Gears of War: Judgment Overrun Mode – It Just May Be Awesome [E3 2012]
When I wrote about the new multiplayer mode in Gears of War: Judgment, I initially thought it wouldn’t be something I would be into. My fear was that People Can Fly would focus too much on making a class-based multiplayer and it would take away from the true Gears of War feel.
It just seems like nowadays too many game developers want to create a game to put on the stack of multiplayer games out there so they can climb the chain to a selling point. For me the Gears series has never been about money – it’s been about telling a story. I like the idea that People Can Fly is proposing with Judgment, with the whole prequel story. I’ve wanted to know how Cole made his transition to soldier, and I’ve wanted to see what happened when Marcus got locked up, though this game doesn’t look to detail that. I just didn’t want a multiplayer overhaul to ruin what could be a great game.
After reading around and scouting out more coverage on the Overrun multiplayer mode with Judgment, I am backing away from my initial assumption. From the demos played the multiplayer doesn’t look at all like it takes away from the feel and presentation of the game. To my dismay I found out that the classes are locked in, meaning that the only way to gain access to certain weapons is playing a certain class, but it still manages to look very fun to play.
All of the true Gears mechanics are there, such as cover fire, defensive Fortifications, and weapons. You’ll just be limited in what you can do by the class you choose. The engineer is the only class with a shotgun, and the scout is the only class that can use long-range weapons. This is the only drawback I really saw in the game’s multiplayer, and it’s sad to see this is the case. Still, People Can Fly has managed to make it work and become less of an upsetting drawback.
The Locust side of multiplayer works much the same way, though instead of just choosing from a Locust class players will have to earn money and upgrade to higher tier loadouts. This is good considering that there are so many Locust types to choose from. The only downside to this is that you’re bound to get that one player who’s the top guy on the team, and they’ll run around as the highest class level, demolishing everything in sight. Still, that’s not bound to happen each match.
The game type available in the demo is an attack and defend mode where the Locust players try and detonate a generator being defended by the COG army. The Locust only have a limited time to take out the generator before the teams switch up and the COG soldiers go on the attack. This is what makes the multiplayer reminiscent of Team Fortress. The multiplayer does skip out on letting maps have multiple paths like we’re used to. This makes it a lot easier for enemies to camp and wait it out for your team, no matter which side you’re on. It gets to the point where you keep running through the same lanes over and over again, which sees you dying a lot.
I’m interested in seeing what Epic and People Can Fly will do with the final version of Overrun mode, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of the game’s single-player. If the developer can get the multiplayer tweaked out and offer a rich campaign, Judgment could be the open door to a brand new Gears storyline to explore.
