What gives the game it’s real legs are the very entertaining online play that the game offers. An excellent online experience has you teaming up with others to do battle against the Locust horde, one team of humans, one of Locust. This is a straight-up firefight with the winner being the last man/monster standing. There is a mode that runs side by side with this one, called Execution.
In Execution mode, players (once they go down from wounds) can revive themselves by repeatedly hitting the “A” button. The only way you can permanently stop an opponent is to run up to their body and deliver a close range kill, you know, like curb-stomping their head.
Other multiplayer modes involve playing a game of assasination where you go hunting for the other team’s leader in a point, multi round style game. This seems to be a popular game amongst online players as the person who kills the leader of the team, becomes the leader of their own team in the next round. Sort of a hunter becoming the hunted type of thing.
What’s more, you can log on with a friend and play through the single player campaign, only this time it’s Marcus Fenix and his buddy, Dominic Santiago. Playing this way means really working together, flanking enemies and utilizing the voice feature to really engage the enemy. This is really an awful lot of fun to do especially if you have a competent partner and you can play the game on the hardest setting. It totally opens up new gameplay as you can revive one another and take different paths to get to the same point. This is cool gaming here folks.
As big an AV guy as I am, I can’t help but tell you how well this game sounds. The game is broadcast in Dolby Digital and if you have the means to play this on a surround sound system then I would highly recommend it. The speakers come alive with gunfire and the screaming of both monsters dying and other troops barking out orders.
The voice work by John Di Maggio and Carlos Ferro is spot-on. Marcus sounds every bit the hard-ass, life-taking death-dealer that he is. The sound effects, gunfire, monsters raging, explosions, helicopters: they all sound so good, it’s hard to believe that this is not a Hollywood big budget action title. And here’s hoping they DO NOT turn this into a movie. Especially if it is directed by Uwe Boll… God help us all.
