Gears of Corr Blimey!!!

After several weeks playing the Gears 3 beta (including the early Bulletstorm access) I think I'm finally ready to form a reasoned, thought-out opinion taking into account all positives and negatives and reaching a well-argued conclusion....

To be blunt, it's friggin' awesome.

That I enjoyed the first 2 installments of the game is fairly well displayed if you take a glance at my stats. The original game was the first title to drag me away from Halo 2 (oh those good ol' days) and I played well over 2000 games in total, making a solid group of online 'friends' and spending a significant amount of time chasing my 'Seriously' achievement. When the second title arrived I was prepared to overlook the terribly broken multiplayer aspect and still play it, even through the horrific lag situations, host balancing issues and smoke grenade diabolical. With over 1700 games played my Kill/Death ratio stands at a (slightly smug) 1.9, mainly through Guardian matches.

So it's safe to say that I'm probably Epic's target market with Gears 3. I'm actually interested in the macho fist-bumping storyline, and I do find myself slightly enamoured with the stereotypical characters. When it comes to the multiplayer however, standards are high. Epic cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the Gears 2 launch, the connections must be reliable and much fairer, the weapon balancing must be a lot more consistent and for crying out loud, no knock-down from the smoke grenades!!! The fact that a beta was on the cards at all was a step in the right direction, however the real story comes from playing the beta itself.

And all the signs for the full release are extremely encouraging. Overall the connections are much better, having dedicated servers really does make all the difference and although host advantage is still around, it's much less noticeable than before. The vast majority of the time the engine behaves itself with flinches and animations, and hit consistency is improved if still less than perfect. The new weapons are proving much more controversial, the Retro Lancer is far too accurate close range and downs people in seconds, making the original lancer feel a bit weedy in comparison. Couple the Retro's power with it's bayonet 'charge', and it's definately the weapon of choice for most people.

However the real sticking point is the new Sawn-Off shotgun. Basically it's a single-shot weapon with a huge field of range, although very limited reach. You get 4 rounds and the reload time is about 3 seconds (in Gears time, an ice age). To put it bluntly, it's a noob cannon. Sit around a corner, wait for some unsuspecting bugger to wander by, lean out and blow them away, then leg it. Experienced players are up in arms, claiming that it's massively overpowered and should be a power pick-up weapon if it remains at all, but I think that it's a balancing action by Epic. It's fair to say that most experienced Gears players are incredibly unforgiving on the newer playerbase, the SO is just a way of giving the newer players a way to fight back, albeit in a limited fashion. I'm fine with Epic trying to encourage more people charging at me out of cover....my Gnasher needs to be fed.

Apart from the beta I started my new job working for a business that provides Hosting & Connectivity solutions, so I'll be busy for the foreseeable future while I try and wrap my head around data centre infrastructure and VMWare features. Otherwise, I might try and get myself back into Dragon Age 2. God knows I've got to clear the games out before Gears 3 launches for real...