Gears of War 2 Hands On

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Horde sees a team of players working together to see off a huge number of enemies, who come in waves. Each player has the usual screen furniture plus some Horde stats in the top left - a health-bar for the Horde, which is replaced by a number once the amount of enemies remaining drops to a certain level - and at the end of a wave there are stats to pour over, noting who killed the most, team- and wave-specific scores and the impact of difficulty multiplier (something that's still being tweaked) on the points total. The object of the game is to last as long as possible.

Navigating specific levels (whether Horde is supported by all is still to be confirmed), the dynamic spawn-points for enemies initially drive you around the map, as ears prick to the noise of gunfire and grunts, but as enemy numbers thicken the pendulum swings the other way, and the team backs away instead. Signature elements like Seeder emergence holes and an avalanche that rips through one town centre will threaten stumbling retreats. It's not completely dynamic, though, because it's also meant for high-score play, and so the difficulty curve is rigid - enemies becoming more sophisticated in the seventh or eighth wave and thickening in numbers.

We're spoiled though, having played Valve's Left 4 Dead already, so Horde's simple sieges feel unrefined, with little to coax players together other than a desire to avoid mutual annihilation - and in the context of Monday's multiplayer event, it wasn't enough, every man playing for himself. It could reduce Horde to a fun, throwaway diversion rather than a long-term pursuit.

There are other modes though, and one we got to play was Guardian, which is an evolution of Assassination from Gears 1. As with Assassination, you're on a team with a leader and that guy is the other team's primary target. When he's taken out in Guardian, your team loses the ability to respawn, so you suddenly face an uphill battle to stay in the game. The pods were full all night and a few rounds of our own were bloody and amusing, benefitting greatly from bolt-ons like meat-shields and chainsaw duels. The other new modes we know about are Wingman (five teams of two) and Submission (CTF with an enemy as the flag).

Marcus and Dom are the focus for campaign co-op, but familiar faces - like Cole Train - return along with new pals like Dizzy, a former Stranded who joins the COG to buy his family's security.

There are other refinements to multiplayer, too, and Bleszinski was on hand to clarify some of those. The Hammer of Dawn, for instance, now has a timer so that you can't just use it forever. Other knowing tweaks include the removal of the super damage boost on sniper rifle ammo following an Active Reload, which saw players firing into the air and reloading to follow with a single-shot kill - something deemed "unfair" in the original game. There's more elaborate blood trails and crawling around injured, too, seeking that helpful revival tap from a team-mate.

Meanwhile, Epic's keen that multiplayer isn't just the preserve of the dauntless hardcore this time, and so there are bots, and they're more than an afterthought. We're not told much about how they work (other than the fact Steve Polge, who designed the original Quake Reaper Bot mod, is working on them), but we know they're put to use Unreal Tournament-style. "We have a great mode, which is basically training grounds, in which you start off with you and a couple of bots against a few other bots and we basically walk you through the multiplayer experience," says Bleszinski, "so before you're unleashed into the wild of online gaming you can learn everything and have a chance of surviving."

Sadly, Bleszinski doesn't tell us whether Marcus and Dom ever kiss.

It's a good idea in a sea of good ideas. A same-gen sequel, Gears of War 2 isn't always as glamorous as your Resident Evil 5s, Fable 2s and Final Fantasy XIIIs, but its E3 showing is extremely assured, and Bleszinski's not sweating on that release date, claiming that Epic has "a way of coming in perfectly under the wire and making everything button up nice".

"You'd be surprised in certain instances where just changing one number can make everything work, and it's just a matter of nudging," he says to us at one point. "Sometimes the pendulum swings one way, sometimes it swings the other way - same thing with weapon damage - so I'm confident we'll get it all ironed out." Either way, we'll certainly be doing what Cliff wasn't doing on Monday when 7th November rolls around, if only to find out whether Cole Train still sings at the end.