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New Gears of War Mode Announced

Posted by Zonk on from the i-claim-this-land-in-the-name-of-spain dept.

In an update downloadable on April 9th, the newest multiplayer mode for the Xbox 360 hit Gears of War will be made available. Called Annex, the mode is an objective-capturing gameplay scenario. Each map will have physical locations which must be taken and held, and allows for infinite respawns on a fifteen second timer. "On the map, a projected ring marks the physical location and boundaries of the objective in the world. The ring's color indicates the current captor: White means neutral, blue COG, and red Locust. To capture an objective, players must stand inside the glowing ring uncontested for a short period of time. How long depends on how many teammates stand in the ring at once. One player can capture an objective in eight seconds, two players in four seconds, three players in two seconds, and four players in one second. Once a team takes an objective, they are not required to remain inside the ring to maintain ownership."

31 comments

  1. mingot by mingot · · Score: 1

    I hope the fact that you are supposed to hold locations stops folks from camping the spawn point.

    1. Re:mingot by zyl0x · · Score: 1

      I would hope the spawn points would be a random location, much like in Halo. Makes more sense in this kind of game mode.

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  2. Anyone know the first game to do this? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The first one I encountered was Shattered Galaxy, which was a fun little game but not compelling enough to suck a monthly fee out of my wallet. You had to put a unit (or was it units? I forget) on the POC (point of contention) for sufficiently long to take it. Take enough POCs and you get the map. Or keep the invaders from taking enough POCs for long enough, and you keep the map... Does anyone remember seeing this back in the mists of antiquity?

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    1. Re:Anyone know the first game to do this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah I remember that back in Fall of 2000. That's when I played it anyhow.

    2. Re:Anyone know the first game to do this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I remember playing Magestorm back in like 1996, used this system. Not sure how it relates datewise to your listed game, though. They had "shrines" and you stood in it for an amount of time and it became aligned to your team, the more inside the faster it shifted and then you could leave but it would stay under your teams control until another team took it in the same manner. Fun game, kinda miss it.

    3. Re:Anyone know the first game to do this? by jlavarj · · Score: 2, Informative

      Bungie's Myth 2 had a game type called Territories similar to this.

    4. Re:Anyone know the first game to do this? by Aladrin · · Score: 1

      Spellbinder was the one I was thinking of, also by Mythic Online. I actually liked it enough to pay for it for a while.

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    5. Re:Anyone know the first game to do this? by Chris+Burke · · Score: 1

      The original Team Fortress mod for Quake had maps with this style of play. That might qualify as the first FPS to have this mode. I doubt it's the first game period to do it.

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    6. Re:Anyone know the first game to do this? by brkello · · Score: 1

      That game is still kicking as far as I know. I played it about a year ago and am pretty sure it is still doing ok. I imagine numbers are either staying steady or dropping off...but it was fun. It was basically a MMORTS version of Stracraft with more players and no resource management. Each map could hold about 40 players and there could be multiple battles going on all over the larger territory.

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    7. Re:Anyone know the first game to do this? by Mia'cova · · Score: 1

      Not the first but the domination mode of UT should be called out here. This is the third major iteration of theirs on this concept. UT Dom, imho, can be considered a failure. I think they should have just added points to DM maps and left it as a minor gametype. But with gears, they're guaranteed players so it's interesting that they chose to try this again. Prior to each release of Dom, we've heard from Epic how awesome it is. I think they're hoping that once people give it more of a chance they'll enjoy it. I personally think most people will stick with the raw versus mode. Perhaps gametype specific maps will persuade people to give it a chance.

    8. Re:Anyone know the first game to do this? by Raenex · · Score: 1

      The "modern" version of Netrek goes back about 20 years. It's not a 3d shooter, obviously, but the basic goal of capturing points on a map are the same. In Netrek it works like this:

      • You play over the Internet, client-server model
      • There are two teams with 8 players on each side
      • You fly a spaceship that can shoot torps (bullets) or phasers
      • Each side gets 10 planets
      • The planets produce armies that you can pick up and drop on enemy planets, taking them over
      • To carry armies you must have "kills" (you killed an enemy; dying sets your kills to 0)
      • If you die you respawn at your home planet

      I started playing this game back in 1993. Amazingly enough, you can still play it today in pretty much unchanged form.

  3. Wrong date by MooseMuffin · · Score: 3, Informative

    The same site you linked to already did a follow up stating that this is not coming out April 9th.

    http://kotaku.com/gaming/gears-of-war/whoops-no-ge ars-of-war-update-next-week-249795.php

  4. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You're getting your ass kicked too huh? Nothing worse than getting your ass handed to you by 12 yearold dutch kids with expectations that all Americans do is fight well.

  5. BZflag had this - king of the castle map by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    ... about a month or two ago - Some details here

  6. Infinite ? by DrSkwid · · Score: 1

    Go on then, do more than 1 per clock cycle per CPU.

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  7. lol @ marketspeak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Annex? In Halo (or any other game) we called this King of the Hill. I like how the summary spins it like it is unprecedented in the gaming world.

    1. Re:lol @ marketspeak by Jim+Hall · · Score: 1

      And in 'Star Wars: Battlefront', it's called the game.

      For those who haven't played SW:B, you have to capture points on the map. Your captured points are blue, the enemy's points are red, the uncaptured points are grey. You can win the match either by capturing all the points (and holding them for 20 seconds) or by killing everyone on the opposing team.

    2. Re:lol @ marketspeak by demeteloaf · · Score: 1

      According to the summary (I haven't read TFA, but who does?), this isn't the same as king of the hill/SW:B, because it looks like as soon as you "acquire" an objective, your team gets the point for that objective and then a new objective appears and the first objective point is pretty much forgotten. So rather than basing the entire game around a couple points on the map (either one point, or a bunch of different points at the same time), which is very common in a lot of games, you'll be concentrating on one point at a time, but as soon as a team "wins" that acquire point, the focus of the game will shift to a new point on the map. I think I've seen it in a couple games before, but it's nowhere near as common as the king of the hill type game you're talking about.

      I assume this could probably be most interesting if you have an objective point in a very open area with little cover and a lot of cover around it, so that it's hard to get into the objective point while there is someone guarding it and you have to hunt down the guards in order to really claim it.

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    3. Re:lol @ marketspeak by demeteloaf · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, i caved and glanced at TFA, and when you actually read it, looks like i'm wrong and it really is just a modified King of the Hill type game. So yeah, disregard that. Should have known the summary would be misleading.

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    4. Re:lol @ marketspeak by Loadmaster · · Score: 1

      Or kind of like the Domination game type in Epic's other game: Unreal Tournament.

      Swi

    5. Re:lol @ marketspeak by heinousjay · · Score: 1

      The only spin in the summary would be what you put there yourself. The most that's said is that this game type is new to Gears. I don't think there's much dispute to be had there.

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    6. Re:lol @ marketspeak by Sibko · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually, in Halo this is called Territories. King of the hill involves one location. Sometimes it moves around.

    7. Re:lol @ marketspeak by Hadlock · · Score: 1

      Hm. Seems to be the premise for BF games. Also Socom 3 has a similar mode where they use smoke flares.
       
      Heck, if you want to go really oldschool we used to do this for orienteering courses in boyscouts. There's a group that does this at point fosdict park in Tacoma, WA where they give you the coordinates of the various checkpoints that have custom hole punches, and you go find them, punch out your card, and you're ranked by time to finish.

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    8. Re:lol @ marketspeak by SighKoPath · · Score: 1

      This is even in Guild Wars: Factions! (Alliance Battles)

    9. Re:lol @ marketspeak by IX+SICK+ECHO+XI · · Score: 1

      I don't care if it's new, old or original, finally gears of wars fans, like myself will have a different game mode than execution and warzone, and that will suffice.

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  8. yeah by User+956 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I liked this the first time I played it, when it was called Battlefield 1942.

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    1. Re:yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agreed. Also, this sounds just like the Unreal Tournament 2004 online play. Defend, shoot, respawn, move to another location, rinse, repeat.

  9. Battlefront by sxeraverx · · Score: 1

    This was pretty much the standard in Battlefront.

  10. King of The Hill in Myth multiplayer. by Beaker74 · · Score: 1

    Myth had this mode back in 97-98.... It's not new.

  11. Now all that they have to do is... by unborracho · · Score: 1

    Link together the objective points and require that you own an adjacent one and you have onslaught mode in unreal tournament!

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