Gears of War: Judgment – Bulletstorm studio People Can Fly refreshes an old formula

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...t1-610x343.jpgPeople Can Fly’s ‘extra content’ for their PC port of Gears Of War was a level planned but cut from the 360′s campaign. Whether a matter of time or technology, getting the Brumak boss running on Microsoft’s console was beyond Epic in 2006, so People Can Fly was brought in and given the time and tech to do it right. Now, six years later, they’re pulling the same trick with Gears Of War 3′s missing link, Aftermath.Baird and Cole go missing in the tail end of Gears 3′s campaign, only to return in the final level having recruited the entire Gorasni navy off camera. The Baird ex machina was the least of Gears 3′s worries in a campaign filled with narrative contrivances, but it’s a plot hole into which People Can Fly has jammed a wedge anyway. Together, Baird, Cole and Marcus return to Halvo Bay where they fight their way aboard an imulsion rig beached by a tsunami, and then get told by a People Can Fly producer to turn the game off because they want to keep what happens next a secret.If Aftermath is among Gears 3′s leftovers, nobody at the Polish studio is saying so for now, but the unlockable miniature campaign certainly feels unlike the rest of Judgment. It’s a mission built to a different plan, with no space for the Declassified challenges which mark the start of every mission in Judgment’s campaign and none of the buffers which signal the end of each section. Aftermath stands out because Judgment’s main campaign is a series of carefully constructed meat grinders, none of which which play like anything else in Gears’ short history. Judgment is the makers of Bulletstorm making the covert overt and gamifying Gears Of War until the hit points fall out.The third campaign chapter, Onyx Point, begins in a closed steel tube where a seven-foot glowing COG emblem can be activated if you fancy making the upcoming section markedly tougher. The Declassified challenges change the flow of battle, justified with a little exposition about the story behind the story – did Baird and Cole fight their way to the top of a Locust-infested hill? Sure, but by Declassifying the stage you’ll discover they had to make it in four minutes or a misfiring Hammer of Dawn would have cooked the entire squad. When the tube opens it does so onto the one shooter trope Gears has yet to cover with waist-high sandbags: the beach landing. As Locust troops defend the captured Onyx Guard facility with troika guns and mortars, you’ll advance up the beach and storm their staggered emplacements, racking up points as you go. Every kill, gib and headshot is worth points, which the game turns into stars you can compare with friends and spend, not least, on unlocking the Aftermath campaign. Declassifying the mission reveals the Locusts used land mines and tripwires to defend the beach too, and near doubles your star-earning potential.

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