Gears of War Realm

June 27th, 2006 at 1:00 pm

Gears of War Preview – Part II: The Multiplayer Experience

Posted by Patrick McCarron in

Gears of War Preview

Part II: The Multiplayer Experience

Multiplayer Gameplay Setup

So far the multiplayer gameplay is very similar to other war shooter games where it’s squad based, single respawn deathmatch. It’s the human Cog team versus the invading Locust drones, and once you die you are dead for that round unless you are lucky enough to get revived by a teammate. Your entire team spawns at once, and then all have to race to get to your desired spot as quick as possible. Your race also doesn’t seem to make any difference as far as game play, just your character obviously looks different. This is good because balance is preserved.

Once the game is completed, I’m pretty sure you’ll see your classic all for one deathmatch along with team deathmatch classics like capture the flag and various objective games. What we saw was just a small fragment of the possibilities in the final game.


The Rocket Launcher In Use


The Sniper Rifle In Use
The Streets of Serra

The game only had one level, but it was perfectly sized for the eight total players in each game. It was a street scene, with abandoned cars in the middle of the map on the street and open buildings on both sides of the street. There were only a few extra weapons in the map, a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher, which were scattered around in the center of the map. This placement of weapons created quite a few early firefights to gain control of the center area and get the weapons. But I found the weapons were not ones that would lead your team to an easy victory. The weapons were balanced out fairly well and only offset the game play slightly once someone had one in their hand. Actually in most cases, an Epic employee would announce to the other players when the weapon was picked up by someone, and this would cause the rest of us to start playing more cautious and stick to cover.


The map area from above


Closeup shot of the wrecked cars in the street
Getting used to using cover wasn’t hard at all, the use of the “All Move” button makes this process really easy and smooth to use. Epic put a lot of work into this feature of the game, and it shows. It was and continues to be their main focus of the game play, and after using it I can see why. Because it was evident that those who rushed into the fight, in most cases, wound up at the other end of someone’s gun or chainsaw because they weren’t using the cover. Cover plays an incredibly important role in the game even in multiplayer. If you don’t keep cover you will not survive for long because you become a sitting duck out in the open. This is why I recommended in Part I for all those new to Gears of War to take a spin at the training path of the single player level. It gives you lots of possible ways to test out the use of the covering system.

Taking cover in a higher building.
Getting Into The Game

Now that I’ve described how the game plays, I’ll attempt to tell you how it is to actually play it. I say attempt because the game is so fun that it is hard to capture in words. I found myself not only just playing it but cheering on my teammates and shouting out when big events happened to either me or my teammates I was spectating.


Watching the game from Spectator Mode.
After our first play session we were all itching to play the game some more after playing many of the other mediocre games on display at the show. Itching so much we went back on the last day and asked Microsoft to let us take a spin again. They gladly squeezed a few of us into another game, and we were eternally grateful for this extra opportunity. This second play session cemented our love of the game even more.Once this game ships on Emergence Day 2006, I know my friends and I will be there waiting in a party to hop on and start playing everyone. We probably wont stop for a few days, playing this game in every waking hour of our days when we’re not working. And I’m sure a lot of our readers will be joining us as well.

23 Responses to ' Gears of War Preview – Part II: The Multiplayer Experience '

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  1. Gears of War Realm - The Definitive Source for Gears of War said,
    on June 30th, 2006 at 4:34 pm

    [...] Continue on to Part II of the Gears of War Preview. [...]

  2. Nick said,
    on June 30th, 2006 at 6:45 pm

    Where’s the whole video of the session? I have a fifteen-second clip, but I need the whole thing… so bad.

  3. Patrick McCarron said,
    on June 30th, 2006 at 7:21 pm

    Sadly we don’t have any video of this. They were not allowing video, so we only have screenshots taken with our camera.

  4. zack said,
    on July 1st, 2006 at 1:26 pm

    :mrgreen: Hey, I habe a question Patrick, Can You Sneak Up On Some1 and Chainsaw them from the back or the sides or does it have to be in front of them, If you can tell me that’d be awsome!

  5. Rexx Doom said,
    on July 1st, 2006 at 1:55 pm

    Yeah I’d like to know about the chainsaw myself. Is there going to be any other cool melee style kills?:???:

  6. Fortune Wookie said,
    on July 1st, 2006 at 7:20 pm

    I LOVE GEARS OF WAR! its awsome, and i think its going to b one of the greatest games of all time, and i am not dissing halo 3, but i think gears will b better but i’ll get both :D

  7. Chris said,
    on July 1st, 2006 at 8:27 pm

    Ya i can’;t wait for this game it’s gonna ROCK… whats sad is we still haven’t seen any indoor fights … i saw a screenshot in OXM with them rittling through a couch … i can only imagine how wicked those parts of the game are gonna be… and the laser platform is gonna be awesome i sooooooo can’t wait to get a look and my hands on with it.

  8. Kokos said,
    on July 2nd, 2006 at 3:29 pm

    Thanks for this great preview guys! I was wondering if you could like put something up that we can ask questions because believe me, we have lots :)

  9. Patrick McCarron said,
    on July 3rd, 2006 at 9:48 am

    zack: you can chainsaw someone from any direction. Sneaking up behind is hard unless they aren’t paying attention to their surroundings because the chainsaw is not quiet.

    Rexx: I’m not 100% sure myself, I’ll keep in mind to find out.

    Kokos: You can ask questions here in the comments or better yet you can ask them at our new Realm Media Network forums, http://forums.realmmedia.com, where we have a Gears of War sections setup just for those purposes.

  10. zack said,
    on July 16th, 2006 at 12:10 pm

    thnx man, ive been curious about that for months and i’ve been in the official forums discussing this with every1 but we wern’t sure

  11. zack said,
    on July 16th, 2006 at 1:26 pm

    hey patrick, i was wondering wen u chainsaw them from the back or the side what kind of animation is it, like different from when you chainsaw them from the front

  12. StarborneRanger said,
    on July 22nd, 2006 at 12:34 am

    :mrgreen: Wow, great article! I am so pumped up for this game. Thanks for all the great description of multiplayer, I cannot wait to get my mits on Gears.

  13. silverfox64 said,
    on July 23rd, 2006 at 11:27 pm

    This seriously is THE GAME that’s gonna take over 360 owners lives!!! I can see it now…..people getting fired from their jobs, getting divorce’s, losing hours and hours of sleep..etc! Gears of War is gonna be nutz! Can’t wait for this game, and thnx for the cool article write up and pics!

  14. hilborn said,
    on July 25th, 2006 at 10:28 am

    :mrgreen: u guy s u r so lucky i am from the uk and i think that gow will not be out till the end of november not october like in the u.s i think they should sell the gow faceplates because all the others r crap that r in the shops multi player looks badass cant wait :p

  15. Thanks, again. said,
    on July 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 pm

    Thank you….

    Angelo likes your blog…

  16. Billabong said,
    on July 25th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

    Billabong…

    Billabong…

  17. Thank you for the link. said,
    on December 16th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

    Charlie Brown…

    Charlie Brown Says Thank You….

  18. kyle said,
    on December 31st, 2007 at 3:08 pm

    we need a new gears of war the first one is a big hit so i cant wait for the next 1:evil::shock::smile::mrgreen::sad::mad::eek:

  19. kyle said,
    on December 31st, 2007 at 3:09 pm

    :oops:

  20. kyle said,
    on December 31st, 2007 at 3:10 pm

    123 if u lik gears of war and want a second 1:twisted:

  21. kyle said,
    on December 31st, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    hit 123 if u lik gears of war

  22. kyle said,
    on December 31st, 2007 at 3:12 pm

    :twisted:

  23. kyle said,
    on December 31st, 2007 at 3:13 pm

    :mrgreen: :twisted::shock::smile::???::cool::evil::grin::oops::razz::roll::wink::cry::eek::lol::mad::sad::twisted::twisted::twisted::twisted::grin::grin::grin::grin::razz::razz::razz::smile::shock::twisted::neutral::mrgreen::cool::???::evil::grin::oops::evil::oops::razz::roll::wink::cry::eek::lol::mad::sad:

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