Gears of War: Judgement

W8taminute · March 17, 2013, 08:55:05 PM

I got my code from Gamestop to DL the multiplayer demo for GoW: Judgement this weekend. Fired up tonight and played a couple of rounds and I must say the OverRun mode seems like a lot of fun to play. It is the only mode available in the demo.

The press has talked about how the OverRun mode is a merger of Horde and Beast modes but I'm not entirely sure I agree. Yes you play as either the COG or the Locust and alternate sides every few rounds until the match is over but the game is not played out in waves. It's more complete a few rounds and win or lose switch sides and try again.

The basic premise of OverRun is to either keep the E-Hole plugged if your the COG or attempt to destroy the E-Hole plug as the Locust. If the E-Hole plug is destroyed that section of the map changes control over to the Locust. Push back the COG far enough and the match is won.

I played on the Skyline Map. I'm not sure if other maps are available. I had a lot of fun. At the beginning of the round you choose what class you will play as. For the COG there is Soldier, Scout, Engineer, and Medic. For the Locust you can play as any of the famous beasts like Tickers, Wretches, Kantus, Grenadier, etc. Each of these types serves a purpose. Kantus/Medic heal people, Grenadiers/Soldiers grenade as well as shoot people, Tickers destroy structures whilst Engineers repair and build them.

Overall I'm psyched and can't wait to play the full game. Too bad we're expecting a major snowstorm on release day. :'(

Here are some screenies for you:

Class selection screen. Here is when I switched over to the COG. Sorry about the flash glare, did not have time to shut it off before the screen changed.

The Locust start from the left on this map near the red E-Hole icon. The COG must protect the E-Hole plug near the Greenhouse area on the map.

Grimnirsson · March 18, 2013, 06:12:05 AM

Good to hear you liked what you played :)

And that there are over 20 reviews online before the game comes out means they are confident regarding the quality of their game - good sign and much appreciated in these days of the silly review embargos on almost any game that is published.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/gears-of-war-judgment/critic-reviews

Grimnirsson · March 21, 2013, 06:52:10 AM

After having played now through several matches of both Survival and OverRun I have to say it's fun.

But it's only fun if you have a team of players who know their classes and actually support the team as a whole instead of running around looking for the next kill. There's some room for experiments here, we had a game with 5 Engineers who were making the match a tough nut to crack for the enemies. Engineers and to a lesser degree Soldiers are the only classes I think that are able to make a one-class-only-team workable. Engineers don't have to rely on the ammo boxes tossed out by Soldiers because they can always use their devastating turret for firepower while keeping up the barricades. Soldiers can't repair the barricades but have a high damage weapon to keep the enemies at bay and they will never run out of ammo. Scouts and Medics are not able to build a team on their own and survive long, since they neither can repair, nor do they have that much firepower and they constantly need ammo to be part of the fight. So having a mixed team, with one medic and one scout at the max (having more does not mean to have more advantages) is the best way to hold out long enough to win.

There are interesting ways of the various classes to interact with each other. If you see an Engineer who is repairing a fence and you are a Soldier, toss the ammo grenade right at his feet because as long as he is standing within the circle he doesn't have to reload his repair tool and can repair for a longer time and that safes precious seconds to perhaps get the barricade back to fully repaired status. Two Engineers can actually block one side of a map completely by constantly repairing and setting up one turret while the other one cools down so there's always one up and shooting. Medics and Scouts should stay back and run around to use their ability on the battlefield, their firepower is only needed while the abilities cool down. To have a Medic and a Scout who watch their team and toss out the spot and stim gas grenades can make a huge difference for the match. Always knowing where the enemy is and what sort of Locust is coming next helps a lot to know where to go and what to do first. Having no Medic around (or one who does not play as a Medic first and as a fighter second) means to lose time when one goes down waiting for the respawn and that can mean victory or defeat.

The Maps are nice and have some cool backdoor ways for the Ticker, so the Ticker is much more important here than it is in Beast Mode. I like to spam Tickers in the first minutes of a match to destroy fences in the second line of the COG barricades so that when the first line goes down the bigger dudes often can rush right to the objective. That gives me enough points to come back as a Serapede to spit and attack and do a lot of damage to the objective. Tickers are great in the end game of a round too - sneak in and then dash through the COGs (the dash ability makes the Ticker even faster and hard to hit) who try to shoot and stop you and explode at the objective - that can mean 20% damage to the E-Hole or Generator. The only thing that can stop a dashing Ticker is an Engineer turret. The Mauler with his new shield spin ability is also great to bring down barricades while being almost invulnerable, being supported by a Kantus turns him into an unstoppable Juggernaut.

So I see many cool ways to play with the various classes on both sides, COG and Locust and while not a replacement for the great Horde Mode OverRun is a great mode on its own. Survival on the other hand is just OverRun in hectic and is even more unforgiving so a team of players not knowing what to do with their classes and/or a team of unbalanced classes will have no chance at all. The default difficulty of Survival is Hardcore when you hop into a quick match and that's really tough. Usually the AI team sends a corpser or two in the last round and that is a Locust extremely hard to stop, since the Corpser can do a lot of damage, can take a lot of damage and is not hindered by barricades - that means a battle you fought well until the last waves will go down quickly with a fail message popping up on your screen. That feels a bit cheap sometimes but of course this sort of frustration is also the source of motivation to try it again.

Conclusion: for me as a Horde player (did I mention that I usually suck at the MP? ;)) Judgment is a great add on, more maps (but of course not enough - 4 is just lame), more modes, quicker modes (sometimes 50 rounds of Horde is too long and here the quicker matches are nice to have) and different tactics and strategies I can try out. It will not replace Horde though and I hope they bring out a Horde 3.0 with a later DLC. The campaign does not have the same epic feeling the other GoW campaigns had but with this arcade style approach I consider it more as an additional coop horde like mode so overall good bang for my bucks :)

W8taminute · March 21, 2013, 05:23:16 PM

Excellent analysis Grimnirsson. I suggest the mods sticky that post because there is a lot of useful strategies in there. I'm in agreement with you in that Survival and OverRun are two great modes to play with friends or even with strangers who know what they are doing. Those two modes really shine in that they promote teamwork. Solo running and gunning does not help the team and only leads to inevitable defeat.

I find that as a Grenadier, if I hang back and time my grenade tosses I can support my team mates much better who are duking it out on the frontline. Grenade blasts take out the COG but do no damage as far as I can tell against your team mates. The Grenadier also excels at providing medium range fire support with his Lancer.

The Kantus Shaman has a lot of firepower in his Hammerburst assault rifle but where he really helps is when he heals his team from afar. Say you have several Grenadiers mixing it up in close range fights with COG. If the Kantus provides his long range healing the Grenadiers are invulnerable for a short period of time. You can image how fast they can clear an area if they can't die. ;)

I wish there were more maps included in the base game but I have a feeling more will come via DLC. After all it's all about making money right? It would be nice if they also made Horde and Beast modes come back in the form of a DLC as well. We'll see.

Grimnirsson · March 22, 2013, 06:51:56 AM

Thanks :)

QuoteSolo running and gunning does not help the team and only leads to inevitable defeat.

Yesterday Hiimori and I were in a match and we had a medic who was constantly at the frontline so he was either busy fighting, or dead - both situations didn't allow him to heal his team mates. Quite frustrating if you lay on the ground and the message on the screen says 'Medic available' and you just lay there bleeding out and waiting for the respawn. We find it much more useful to have bots in our team than human players who don't know how to play...

Do you already have a favorite class to specialize in the game? I am an Engineer and Hiimori is playing as a Soldier (of course we both play the other classes as well if we see it's necessary. Doesn't make sense in a small 5 player team to stick to your favorite class if that is actually weakening the team as a whole).

QuoteI find that as a Grenadier, if I hang back and time my grenade tosses I can support my team mates much better who are duking it out on the frontline. Grenade blasts take out the COG but do no damage as far as I can tell against your team mates. The Grenadier also excels at providing medium range fire support with his Lancer.

Absolutely, the Grenadier is a very flexible class and perhaps the most important class for exact this reason. He can as you say provide medium range fire support, can also go in close quarter battle with the Gnasher and most importantly can damage objectives even if all barricades are still up. Usually there are some places on the maps from where you can toss a nade over the fences and the heads of the enemies right on the E-Hole or Generator. I have brought down a Generator recently with grenades only. The COG team were 4 Engineers and a Soldier and we couldn't bring down their fences so I switched to Grenadier and while being in cover throwed the nades over to them. There was nothing they could do about it and their only chance was to come out and get me which for some reason they didn't. So my team mates realizing that the nades were the best and in fact only option for us also switched to Grenadiers and we 'played Arty' from both sides of the map and my grenade was the last one that blew up the Generator. :)

QuoteI wish there were more maps included in the base game but I have a feeling more will come via DLC.

In April the first DLC will be released and it will bring two new maps and Execution mode and it will be free. I hope though that both maps can be played in all modes otherwise it would mean we get only one map for Coop and one for MP. Especially after GoW3 with all the DLC giving us a ton of maps for all modes GoWJ is diappointing in this regard.

QuoteAfter all it's all about making money right?

That's my main complaint actually. In GoWJ most of the stuff is there for you to buy instead of being part of the leveling up. The game doesn't provide much content anyway when it comes to skins, characters, weapons etc. and that you can't get all of it by just playing the game is a hard slap in the face of us gamers. If the game costs 20 bucks then perhaps it's ok to have so many microtransactions in the game. If a game is free to play it's perfectly ok to have it in there. But for a normal full price 60 Dollar title it's only acceptable if you don't have to shill out more cash to unlock everything in the game. And here that's not possible, the majority of stuff must be bought and come on...a character skin for 320 MS points, a lousy weapon skin for 240 MS points? You know what Epic? Shove it up your @$$ and have a nice day.

Btw these skins don't even make much sense because by using them you suffer a disadvantage on the battlefield. All these glowing skeleton skins etc. are just a way to say 'Hey! Shoot ME!'

Of course this is only relevant for the MP side of things which is just a nice change for us once in a while, Gears for us means campaign/coop and that doesn't change with Judgment :)

W8taminute · March 22, 2013, 10:27:58 AM

QuoteDo you already have a favorite class to specialize in the game?

I'm sort of a Jack of All Trades but if I have to place an order on who I usually play it would be:

Soldier
Medic
Engineer
Scout

If we get together I would be willing to play any class you and Hiimori would need me to be. I fully understand what each role should be doing but I must admit, my Scouting skills are limited. I need more practice as a Scout.

What I love to do with the Medic is provide medium to long range supporting fire. I also pay attention to my mates, if I see the medical icon flashing over a player I run to his location and give him a dose of my healing spray. In fact I find that it can be fun just running around looking for team mates to heal. Very rarely do I take my Medic up real close with her Saw-off Shotty. I only do that when the situation is desperate!

The Engineer. Love him too. Yesterday I was playing a Private OverRun match with bots on Skyline. The COG was pushed back to the second E-Hole plug. I was manning the Troika overlooking the right side and alternated between the Troika and my Sentry cannon. What a blast! Usually however in a game with human team mates I use the Engineer in his intended role. Fixing barricades and setting up Sentries at the precise moment they're needed.

QuoteYou know what Epic? Shove it up your @$$ and have a nice day.

I fully agree with you my friend and could not have said it better myself! :) I think it is a joke that the player is forced to buy 80% of the weapon skins and almost 100% of the character outfit skins. I'm sorry but that is pure BS. I already paid 60 for this game like you mentioned, why must I pay more for a great majority of these items that should be awarded to the player after leveling up or unlocking them somehow.

Campaign story: Even at Hardcore difficulty I'm finding that playing the campaign is not really that hard. It's also far easier to find the COG Tags in this game then in any of the previous versions. I suspect they dumbed down the story mode difficulty to appeal to a wider audience? ???

Grimnirsson · March 22, 2013, 11:42:28 AM

QuoteIf we get together I would be willing to play any class you and Hiimori would need me to be. I fully understand what each role should be doing but I must admit, my Scouting skills are limited. I need more practice as a Scout.

Yeah, would be cool if we could have some matches together :)
Well, that would certainly make you the perfect third man if you fill out the Medic role ;)

Seriously, we are all new to this game and we could also split it up a bit, say practice private matches with us and the bots where we all rotate freely through the classes to see how to play them best (I also only have deeper experience with Engineer and Soldier so far) or to experiment like what can 3 medics do etc. and standard/ranked matches where we play the classes we know best.

QuoteWhat I love to do with the Medic is provide medium to long range supporting fire. I also pay attention to my mates, if I see the medical icon flashing over a player I run to his location and give him a dose of my healing spray. In fact I find that it can be fun just running around looking for team mates to heal

What's essential to learn (I have to learn that myself) is to really throw the nades pinpoint because this way there's less running around losing time. I had a game with someone who was extremely precise with the healing nade and I often found myself standing in the healing circle without ever seeing the guy who tossed it. So a Medic who has the overview, can throw the healing stuff over to the one who is in need without moving much has more room for taking part in the battle. Same goes for Soldier and Scout of course.

QuoteThe Engineer. Love him too. Yesterday I was playing a Private OverRun match with bots on Skyline. The COG was pushed back to the second E-Hole plug. I was manning the Troika overlooking the right side and alternated between the Troika and my Sentry cannon. What a blast! Usually however in a game with human team mates I use the Engineer in his intended role. Fixing barricades and setting up Sentries at the precise moment they're needed.

Well, in my experience the Engineer's role is relative. In the first rounds as long as there are barricades up that should be his main concern above all else and his turret should be there to protect him while he's repairing. Even going down because of standing in the fire is acceptable to me because I can come back respawning or in the ideal case will be up automatically due to the Medic anyway. A fence however that's gone is gone for good. But in the later parts of a round if there are no fences up anymore or just those that don't slow down the enemies I use my Engineer as a combat Engineer. Running to the starting points of the Locust and setting my turret up right there helps a lot to pin them down immediately while I stay back a little in cover to slow them in the cool down phase until my turret is available again. This way I slowly retreat to the objective and that's almost as good as having the fences up.

QuoteCampaign story: Even at Hardcore difficulty I'm finding that playing the campaign is not really that hard. It's also far easier to find the COG Tags in this game then in any of the previous versions. I suspect they dumbed down the story mode difficulty to appeal to a wider audience?

Interesting, we started the campaign on normal, not activating the declassified missions (that's for a later walk through to get the most time-wise out of the short campaign) and found they were more challenging than the Locust in the older Gears games on normal (we later always played on hardcore). And regarding your thoughts on dumbed down it was actually said by Cliff B. that Judgment is there to bring back the old meaning of difficult in the term difficulty:

Quote"We've softened games too much," the Gears of War developer said. "That's the reason why people love Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Unless you play Judgement on Casual difficulty, you're going to die a lot."

Of course Judgment is in no way Dark Souls, a game btw that I don't think is difficult at all but just unforgiving if you rush and make mistakes. Since you have perfect control of your character in combat you only die if you are careless.

W8taminute · March 22, 2013, 01:21:01 PM

QuoteWell, that would certainly make you the perfect third man if you fill out the Medic role :)

Then it's settled. If we're playing against/with other humans I'll take the Medic role while you guys be the Soldier and Engineer. As for private matches vs. bots...

QuoteWhat's essential to learn (I have to learn that myself) is to really throw the nades pinpoint because this way there's less running around losing time. I had a game with someone who was extremely precise with the healing nade and I often found myself standing in the healing circle without ever seeing the guy who tossed it. So a Medic who has the overview, can throw the healing stuff over to the one who is in need without moving much has more room for taking part in the battle. Same goes for Soldier and Scout of course.

...and...

QuoteSeriously, we are all new to this game and we could also split it up a bit, say practice private matches with us and the bots where we all rotate freely through the classes to see how to play them best (I also only have deeper experience with Engineer and Soldier so far) or to experiment like what can 3 medics do etc. and standard/ranked matches where we play the classes we know best.

I will practice on my Medicinal nade throwing. Good idea. Also I think you are right in practicing together in private bot matches with the different classes but reverting to our specialties when it comes to playing humans.

Interesting comment by Cliff B regarding difficulty. I'm finding that there are far less moments in Judgement's campaign where I'm dying so much I throw the controller away. The other Gears games had some very tough chapters at Hardcore level and it took me a while to get past them. In Judgement, I've only played Baird's and Sofia's testimonies. Two of the 8 sections in Baird's testimony were tough and I died a lot but once I figured out to not be a foolish rusher I was ok. In Sofia's 6 sections I only had a hard time on the one section where you must escort the robot out of the final room in the academy. Again once I started to play patiently I did better.

In general I now try to play the medium to long range battle and take my time with the campaign. Only when I know there is a single enemy alone will I rush up to him and hit him with shotgun fire. The sections where you must prepare to defend against several waves of Locusts can be easy too because you have some time before the wave begins to plant nades near the E-holes. Once they Locust attack begins they lose a lot of men at the E-holes due to my grenades.