Horde is amazing, but I am afraid that the progression system will keep me from putting too much time in it. The random nature of the loot sucks (need to get people to spend real money)..and leveling up your core classes is slow...

3 of us did blow through 50 waves on normal difficulty tonight though...and we all only got to level 2 of our classes. Still had a blast though.

Alright, yeah I agree overall patience is a key with that one as long as you keep track of any possible enemies sneaking up behind you for example depending on where you are at on the playing field. Beating on Insane should be fun, that's for sure.

Slow and steady for me finding time to play the campaign, Act 1 was pretty slow but Act 2 was awesome with some great moments. Enjoying this quite a bit.

I have yet to buy gears 4 but I've been reading a lot of complaints about the micro transactions being absurd. Apparently there are cards you randomly get from crates that boost your skills in Horde mode?

Isn't that how card packs normally work? The sports games have been doing that for years now, and Halo 5 did it last year as well. If anything, I think Halo 5 fumbled it more because it sucked playing against teams that were using higher level cards when people on your team weren't using shit. And people didn't want to risk wasting a card if the lead was already too large.

So if it's only in horde mode and not competitive multiplayer, I don't see the harm.

Really hating playing HORDE 3.0 with randoms, always leaving and no one ever being added. Also no communication and not knowing what to do with power collected and such

other than that this game is amazing!

oh and I finally got my Ultimate Edition (17-Pack Starter Air Drop Special) packs delivered to my collection: it consist of 5 HORDE, 5 VERSUS, 5 OPERATIONS and 2 ELITE, plus the season pass VINTAGE DEL they advertised. ... a lot of epic skins, including LEGENDARY "DAY OF THE DEAD" for Boomshot (woulda loved it for my LANCER) and some epic characters.

Hello gentlemen (ladies?)

I haven't posted here in forever it feels like, but been playing a lot of Gears lately. Way back in the day a group of DVDtalkers used to play Halo 3 all the time and we had a blast. If you guys see me online, please feel free to join the chat/game and we'll get something going. Love to play Horde, and as much as I like VS, it's always more fun in friendly private matches.

So, go ahead and add me if you'd like. GT: SteelgearX

P.S. My friends and I cuss a lot and talk a lot of shit, but it's all in good fun. If that's a problem, you've been forewarned.

I ended up picking up a copy of gears 4 UE and tried a horde match on casual. I probably should have done the campaign first as I have no idea why I am fighting the vex from Destiny.

I chose to be the sole engineer. I can see how things can go sideways with strangers as no one had a mic and everyone was buying their own crap and picking up the power. Is there an easy way to tell what class each person is by looking at their character or do you need to go to the scoreboard?

Scoreboard seems to be the only way since you can choose any skin.

Bah, requiring RNG for horde skills is terrible. I opened my 7 horde packs and got 0 epics.

Tried my first Horde match last night, in Normal, it was past 9:30 pm.

I'm a veteran Gears player, completed Horde several times in the previous games, even in the hardest difficulties. But I didn't do any kind of research before playing the new game. So I wasn't sure how to spend my money/power, there was some that was automatically added to the main box thing (?) though.

My family goes to bed early, so I have to be in mute, fortunately the other guys had mic, and were collaborating, so we were advancing really smoothly. Since I was new, I tried to follow the basics from previous games, never being alone, cooperate, revive people, etc.

By wave 30 we started to get tested for real. I think we failed one wave. I started to get "nervous" since this is when you really need to know what you are doing :P , I had a lot of money/power and I wasn't sure what to do with it. I tried to give it to another player, like in previous Gears but didn't see that option, or transfer the money to the box? or was the money always available to everyone? I had no idea!

Most of the match there were 5 of us. One person leave by wave 20 or something, and they were able to get someone else to join. I think when we reached wave 40 there were just 4 of us.

But yeah, we kept failing wave 40, several times. And most of the times I was the first to die. We tried for like 20-30 minutes until we finally did it. It was a great victory or it felt like that. But I checked my clock and it was already past midnight, I knew that if I stayed until Wave 50 I would go to bed past 1 am, and I just came back from Hawaii and I'm having a really hard time trying to wake up. So I decided to leave there. Again, I thought I had a lot of power/money, didn't find a way to pass it to someone else, and bought something for the team. They weren't that excited about that...

So, do you have any guide that you recommend? Or give me some general pointers here.

Thanks!

Basically you get power from killing a mob and from picking it up off the ground. You should however let the scout pick up the power as they get a bonus when they pick it up while the wave is still going and they get an additional bonus when they deposit the power in the fabricator (the deposit bonus requires them to use the skill). When you are looking at the items in the fabricator, you can push Y to disable/enable auto deposit.

Right now the turrets are OP. If you have 3 or 4 turrets, you can mow down everything. Although this requires your teammates to actually use the turrets and not move them outside of the base like my last game... Also by the time you hit wave 40 you really want to bunker down in your base as you die pretty quickly even in casual. So far the sentry appears to be useless and a waste of power.

Also 19 horde packs later and still no epics. I am missing 17 skills lol

Thanks for the info.

I did a little bit more of reading yesterday before playing another quick match of Horde. I was an engineer in the first game, I didn't know that. And I was an engineer again, but I actually used my repair gun more this time. Five started and soon we were 4, and before wave 10 we were only 3. No one was using a mic, no one was picking the power, etc. I think one guy left in the third wave because he wasn't revived...

I decided to be an engineer and build some protection for our base. By wave 9 I had 2 sentries, that I was fixing constantly. I think it helped us a lot since there were only 3 of us. We were able to complete wave 10 without dying. Just staying close to the base and helping each other. I had to leave after that though.

I even used one card for extra XP for completing waves 1-10.

I am loving my time with Gears, as I have with all the previous games, even Judgment, which a lot weren't fans of.

The campaign is solid, but there is something about this version of Horde that feels a bit off to me. I think it's because of the early quit outs and no backfilling. I noticed in the notes for the big patch coming they addressed the issue but said nothing would be fixed about that in the patch. I'm pretty sure the last Horde mode just dropped in people as others quit. I've resigned myself to just play casual Horde since it seems I can't even get to wave 10 on the other levels before my team is down to 3 or less. Sometimes I waste several minutes just waiting for the map to load just to find we only have 3 people to start as 2 have already left.

The cards thing is interesting but I bet I've revealed at least 40 and have found about 5 worth using.

Agree with someone's comment on the class progression too. I've been playing several hours a day of Horde since release with the soldier class and I'm still only on level 4?

I really enjoyed the campaign too, although the last act just didn't feel like...the last act to me. but it just felt like there should've been a little something more afterwards. I'm definitely going to give the campaign a second playthrough on hardcore, and I can't wait for the next installment.

They actually increased class leveling on Friday. Before that it was even slower.

I despise the card thing. There are certain skills I want but after 30-35 packs, I still don't have them. When I finally get one, I then have to figure out what to scrap to make duplicates to level it up. Leaving skills to RNG is just dumb.

We made it through all 50 horde waves on casual over the weekend and had an absolute blast. Hopefully I'll have some time to get into the campaign this week.

Just some tips my group uses on horde..not an expert..and I am sure these are not the best tips but this is what we used.

We have had a hard time getting 5 of us on at once, so a lot of time we play 3 player. These tips can easily run a 1-50 run with no deaths on normal difficulty even with just 3 of us. We will finally be back to a full group this weekend to push hardcore, but honestly we will not have a problem.


Tip 1. Have a scout with at least the bonus deposit skill. Do everything in your power to level this skill up. The scout will be the only one picking up fabricator scrap. Also try to let enemies get close before you kill them so it is easier to pick up and then if you get down to one enemy let him make a run so you get all the loot.

Tip 2. Have an engineer with reduced repair cost skill and do everything you can to level it up. After that I think the reduced turret cost is good but really anything that helps with reduced cost is great.

Tip 3. Have at least 2 heavies. Maybe 3. Take the tag bonus skill first. Fully leveled up you do 50% bonus damage to tagged enemies. Second skill should be turret damage bonus, but it is a rare card and odds are you are not going to have it. Replace that with bonus explosive damage. This works not only on boom shot but also salvo's you pick up.

When the game starts find a corner where enemies can not flank you. Make sure you pick one with an ammo box near by. Let them funnel to you. Put up a barrier and make sure the engineer keeps it healthy. Now spend the first 4 or 5 easy waves getting kills and building scrap. As soon as you can build a turret. One of the heavies needs to man this as soon as it starts getting hard. If you have a heavy with both marked and bonus turret put him first. MARK MARK MARK every enemy..especially hard ones. By wave 10 put down a second turret and a weapons locker.

Now here is the key to the weapons locker...as long as your don't spend the final round of a salvo...you can put it in this and recharge the ammo. As you level up the weapons locker you will have more slots for weapons..by the end you can basically have permanent salvo ammo..and the Heavy will do 50% bonus damage to marked enemies and another 80-100% bonus because of the explosive damage buff. These apply on top of each other so the heavy does nearly 3 times the damage as any other class with a salvo..and even on hardcore that will melt bosses.

By the later waves you will have 4 turrets...each person will man a turret expect one heavy. That one will use the salvo's to mess things up. The engineer needs to hop off his turret from time to time to repair and put new ammo in other turrets. Also later waves decoys can be a god send. With this rolling, boss waves are super easy...and you earn so much scrap with the scout you can keep things going. Be sure to upgrade the turrets and stuff as you fabricator levels up.

Make sure turrets are not real close to each other so a bad explosion does not take more than one out..

Great tips.

With just 3 horde matches my only advice is: use an engineer. If you are an engineer, be an engineer. Use your fix gun. In one boss wave it was me between two guys with turrets, I kept fixing both of their turrets the whole wave.

Yeah, always make sure you have an engineer and a scout.

They probably felt okay ending it this way because it's supposed to be a 3 part trilogy.

I don't even mean that in a narrative sense (although the ending doesn't really bother to compellingly setup GoW 5). I pretty much always expect the final stretch of a game to be a culmination of everything up to that point -- to put all the skills I'd learned throughout the course of the game to the test. In a lot of ways, it felt like Act IV did the best job of that. Act V was quite a bit shorter and easier, and although I love the mechanics introduced in its back half, it doesn't really feel like that's how the game should draw to a close. I still love the game and don't consider the abrupt and lackluster finale to be that big a deal, but I do think even just one more chapter could've made a huge difference.

I need more time to let horde stick..but as of right now this is how I would rate the Gears games...I have never played the multiplayer..so this is for horde/single player only.

1: Gears of War 2. The best campaign in the series mixed with horde mode..what is not to like?

2: Gears of War 4. This is a close one..and over time It might drop. The campaign is strong and the horde mode is a blast.

3: Gears of War. As a pure campaign it did so much right and is actually better than 4..but it lacks horde.

4: Gears of War 3. Game was great, but not up to the level of the other games.

35: Gears of War Judgement. Would not be fair to the other gears games to even put a number in the top 10 next to this turd.

I think the best horde mode belongs to gears 3.

Judgement had a great bonus campaign with the cole train though! We can ignore the rest of the game though.