GOWJ: Epic Giveth & Taketh Away!

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We are now just over a month away from the release of Gears of War Judgment. Epic Games has in turn been releasing more game info on the regular.

But not all news is good news as in the two latest Epic podcasts Epic released some info that was a downright sucker punch in the gut of long time fans but then managed to save face with some excellent news regarding weapon balance.

The campaign for Judgment is looking to be really good

GOWJ sure is shaping up to be quite a confusing cookie to comprehend as I now refer exclusively to the multiplayer. On one hand they have done their best to try an improve on every aspect of gameplay (as we’ve discussed before) making the game faster, smoother and mechanically more stable. But is a solid game if there is nothing to do in the game? I mention this because to date in GOWJ it has been confirmed that the game will ship with only 4 MP game modes:
 

GOW3 was widely criticised for probably having too many game modes and playlists which resulted in player numbers being diluted over the many lists but having only 4 modes may be a bit too extreme in the opposite direction. I would thus assume that Epic and PCF may have put slightly more effort into the campaign and overrun than the MP. This is of course completely understandable considering we are at the end of the current console cycle and not investing too much effort in a multiplayer that will not require long term support makes more sense. That being said with them only including (proper) team based game mode (Domination, as the changes to TDM make it only a hair length away from FFA) game mode is kind of a low bow to all long time fans because has always been a team game.

But possibly the biggest disappointment has to be the total exclusion of any singe life game modes like Execution or Guardian which have been one of the signature characteristics Gears since the beginning of time. Not only is it a disappointment to loyal Gears enthusiasts but a possibly crippling blow to the competitive GOW community.
Slim MP options aside, Pete Knepley and Jim Brown from Epic Games did announce some promising news regarding the weapon balance in GOWJ. For the most part it seems that Epic and PCF have taken all the feedback from fans via the forums and twitter and have made some fantastic changes (on paper) to the weapons.

We’ve already heard about the removal of stopping power and damage boosts from active reloads which were added to speed up play and in addition to that we have now learned that ammo pickups will be automatic and damage over distance modifiers have been normalised which will both go a long way towards further speeding up play.
 

Knepely and Brown also confirmed that as in GOW3, they will continue to monitor feedback and game stats and make tweaks and changes to balance where necessary.

Pre-Orders

If you haven’t pre-ordered your copy of GOWJ yet, we’ve compiled a convenient list of all the local retailers that will have GOWJ available as well as which incentives are available where.
 

Note: There will be no Limited or Collectors Edition released.
SA release date: 22 March 2013