Gears Of War: Judgment’s Class-Based Multiplayer Makes Horde Mode Even Better


I’ve just finished playing Overrun, the new multiplayer mode in Epic and People Can Fly’s Gears of War: Judgment. As a fan of both Gears of War 3‘s enhanced horde mode and vicious Beast Mode, Overrun gives me exactly what I’ve been hoping for: It gives us versus mode, and lets players alternate between playing as the defending COG soldiers and the attacking Horde.

From what I saw and played, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

At a Microsoft event at E3, I played both sides of a match of Overrun. (The image up top is from Gears 3‘s Beast Mode). Overrun will feature 5-on-5 versus multiplayer, with a variety of objectives. The map I played featured the defending team trying to keep a the Locust forces from destroying a generator.

In a cool wrinkle, Overrun mode will have class-based gameplay. I played as a scout, which armed me with a sniper rifle and let me climb up to ledges to have a better vantage point. Another cool touch is that each class is a unique character from the story. The scout is a guy named Paduk, who I’m assuming is a new character in Judgment.

The other classes are: Baird is an engineer, which lets him build turrets and fortifications like in Gears 3‘s horde mode. Cole is a soldier, which lets him toss ammo crates, presumably for the other soldiers to use. Sofia is the medic, which the ability to heal other players; I didn’t see the medic abilities in action.

The classes do change up the feel of the gameplay, though I only had a chance to really try out the scout a bit.

On the horde side, things work much like they do in Beast mode. You start out with lowly locust troops, then unlock better and better characters as you do better. There’s a time limit like in Beast Mode as well, which keeps you constantly on the offensive.

The Berserker isn’t in the game — a Microsoft representative told me that it presented too many balance issues, which makes sense. Corpsers were already pretty powerful, and in my time as Horde we wound up having a bit of a corpser party on the other team.

Overrun looks like a significant evolution for Gears’ already supremely fun multiplayer. It’s the versus mode that I’ve been hoping for since Horde mode debuted in Gears of War 2, and I’m really looking forward to getting to spend some more time with it.


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