[Mechanical R]

So, the beginning of November has brought us the beginning of downloadable content for franchise giant Gears of War 3. With the second batch of downloadable content already announced and on its way, lets take a look at DLC pack one. The Horde Command Centre.

The main focus of this map, being called the Horde Command Centre is non surprisingly, a Command centre available in horde mode. A new form of defensive upgrade, the command centre allows you to call in some aid in the shape of sniper fire to hammer of dawns to clear out those pesky waves. Other upgrades have also appeared on the horde scene with a new decoy which turns your defence into an Onyx guard bot, a new auto turret which will have better use against Berserkers and the Silverback upgrade which lets you fire rockets. These new upgrades are great to use. When you actually get to use them. Unfortunately, your going to have to put in a lot of work to get these, as standard, you'll need to have maxed out the decoy, turret and silverback in order for you to be able to access the new upgrades, and if you want to get your hands on that command centre, you'll need to have spent a whole $360,000 on turrets after you've purchased the content, meaning anything earned before the downloadable content, isn’t going towards that ultimate defence upgrade. Sigh, it’s a tough job, but we have to get there at some point.



The next main addition to this pack is the three new maps. Two new and original maps to Gears 3 and a Gears of War 2 remake, Blood Drive.

Blood Drive – Probably not the first map from previous Gears maps I'd chose to revamp at first but regardless, this tight and well remembered Jacinto Medical Plaza is now host to yet more horde and versus turmoil. The narrow corridors will play havoc for all those new weapons to go crazy with.

Sticking with the tight map themes, Rustlung takes place on an old ship, the Royal Tyran Navy, this small and intense map opens up around a torpedo bay. In a crazy addition to the map there’s actually a Silverback waiting for anyone who wants to open the gate on competitive multiplayer. Happy hunting.



The island resort which saw the triumphant end of the Gears series makes a multiplayer cameo in the level Azura. This map is a bright and rather untouched area from the locust, its relatively easy to get familiar with the area quickly and begin coordinating those attacks. Also gives some serious de ja vu to those who enjoyed the Jacinto and Pavilion maps from Gears 2.

Also included in the pack are three new characters, including those pretty brutal looking Onyx Guards. After making a brief appearance in the campaign at the settlement of
Anvil Gate, 'The Boomer Lady' aka Bernie Mataki joins the ranks to fill out the female roster and a 'Big Rig' variant of Dizzy, because who doesn’t love Dizzy in dungarees? Two new weapon skins make an appearance also with Team Plasma and Jungle Camo to really fill out the extras with this pack.



The game comes with 5 achievements which amount to 250 gamerscore. It was recently announced that Gears of War 3 will be the first game to hold 2000 Gamerscore. A couple of the achievements will require some heavy play time to unlock and the rest will require four other friends who own the content as well. Which shouldn’t be a problem, especially in this day and age to find some people to play with online.

All in all, this is a nice little update to the game, the Horde upgrades add a lot more depth and reason to continue fighting through the waves and the new maps are more than welcome. Granted, it’s a little fishy that we are paying for character skins that are already in the game but lets face it, we can’t get too picky considering the next downloadable content out in early December will be even better. For those who don’t fancy forking out for all that extra Horde stuff then you'll be happy to know that the maps are now available for free to download separately for use in competitive multiplayer both online and off.

Not only that but this pack known as the 'Versus Booster Map Pack' will also contain two more remade maps 'Swamp' and 'Clocktower' from Gears 1. The Horde Command Center map pack is at a reasonable price of 800 Microsoft Points and is all free if you've bought the Season Pass.

7.0

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