I suspect there will be a point where Microsoft games coming to us will no longer feel novel. They’ve had a busy few months with a slew of exclusive games now making their way to the blue brand. Later this summer sees Gears of War: Reloaded finally landing on a Playstation console. We were invited to check out their closed beta test. Here are my thoughts.
I’ll preface this by saying I was not an online kid during my time with the Xbox 360. Whilst I did play the single-player campaign, the multiplayer options are very new to me. So, with something of a fresh perspective, I’ll not quite have the nuances down in terms of game feel and some of the mechanics.
Thankfully, the first session was some standard Team Deathmatch. Two teams of four battle it out for kills and points for the best of three rounds. Unfortunately for me, I spent the two weekends firmly rooted at the bottom of the leaderboards. There are some experienced savages out there but I didn’t see the fabled roll and shotgun massacre I was expecting.
Before the match you can pick your player and gun skins. Everyone starts with the same assault rifle and shotgun arsenal but there are other weapons available within the maps. Each team has a set number of respawns. When that number is depleted, any deaths are final. Last team standing wins. It’s straight forward and did lead to a couple of close match-ups. Voice chat is on by default and that did allow me to overhear what some of the other invited parties thought of the package.
We saw three maps, Goldrush, Raven Down and Gridlock. All three of them stick with plenty of urban decay and the maps seemed small enough to push teams together. I was never out of the action for long and that kept the fights interesting. Team Deathmatch urges you to finish an opponent. Pumping them with lead will first down them so keeping up the pressure extinguishes them for good. On the receiving end, you have a chance to revive and I felt everyone was robust enough to take a few hits.
There’s a wealth of chest-height cover and detritus to cower behind. With these big lads, there’s always a shoulder popping out from behind the wall. Whilst I’m certain some games are still made like this, nothing really sticks to the formula like Gears of War. I always saw the single-player campaign as a series of encounters held together by helicopter rides. In that respect, the multiplayer replicates those encounters well.
The second weekend opened up King of the Hill and added three more maps. Again, these felt tight, urban and symmetrical. Easy enough to mentally orient yourself and enemies did seem to regularly get pinged on the HUD. You are almost always directed to the action. That’s a nice touch and it does force an assemblance of teamwork, even if you’re communicating explicitly.
King of the Hill is a mode about controlling positions on the map and, as a guy who struggles to bring in the kills, holding positions is more my speed. I definitely felt of some use here. It’s another mode that encourages you to roll with back-up. I felt very exposed when trying to take a control point. There’s usually two or more entry points or overlooks where bullets could come from.
It’s been a while since I’ve played Gears of War but the chunky feel of combat feels like I remember it. Everyone is built like a fridge and that carries with it a sense of resilience. Stand out too long and that dissipates but it does give some room for error. I didn’t get my hands on all the weapons but they feel reliable and punchy. Seeing someone get operating the hammer of dawn puts the fear right into me.
Performance felt stable. Obviously, a launch is going to put this under more strain but, for the time of the beta weekends, things felt smooth. I only saw a couple of instances of jittery movement and I don’t think I can blame latency for my inability to hit a target. A couple of matches took a little time to fill the lobby up. I don’t quite know if bots were plugging the gaps but cross play was in full effect. Judging by the icons in the lobby, it was mostly PC players. For the most part, getting in and out of matches felt pretty seamless.
Looking at them side-by-side, there has been some work done on this package since Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. It is not just a straight port from something that is now almost a decade old. Indeed, I think the smoke effects look great and present an impenetrable wall of smoke. It is still very married to the dreary aesthetics of mid-2000’s console shooters but, as an improved version of what came before, I think it does the job.
I’m always a little sceptical about multiplayer betas. The server load is probably a fraction of what will come at launch. As a preview of what’s to come, the combat feels as meaty as it ever was. Most of the feel seems to be there with some visual upgrades. It’s still a game with one foot in 2006 but performance felt smooth and the matchmaking seemed reliable.
Gears of War: Reloaded releases on Playstation 5 on August 26th.