So I wasn’t really planning on playing the Gears of War 3 multiplayer beta last night. I figured I’d install it and maybe play a level in Bulletstorm before bed or something, or read the first chapter of The Name of the Wind. Plans changed as the download completed and I almost instantly got a friend invite to dive in.

What the Hell, right? It’s been a while since I played any Gears of War and I figured I’d give it a shot.

Holy Hell.

Despite my participation in the GameKrib community I somehow forgot that fans of competitive shooters do nothing but play competitive shooters. Every team we went up against was already ranked above level 10, frequently above 15, and here I was playing with friends ranked as low as I was. Y’know, people that actually have jobs during the day, families to spend time with at night and other hobbies than just trying to “pwn” some “n00bs”. I wonder if these kids even have College classes (or, more likely, if they cut class in celebration of the beta).

So I guess my first “bug complaint” in the Beta is that the matchmaking service doesn’t work, unless there’s some sort of setting where you set yourself to be a rapist or victim. That’s pretty much what it felt like.

Epic’s new Team Deathmatch mode is precisely what I had expected it to be. Each side has a reserve of respawns that depletes each time someone dies, right until each team member is on their last life. It’s a great concept in theory that allows for longer matches and even hectic moments where each side is down to their last life, or that one really good player on his final spawn somehow manages to beat the other team.

In reality, you’re more likely to see it as a scale for how badly someone was beaten. Sure, the game already has a kill count at the end of the match, but seeing just how few of their lives were taken as they tore your team apart is anything but uplifting.

This is one of the reasons I have no interest in Betas. The sort of game modes I’d like to play are never really included. I’d love to give Horde mode a whirl (and God knows it needed some Beta testing in Gears of War 2), but the art, A.I. code and other assets are bound to be too numerous for them to include in a public testing phase. Beast mode would have been pretty sweet as the spectacle of playing as the different critters would have cast aside any worries of kill rates or victory, but for whatever reason Epic chose not to include it (even though it’s bound to be a game mode where players will cry out against certain creatures being over-powered or gimped).

In the end, though, I don’t think Epic Games is going for my style of competitive multiplayer. I realized the other day after playing Dead Space 2 online that I prefer game types where kills and skill hardly matter. Not in the Nintendo sense, where at any time something can come in and ruin your day just because you have the audacity to be winning. I mean where the goal of the game isn’t based on any form of quantity.

Unreal Tournament 2K4 managed this best with their Assault mode. While other objective based games exist, such as Capture the Flag or King of the Hill, Assault’s objectives weren’t based around collecting more of something or some arbitrary score. The goal was for a group of friends to sort of proceed through a level completing different objectives while the opponents try to prevent them from making progress.

The most recent iterations of this multiplayer type are Left 4 Dead’s versus mode and Dead Space 2’s multiplayer. For some reason, however, I just couldn’t get into Left 4 Dead online. Maybe it’s because any time teams switched anyone playing as survivors would quit. Maybe it’s because no one I played with actually tried to communicate. I don’t know. All I know is that I couldn’t get into Left 4 Dead, but I loved my time with Dead Space 2.

I think the major reason these game types appeal to me is because it’s completely based on teamwork, and no matter how many times you die or how bad you are any player is helpful. I wasn’t one of the best players at UT2K4, so I tried going for objectives rather than fighting other players head to head or playing the decoy so another player could reach our goal. Or perhaps I’d just spam myself at the enemy, making sure they took as much damage as I could deal so by time they reached the defended objective they were worn and at a major disadvantage. Dead Space 2 offers this sort of game style. In most other games, this sort of thing just brings you closer to death, or if you drop the flag all you can think about is that score.

I guess I like games where I feel less like I’m competing and more where I’m working towards a goal, whether that goal is to reach an objective or to prevent others from reaching theirs. Gears of War 3 doesn’t offer such a game type in Beta, which is a damn shame, but that’s not really the point of a Beta anyway (at least, it shouldn’t be).

I’ll let you guys know more as I keep playing. Just know that, so far, prepare to get your asses kicked by people that are just too damn good at this game to be any fun.