feels more like the original vision of Gears of War than Gears of War itself does. With Gears, you feel grounded. There's a weight and a heavyness to it.  With Uncharted, you're bouncing all over the place leaping onto walls, evading and climbing. The maps were massive in scale for a multiplayer map rather than condensed and constricted with the sort of claustrophobia. With Uncharted, you were constantly in panic and complete and total paranoia wondering when someone was gonna come up behind you and CQC you to death, shoot you in the head, or like Gotham City scum fears Batman, looking around feverishly screaming "Where are you!?" There felt more a need to take cover and play the game the way it was meant to be played. Again, I guess if you can't beat them, join them. I was trying to stratagize taking cover to think. I was well on my own trying to fend for myself most of the time. At the same time, I would find myself stopping and thinking, "Hm... am I playing a third-person over the shoulder action shooter with a stop and pop style or should I just as well pick up Call of Duty, Halo or Unreal Tournament? It felt more as though I should be playing CoD, Halo or Unreal. Everyone was just gathering in groups  back to back trying to fend off guys running across the field blind-firing trying to wrack up their kill count and their name up the leaderboards. Didn't matter if they were mowed down, if someone was next to them, they'd revive them, if they were there or they would talk to you.

You know, it always got to me how the PS3 was first griped at because it didn't come with a headset and Xbox 360 consoles all did and that PS3 gamers on PlayStation Network never used them. All I have to say to that is, "Are you serious?" As I had mentioned before I, a lot of the time, was fending for myself. If I wanted back-up, I had to RUN and catch up with the group and would get mowed down in the process. If I were holding back and everyone else were playing run and gun FPS style, I'd try and run up and help them and they'd get mowed down and die as well as I because there was no comminication and it was every man for himself. Who cares if all your consoles come with a headset if nobody is going to use them to stratagize. I find I talk with perfect strangers on PlayStation Network far more than Xbox LIVE! In the Xbox LIVE community, the philosophy is "All our consoles come with headsets, your's (PS3) don't and those who have them don't even use them. But with us, we all have headsets, but we're only going to use them when our friends are playing." This is a team based game that requires communication without it, its difficult. I was really struggling trying to ban everyone together, but everyone wanted to run out on their own and in the middle of an open field firing wildly just to get their name up the leaderboards. It doesn't work.

All things said, I can do without the competitive multiplayer I think. Maybe in Gears of War 4 as the game isn't played as it was intended. Its gone from 3rd-person action to first-person shooter. No thanks. It will be fun to play co-op with friends in 'Horde Mode' or something like that, or Team Deathmatch which friends, but the truth is that the Xbox LIVE! Community is still pretty unwilling to work together especially with a stranger. The game has lost its identity and I honestly feel like Gears of War 3 is going to be all about the singleplayer experience. There are no incentives to take cover or want to take cover. You will on occasion see other gamers playing similarly and try to ban together with them, but in the end, you're still going to get mowed down because there's no communication. However, if multiplayer graphics are any indication of the final build, its going to be one beautiful game for the Xbox 360 and can look stunning if they can work out the haze that otherwise causes a faded bland but still beautiful look and feel.

We'll see how things go throughout the Beta. New modes will surface and we'll have more to toy around with. Thankfully Epic have chosen to delay the game to polish it out. Had they released the game earlier this year or late last year, they may have fallen in the same trap they felt they had with Gears of War 2 multiplayer. I'm definitely more than willing to keep at it and give the multiplayer a shot, but as of now, it feels pretty boring, the only drive being unlocking what you can during the beta. I'm also glad I'm not he only one feeling this way.

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