Three lumberjacks converge on the tree simultaneously. As if racing to see who can chop it down first, each man revs his chainsaw and engages the specimen.

BRAWNGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!

The trio obliterates the trunk into a million useless chips.

Timber!

One turns to the other two and shouts, “Woo!” while another expresses his machismo with an enthusiastic “Sh*t yeah!”

As you’ve already guessed, these guys aren’t lumberjacks and the “tree” actually used to walk around on two legs and sport a hideous monster mug — it was a Locust Drone who deserved his three-man saw-bang fate. Bummer, then, that these amigos will have to rely on more
than just Locust deforestation-via-Lancer to combat the incoming, towering Brumak.

Welcome to Wave 40 of Gears of War 3’s insanely revamped Horde 2.0 mode. To say we’re knee-deep in it doesn’t begin to tell the story. You have no idea what’s waiting for you in the biggest Xbox 360 game of 2011…

Putting the “Fence” in Defense

The Drydock isn’t the worst place to engage over four-dozen waves of Locust uglies. With each of its four cardinal-direction zones suitable to hole up in and prepare for battle — the north and south ends are on ground level, while the east/west base sites are up on elevated platforms connected by a bridge — we’ve got plenty of options for fortifying our defenses and loads of shipping containers to take cover behind. We choose the west zone up on one end of the bridge, pressing Y to designate it as our base. With that critical decision out of the way, all our team has to decide now is how to spend our initial allocation of money. Buy a turret? Throw down some defensive spike strips along the ground? Toss up a decoy?

Wait, bases? Buying turrets? Yup. See, in Gears 2’s original Horde mode, Epic says, user data and feedback indicated that teams tended to create their own makeshift bases by picking the most secure pockets of the maps they could find and letting planet Sera’s Locust denizens come to them. So for Horde 2.0 in Gears 3, the developers fleshed out the fans’ desired play-style and built the game around it. The result is a cash-driven Horde economy that adds a healthy dose of tower-defense gameplay to the flesh-shredding, sawed-off shotgun–blasting third-person carnage you’ve grown accustomed to over the series’ first five years.

Don’t panic, Gears purists: it’s actually quite simple and melds seamlessly with the gameplay. For every kill or assist you get (pro tip: if you tag an enemy by aiming at them and clicking the left stick, you’ll earn money when they’re killed, even if you didn’t personally score the frag), you’ll pocket some coin, which is denoted by a simple-but-addictive ringing-cash-register sound. You’ll also bring home the Benjamins by completing randomly assigned bonus objectives, like completing the wave in a certain amount of time or chainsawing or executing a certain number of Locust during a round.

Your hard-earned scratch is then used not only to fortify your base, but also upgrade it. The aforementioned ground-spike barrier is only level one. Additional money will turn those spikes into barbed wire, then an electric fence, and ultimately a laser fence (shown at left). None of them will stop your enemies cold, but they will slow opponents and do progressively more damage. Same goes for the gun emplacements — they’ll start as a couple of Retro Lancers strapped together, then upgrade to a pair of chainsaw Lancers on a stick, before doubling to four of them and even beyond that. Other buildable fortifications include turrets, decoys (which start as literal cardboard cutouts of Thrashball-era Cole and work their way up to fully armored tackling dummies), and the ultimate prize: a Silverback exosuit (think Iron Man version 1.0) that fires machineguns and missiles, and can even anchor down and become mobile cover for your bros.

Before you start worrying that all this strategy is interfering with your war against the Locusts, rest assured that it’s all easier than it sounds. You can’t build anywhere — the game will instead indicate green areas you can afford, red bits you can’t, and blue objects that are upgradable — and you can build only before each wave begins. Everything is done with just one button, too. Further simplifying matters, you can give money to other players, and also pool your resources by having everyone click on the desired object to pump money into it until it’s fully paid off. This type of group effort is practically the only way to afford the Silverback.

The overall objective remains the same as always: wipe out every single Locust scum on the map. Easy enough to wrap your head around, right? Good. Now let’s get back to the meat of the action.

Knee-Deep in the Dead

When the Brumak showed up and began stomping toward our team, someone channeled Marcus Fenix and let out an audible “Aww, come on!” in disbelief. The gigantic boss monster slowly plodded toward us, and our fully upgraded laser-fence defense system that seemed so badass five minutes ago against the regular grunts was suddenly no more than a splinter in the hindquarters of Gears of War’s biggest beast. Someone — we’re going to guess it was a person from Epic who’d have experience in this kind of thing — shouted, “Aim for the guns and the fuel tank on its back!” So blast away we did, but not before having to risk life and limb darting out into the open field to resuscitate two downed teammates (another activity that earns you money, by the way). Eventually, we brought down the Brumak, but not before it pushed our team to the very brink of doom.

These apocalyptic “boss waves” rock you every 10 rounds, pounding your base and setting you back on your heels. And it’s designed that way. “[Bosses] tear your base up,” admits executive producer Rod Fergusson. And as scary as the Brumak is, the tougher fight came against the Lambent Berserker. Remember her — the blind beastess from the first Gears who hunted you based on sound? The Lambent-infected version also charges you, but instead of scorching her with a Hammer of Dawn, you’ll have to wait until she charges and her chest cavity opens up, exposing her glowing yellow heart. It’s her one truly vulnerable spot. So if you read that and ask yourself, “Wait, you mean I have to stand in the path of a charging Berserker to damage her?” — the answer is yes. Yes, you do.

But the 45 non-boss waves are where all of Horde 2.0’s new elements can really be appreciated. Take the all-new mech-like Silverback, for instance. Our team had to collectively save up for it, as, again, its stratospheric price tag makes it far too expensive for one COG to afford. So, over the course of many rounds, we kept feeding our money to one teammate, who finally built the sucker. He kindly stepped aside, though, so we hopped in!

Ripping off missiles and high-caliber chaingun rounds, we quickly turned the Locust attackers to mulch. The Silverback isn’t invincible, though. In fact, it’s rather vulnerable from the rear, making it a good idea to bring one or two teammates with you so they can watch your back. And it’s critical that you repair the exosuit between rounds — same goes for your fortifications, actually — lest it disappear and be lost forever between waves.

One other new toy worth a shoutout is the Cleaver. For anyone who’s ever wanted to wield the Butcher Locust’s weapon after he dies, Gears 3 grants you that wish. It’s a special weapon, meaning you can’t take cover while using it, and even though it reverently homages Final Fantasy VII by dragging behind you when you roadie-run with it, it didn’t quite satisfy: the Cleaver’s slow, finite number of swings didn’t chop Locust in half with one swoop as we’d hoped. It was the only mild letdown in what was otherwise a flawless day on Sera. Of course, that didn’t stop us from using the Cleaver to single-handedly finish off the last Lambent Drone. On to Wave 50…

Four-midable Package

With a Versus mode powered by better maps than Gears 2 and dedicated servers, the table-turning Beast mode, a four-player co-op–enabled campaign, and the amazing Horde 2.0, Epic design director Cliff Bleszinski (see sidebar) proclaims, “We’re shipping almost four games in one now.” And we didn’t even get to see the “Big Head mode” (yes, seriously) or any of the other 14 Unreal-style Mutators in action. It’s hard to argue with him — we might as well start calling this game Gears of Four. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to go think up a way to have four lumberjacks chop down a tree at the same time.

Cliff’s Notes

Epic design director and Gears creator chats about the franchise and more

On whether Horde 2.0 is a tower-defense game: “A little bit. We wanted the creatures to still go for you and chew through your fortifications to get there. Their endgame is to kill you, not to take out the base, and that’s a key difference.”

On other influences on Horde 2.0: “Something we were influenced by was the bonus objectives that Halo [Firefight mode] had done, like, ‘Now in this round, get 16 headshots.’ That’s one thing where we can do our own twist on it, and we are perfectly willing to cop to that.”

On mixing-and-matching Mutators in Gears 3’s multiplayer modes: “You can kind of cross-pollinate them. One person brings in one Mutator, one person brings in another. It’s like, ‘Get Ryan because he has Big Head [unlocked] and get this guy because he has Gore.’ You can make this kind of potluck dinner of mayhem that modifies the game, and you can bring that to the table.”

On whether he could step away from Gears in the future, á la Bungie with Halo: “There is no way I’m going to vanish anytime in the future if there is a Gears of War follow-up. With that said, in order for me to stay interested in any sort of follow-up, it can’t just be the same exact thing we’ve been doing the whole time. It needs some kind of continued, unique twist to stretch those creative muscles and get those juices flowing, which I think is also necessary to keep the fans interested.”

On how long Gears can continue to thrive as an Xbox 360 exclusive: “As long as Microsoft wants it to. We have found through our history that we do well when we align our interests with those of our corporate partners. Microsoft needs a Mortal Kombat to Halo’s Street Fighter. They need a game in a genre that is slightly harder-edged and that will be their holiday game to go against everything else. We are happy to do that, and it makes sense for us from a business standpoint.”

On the secret to launching two successful new IPs (the other being Bulletstorm) this generation: “There is no magic formula. At some point you make the game you want to make and are cognizant of the market you are launching it into. Be aware of a competitive product. I’m happy that when Gears comes out this holiday that we aren’t going against Battlefield and Call of Duty. Let those two slug it out for the ‘hoo-rah army genre’ [crown].”

On whether Gears 2’s storyline was a bit hokey: “Yeah, in hindsight, it was. [Gears 3 will have] less of the gimmicky sh*t because we got a little too hung up on that last time.”