Gears of War 4 (XB1/Win 10) - The Final Achievements revealed etc (p37)

Because of that heavy reliance on multiplayer, I’m waiting until Gears of War 4 has launched to the public so I can play with all of you to test and make sure it works as well after launch as it did before. But if I had to score it now, I’d give it a 9.2, which we define as “amazing.

That serves as a microcosm for the entirety of Gears of War 4. This is a shooter teetering on the edge of something greater, but despite the improvements it makes to the storied franchise, its missteps hold it back. There is inspiration here, and creativity in the way Gears of War 4 rethinks its multiplayer modes. But the lackluster campaign and technical issues are blights on an otherwise exhilarating shooter. The result is a whole that doesn't reflect the quality of its often stellar parts.

GEARS OF WAR 4 IS A REMARKABLY COMPLETE PACKAGE.

When I was finished with Gears of War 4’s campaign, I remember wondering why it didn’t do more. The next morning, I was playing the game again, not out of obligation, but because I wanted to. Taken all together, Gears of War 4 doesn’t completely reinvent the genre, and it’s not always "bigger." But it’s a remarkably consistent, complete package with the kind of refinement and focus few other games can manage, providing excellent solo, cooperative, and competitive options that rank it as one of the best action games of 2016.

Even with a new studio leading the development charge, Gears of War 4 is a return to form for the series, and is continual delight, even if it does unnecessarily cling for dear life to the past.

The nature of Gears of War 4 is that we won't know its legacy until there are more games in the canon. That's frustrating now but it'll hopefully be exciting later. This was a fine first showing but it'd be nice to see The Coalition carve its own identity for Gears of War. Using Epic's foundation is understandable and expected, but it often feels like a crutch. Marcus' boy had grown up just like him.

The Gears of War series returns in fine form. The well-scripted and fantastic-looking campaign ends rather abruptly, but while it lasts, it's an exciting thrill ride of intense firefights and over-the-top set pieces. It can feel a little repetitive and relentless at times, but overall it's a lot of fun. The game's six-mode multiplayer PvP feels refined and well designed, and offers plenty of long-term potential, while Horde 3.0 is ideal for those who want to join friends in a long, and very challenging firefight.

Gears of War 4 is a focused, confident exercise in how to relaunch a franchise. As effective as a direct sequel as it is a soft-reboot, it’s a game crafted of thought, wisdom, and objective calculation blended with a real passion for finding the fun. It may err slightly on the safe side in its campaign, but it does so understandably, in order to strip the series back to what matters, and re-evolve it with a carefully considered outlook. A great game in its own right, the potential it implies as a launch pad for the next phase of Gears of War is just downright exciting.

Gears of War 4 represents the next level of classic Gears of War gameplay. All of the hallmarks are there – you’ve got an epic battle against an unknown threat, some absolutely gruesome weapons and a combat game entirely designed around moving in and out of cover. But what Gears of War 4 gets entirely right is moving this gameplay in a different direction – cover is no longer a lazy crutch – and the way that Gears of War 4 is designed is in a way that keeps players moving from cover to cover. New and almost gravity-defying weapons, more aggressive enemy intelligence and dynamic environments in windflares and constantly shifting cover spots keeps Gears of War 4’s classic combat fast and fresh.

Although there are perhaps a few things that Gears of War 4 does that’s narratively almost too safe. For starters, it’s clearly setting up a new trilogy of events with the advent of the Swarm enemy, but in the process it perhaps steps a little bit too close to the original game’s storyline. There’s no discernible villain figure, everything is really just being set up and the cliffhanger ending is going to leave everyone wanting more. But these are all minor issues in an otherwise very exhaustive and complete package and a truly worthy successor to Gears of War 3.

Gears of War 4 looked at the series’ core formula and figured that if it wasn’t broken, don’t fix it. Most of the additions The Coalition put onto that core simply helped enhance and refine something that was already great. A couple of missteps were made, but this is still a great overall entry in the franchise.

Rather than a reboot, Gears Of War 4 is more of a restatement of what has gone before. An attempt to bring everyone up to speed and prove that the original gameplay and plotlines deserve to continue. In that the sense the game is a success, but it looks like it’ll be Gears Of War 5 before we see anything genuinely new. So for now, genuinely good will have to do instead.

That’s what Gears of War 4 is all about: bombast, spectacle, explosions, blood, guts and carnage; not so much strumming on your heartstrings as stomping up and down on them. It might not be agile, but it’s pretty, it’s clever, it’s honest, and it’s a ton of fun.

Gears of War 4 is exactly what you've come to expect a Gears of War game to be over the years -- an impressive visual showcase in the campaign, with the accompanying competitive and cooperative modes to keep you busy long after the credits roll. Its good to finally see a new Gears of War game on the Xbox One. The wait has been long for Gears of War 4, and now we've seen that the wait has been worth it.

Incredible: Gears of War 4 is one of the best shooters out there, with an exhilarating campaign, the most competitive and social Versus Multiplayer so far, and a cooperative Horde experience that puts the player back in control with emergent gameplay. With a fantastic PC version with several settings to change and tweak to your liking, along with Xbox Play Anywhere features, Gears of War 4 remains a great experience, regardless of the platform you play it on. Additionally, the new enemies and bosses allow for some tense moments, while the narrative is dark and gripping. Gears of War 4 is tense, mysterious, heavy, brutal, and intimate all-round, and The Coalition has delivered an experience that lives up to the famed legacy of Marcus Fenix.

Gears of War 4 doesn’t reinvent the formula but it definitely brings enough improvements without changing the core feel of Gears. With stellar production values, incredible action, series’ best multiplayer, engaging new characters, and an introductory story that should satisfy new players and returning fans alike, Gears of War 4 may just be your new favorite Gears game. It’s certainly mine.

As a big Gears of War fan, I can honestly say this is the best entry in the series. While the campaign isn't my favourite it still has a lot of character, the graphics are unmatched, the new Horde mode is fantastic, and it is all around one heck of a good time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to curb-stomping locust scum as ‘modern day Fred Durst look-a-like’ Marcus Fenix.

A superbly entertaining and gorgeous joyride

Prepare for battle: If you’re used to the old Horde modes you may be tempted to hurtle through the menus and lobby as quickly as possible to get started, but there are a few extra steps in Horde 3.0. First pick the class that best suits your play style (bottom left option in the lobby screen); next assign a skill in the one skill slot you have unlocked to start (bottom middle of the screen); lastly choose a bounty (bottom right) to help you level up.

There are five classes: engineer, heavy, scout, sniper, and soldier. Experiment at first to discover which you like (we’ll go in-depth on them in the next section) but it’s advisable to ultimately pick one and stick with it for a while, because leveling them up — crucial to be able to equip more skills — is excruciatingly slow. Probably best to have at least 1 Scout & Engineer on each team.

Place your fabricator wisely: Horde 3.0 revolves around the fabricator, where you build defenses, purchase new guns and revive teammates. Place it carefully on each map in a spot that’s both defensible and escapable. Your defenses are invaluable in many situations, but don’t expect your fortifications to hold through the toughest waves (especially boss waves). You want long sight-lines and lots of cover, but also multiple approaches so you can bail if your team becomes overwhelmed.

Let your scout pick up the power: Scouts gets at least double the credits of any other class. Power has nothing to do with the points you earn personally, outside of maybe getting a little ribbon at the end of a round.

Leave one enemy alive: All pickups, such as energy for your fabricator, ammo, and weapons, disappear at the start of each new round. As the waves intensify, you and your teammates will often find yourselves scrambling to pick up these valuable resources during the 30 seconds in between waves. Rather than running around and getting caught off-guard, keep one weak enemy alive near the end of a round so you can scavenge without a time limit.

Don’t always revive teammates: If your teammates are knocked down, always try to pick them up. If they’re killed outright you can bring them back to life by picking up their COG tags from where they fell and bringing them back to the fabricator. Bringing teammates back from the dead can be costly, though, and energy is precious. If a wave is almost over consider toughing it out without them.

Mark your enemies: Click the left thumbstick while pointing at enemies to mark them for teammates to see. This can help to point out strong enemies on the field, plus give players using the “heavy” class a damage bonus against them if they have the right skill equipped. Scouts can mark multiple enemies at a time (again, with the corresponding skill on). You can also mark weapons that are on the ground.

Save the big guns for the boss: In “Horde 3.0,” every tenth wave is a boss fight. Use weapon lockers (crafted using the fabricator) to store and recharge ammo for heavy weapons like the mulcher and tri-shot, and pull them out on boss waves. It’s OK to use them other times too, as the normal enemy waves get pretty intense — just make sure you have power weapons (and turrets) ready for every tenth wave.

Modifiers make it harder: After every boss wave a new modifier is added — first enemies get double health, then they become twice as accurate, then the damage each player takes gets doubled. Keep that in mind as you progress.

Use turrets: We have a whole section on building defenses later on, but there’s one essential thing about them that it couldn’t wait. Stationary turrets — the manned ones, not the auto sentries — will save your butts on higher waves. Make two or three and arrange them so they can see enemies coming from a mile away and cover one another’s flanks, but won’t all be destroyed by one unfortunate explosion.

Revive your teammates: When you see someone go down, make a beeline to revive them unless they're prohibitively surrounded by enemies, that's just good manners. If you don't reach them in time, you can still grab their tags and bring them to the Fabricator to respawn them. Be aware that this does cost your team some Power, however, so if you're near the end of a wave and you think those still alive should have no problem closing it out, just hold off, the dead ally will return next wave at no penalty. And don't take it too personally if that happens to you, sometimes it's the right move.

Play with friends: Lastly and most importantly, play Horde 3.0 with friends. Succeeding, especially on higher difficulties, requires communication and teamwork that can’t generally be accomplished by five strangers without mics. If you don’t have friends, make some. Find a community online or even hop into matchmaking and invite whoever you get matched with to a chat party. If they don’t join, quit and try again! It’s that important.

There are five classes in Gears of War 4’s “Horde 3.0.” Though none of them stray too far from Gears’ core running and gunning — there’s no medic, for example — each has its own strengths. There are definite advantages to planning your team makeup carefully, and you’ll want to consider each class’s fortes before diving in.

Soldier: The soldier is the class for players who don’t really want to deal with the class system. It’s the one that lets you play basically how you’d play if there was no class system — using whatever weapons you want, basically not changing your behavior at all. The soldier’s skills include things like extra ammo capacity, extra damage for grenades and assault rifles (like the lancer and hammerburst), and extra damage protection while in cover.

Assault Rifle Damage - +10% Lancer/Retro/Hammerburst damage, with an additional 10% per skill level
These guns are the workhorse weapons and have high fire rates, a 110%+ damage output adds up to a lot of extra damage.
Active Reload Boost - +20% Active Reload bonus, additional 20% per skill level
This applies to all weapons. Pretty huge if you're reliable with active reloads, especially stacked with the above skill. Make sure you empty the clip for maximum effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEoCo0012GY

Sniper: The sniper is self-explanatory: if you like popping heads with the embar and longshot, the sniper is for you. Snipers can get extra headshot damage, extra ammo for precision rifles, and the ability to mark more enemies at a time, plus the ability to make enemies explode with headshots (at least for lucky players who get that rare skill card; more on that later).

Headshot Damage - +20 damage from headshots, additional 20% per skill level
You gonna be a sniper, you better be good at headshots. You should clean up with this skill.
Explosive Headshots - 75% explosion damage to nearby enemies when one is killed by headshot, additional 75% per skill level
Stack with the previous skill and it's gonna be pretty devastating. Keep in mind that the cards for this skill are very rare, though, so it's going to be very slow going to level it up, or even obtain it in the first place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deiJEkoMa9o

Engineer: Although any team member can craft fortifications at the fabricator, your team should rely on the engineer to do so most of the time. This class gets discounts when building and can create stronger defenses, with better health and higher rates of fire for turrets. The engineer also spawns with an essential tool: a repair gun that can heal barriers and turrets, and replenish turrets’ ammo. Other players can buy the repair gun from the fabricator, but it’s expensive and that energy is best spent elsewhere, with repairs left to the engineer.

Repair Boost - 20% cheaper and faster defense healing with the Repair tool, additional 20% per skill level
As Engineer, job #1 is maintaining the health and ammo of your teams's defenses, you're the only one that can. Being able to do it cheaper and quicker is a no-brainer.
Turret Health - 20% additional health for manned turrets, additional 20% per level
Manned turrets are god-tier defenses, and they're really expensive to replace if they get destroyed. Make sure they can withstand a beating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7Q0n9CAU0Q

Heavy: The heavy is an expert in heavy weapons, including boomshots, mulchers and everything else that makes a big explosion or chews through Swarm flesh like bloody popcorn. This class gets better damage and reload speed on these weapons, plus special abilities like a mortar strike — if you’re lucky enough to get the rare skill card.

Marked Damage - 10% bonus damage on marked targets, additional 10% per level
A damage boost for any weapon so long as the target is marked. Another no-brainer and stacks well with the Heavy's more weapon-specific skills.
Turret Damage - 10% bonus damage from the manned turret, additional 10% per level
It's hard to pick between the various weapon bonuses the Heavy can get, but I feel the turret one pays the most dividends assuming the team can maintain turrets well. Their damage output is already insane and they can pick enemies off from long distance much more effectively than the other power weapons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwTneGfjjDk

Scout: The scout is the trickiest class to play, but also one of the most essential, particularly for teams who plan to tackle all 50 waves on higher difficulties. The scout gets a bonus when depositing energy from fallen foes into the fabricator, which means this player spends most of their time running around behind enemy lines picking up energy and trying not to get killed. To help they get more health and faster movement, plus the abilities to regain health from shotgun and melee hits and see enemies through walls.

Deposit Bonus - 10% additional power when depositing at the Fabricator, additional 10% per level
Equip this skill and tell everyone else to kindly f*** off from gathering power, and your team's war chest will be so much better for it.
Shotgun Damage - 20% bonus damage with the Gnasher and Overkill, additional 20% per level
What is best in Gears? To shotty your enemies and hear the lamentations of their gibs. Now you can do that even faster and more effectively! Really devastating with the Overkill's rapid fire. (Probably better to use the Health Boost skill if you're playing Hardcore or Insane, though, as getting close to enemies is a big liability there.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxYu4g-FdCY

Defenses are the other new addition to Horde 3.0, and learning their ins and outs is essential to success. Some types are more useful than others, but several different options will come into play during almost any Horde round. Be careful, though, because enemies will target and destroy your defenses if you let them.

Each fortification comes in multiple strengths, depending on the level of your fabricator, which levels up as you buy things from it. A barrier purchased from a level 3 fabricator, for example, becomes a level 3 barrier — it costs more, but is much stronger. Also, once your fabricator levels up you can pick up older fortifications around the map and upgrade them for a cost.

Barrier: Barriers slow enemies that walk over them and slowly take damage as your foes struggle to free themselves. Weaker enemies will often die outright when caught on a barrier. Barriers are useful when placed in choke points, but they’re easily destroyed as well.

Decoy: Decoys distract enemies and can take some of the heat off you and your teammates during waves where the sheer number of opponents can be overwhelming. They’re best placed near more valuable fortifications, like turrets and weapon lockers, to keep enemies from destroying your other defenses, or inside kill lanes where you’ve set up turrets to chew threw foes.

Machine gun sentry: Machine gun sentries are automatic turrets that detect and shoot at enemies within a certain radius in front of them. They’re great for watching stairs and choke points, particularly when paired with a barrier.

Shock sentry: Shock sentries have a more narrow field of view than machine gun turret and they slow enemies instead of damaging them.

Turret: Unlike sentries, turrets must be manned — a player takes the reigns and aims, holds the trigger down, and unleashes hellfire on every enemy in sight. Turrets are probably the single most valuable fortification you can build, as they absolutely shred most enemies. They’re easily overtaken since they’re stationary, but with the right defensive arrays they’re essential. They are often what will keep your team going through wave 50.

Weapon locker: Weapon lockers are also highly valuable. Weapons you store in them automatically and freely regenerate ammunition — so you grab a power weapon off the field, use almost all its ammo, then stick it in a locker for a round. That way you get a constantly rotating arsenal of heavy weapons. Upgrading the lockers even lets you store more than one weapon on each.

Surprisingly, the Gears of War 4‘s new microtransaction system may be the most complex, intimidating new aspect of Horde mode. It’s actually simpler than it seems, though, and can be less intrusive — as long as you don’t mind advancing a little more slowly than those who cough up cash. No doubt this will prove a contentious point, but there are ways to navigate the card system one way or the other.

You can spend either real money or credits earned in-game on booster packs that contain a random assortment of cards. They’re pretty cheap, and the credits earned in-game seem to arrive at a steady clip, at least for the first several hours of playing. Once you have cards you can equip them, use duplicates to upgrade them, or dismantle them to earn “scrap,” which you can then use to craft specific cards.

These packs are divided by mode. For now we’ll talk about just the Horde booster pack cards, which contain both bounty and skill cards.

Skill cards: These cards allow you to equip class-specific abilities that provide your class’ unique strengths. A soldier, for example, can use “assault rifle damage” and “cover boost” (extra armor while in cover) cards. As we mentioned before, the Heavy can equip a card that makes them do more damage against marked enemies.

You have to pick and choose which to equip, especially early on when your skill card slots are limited. The classes don’t have these abilities naturally, but gain them when you equip the corresponding card, so picking the right ones is just as important as picking the class itself.

Bounty cards: These cards give you experience or credits for completing certain tasks, like beating wave 20 on hardcore difficulty or getting 100 kills with assault rifles. You equip them before the game starts, in the bottom right corner card slot. Pretty self-explanatory, and essential for leveling up, which, again, is a shockingly slow process.

Often after a lengthy Horde session you’ll head back to the menu and see you’ve earned enough credit to grab a new card pack, which is just icing at that point. Otherwise, if you have lots of cash and nothing better to spend it on, just buy as many as you want. You’ll get the bounties to level up your classes more quickly (which you’ll be very happy about) and the skills to beat wave 50, which even on normal difficulty is a serious challenge.

Here’s the best advice for “Horde 3.0:” keep trying. Even through failing you learn and improve, both in your skills as a player and within the class you’re playing as. Maybe unlocking a new skill slot for your heavy and getting a few more points of damage with turrets is all you need to win, or maybe you just need to stay up all night banging your collective heads against waves 48, 49 and 50 just to say you did it.
Either way, have fun.