OXM
Certain gnarled and wizened segments of the Gears fanbase allege that Gears 3 is too easy when you take advantage of four player co-op. "They won't say that about Judgment," Epic's Rod Fergusson told OXM last week, like Yoda cautioning Luke.
"A lot of our testing is in co-op and we have sweaty palms with four people who made the game," he explained. "We're taking care with the difficulty levels, so Casual will still feel casual, but Normal, Hardcore and Insane are going to be significantly more challenging than they were in Gears 3."
Thanks in part to its new Smart Spawning system, which changes up where Locust appear on subsequent plays, Judgment gives you much less time to consider your options. This has necessitated a streamlined control system.
"Yeah, for us it's all about responsiveness, so we've changed the control scheme," Fergusson elaborated. "So instead of changing your weapon with the D-pad it's now just the Y button and the left bumper will be off-hand grenades.
"The weapon swap animation is super fast and you'll see that in multiplayer and campaign. Because the creatures are more lethal - you don't want to say 'oh, let me talk half a second to switch my weapon"' or start winding up a grenade to throw it and then get killed by a Wretch. So it's all about: when you do something, does it and feels really responsive?"
Among other take-aways, Gears of War: Judgment does things with multiplayer Gears of War 3 couldn't, and is to some degree a spiritual successor to Bulletstorm. We'll have more for you in a forthcoming issue.
The big question for me is how they're going to make comic-relief-turned-leading-man Baird likeable. I mean, this is the chap who spent the entirety of the Gears trilogy whining at people. Not exactly Marcus material.
http://www.oxm.co.uk/42745/gears-of-war-judgment-is-so-hard-they-had-to-change-the-controls/
