Gears of War 3 Horde Mode 2.0 (Epic adds tower defense)

Epic games wants to provide the best single player and multiplayer experience for Gears of War 3. The campaign can now be played with four players cooperatively, where in the previous Gears of Wars, it was only two. A new game mode has been added to multiplayer where players can take control of the locust horde. And lastly, Horde mode has been revamped considerably.

In Gears of War 2, horde mode consisted of 50 waves of enemies. Each wave would get increasingly difficult. After every 10 waves, it would start over to easier enemies, but they would be upgraded with either more health, better accuracy, or more damage. In Gears of War 3 Horde mode 2.0, there will now be boss fights, a currency system, and a tower defense system.

The currency system will allow you to buy new tools such as barriers, decoys, sentry guns, and manned turrets. These will help you fight against the increasingly difficult waves of the locust horde. The tools will have upgrade tiers. For example, you can upgrade a spiked barrier into an improved laser barrier. Each tool will able to be upgraded three times.

Players will be able pool their cash together and buy expensive things like a mech armed with dual chain guns and rocket launchers. This will add a lot of teamwork to Gears of War 3's horde mode, where previously, it was mostly just covering each other. Now, there will be a lot more strategy involved, such as gifting money to other players if their short on cash or combining cash to buy better things.

Players can also complete special challenges if they find they are short on cash. Special challenges will occur every fourth wave. Completing these secondary objectives will earn you more cash to help your team mates out. These tasks, however, will not be easy to complete. Some of these may require you to kill a certain amount of locusts with chainsaws or dispatch a number of enemies with headshots.

The boss fights in Horde Mode 2.0 will occur every tenth wave and each boss encounter will be random. This will add a lot of variety as you'll never know what type of enemy boss you will fight, whether it be a brumak or a berserker for example.

Epic games seems to have outdone themselves with the list of new features in Horde mode 2.0. Let's just hope it's exciting as it sounds when Gears of War 3 releases on September 20th 2011!