In 2008, Gears of war 2 realized it's full potential in cooperative gameplay and introduced a new game mode called Horde 1.0. While you could tackle the series of enemies that attack in waves alone, you were encouraged to play with others--and nicely too since they were vital to hoarding heavy weapons and reviving you. Each wave grew increasingly difficult, with more enemies and tougher-than-jerky enemy types, but that also meant better weapons were dropped. And every ten waves you faced a boss you've met in the campaign. However, the tricky part to getting to the final wave was the active modifiers or "Poisons"--such as increased enemy health and accuracy, because we’re not dealing with stormtroopers, kids--that made even the easier grunt, a dangerous encounter.
The biggest difference with Horde 3.0 in Gears of War 4 is the class system and number of friends you can bring with you to the battlefield. The more the merrier, or as GOW calls it, “never fight alone”.
With Horde 3.0, you get to choose from five unique classes similar to Survival in GOW: Judgement. However, instead of being restricted to one set of skills, you earn skill cards from gear packs that stack up to increase that skills effectiveness. But no, Gears of war 4 has not turned into a trading card game--except it kind of has.
Buying these packs using in-game currency that you earn from both playing horde and multiplayer can get tedious. Because the number of class skills you can bring to a game are dependent on the level of your class, you're initially limited to one skill as level one Soldier, Heavy, Engineer, Sniper, or Scout. And while there are general, nonclass specific skills, I never found them practical because they acted as show-off tricks rather than helpful team skills. The soldier class quickly became my favorite class because of its versatility and load out that instantly gave you grenades. What's the point of playing if you can't blow shit up? And because you can level up your skills, I found myself working with the simplified economy between the worth of the cards and cost to build them.
And with the addition of the Fabricator, an upgradable and movable base, you can buy different weapons not limited to your class from earning points from your kills. Even as a Soldier, I could still buy a longshot and pop a couple of headshots if my lancer ammo ran out. And while shock grenades were a great way to hinder an enemy’s movement, it was a catch 22 because it could affect you and your teammates equally. I would find moments of stupidity when I panic-throw a shock grenade to only realize that I just stunned myself and my teammates.
Overall, Horde mode 3.0 has made some important improvements in play styles and damage output, but the card system still has hindered my care for appearance customizations and limited my class playability. The Coalition still has a lot of work to do, and ten years of work to maintain.
