Dark Corners Campaign Hands On

So finally the thing that had been rumoured since before gears of war 2 was released, the addition of a campaign chapter as DLC, is upon us. Junkie Gamer took the Road to Ruin chapter for a stroll through the Locusts home.

The following description may include spoilers, so be warned.

The chapter itself is introduced by Cliff Bleszinski, the lead designer on Gears 2 where he details why the chapter exists and what your objectives are. You start off the mission with Dom mourning the loss of he’s wife and Marcus offering the option to go in guns blazing or in a stealthier fashion. I decided to stick to the gears formula and go in gun toting.

The experience itself is pretty linear for the most part, with you going from corridor to corridor, clearing it out of locusts and then progressing. There are some interesting areas to the left and right of each entry and exit to the corridors, and which house a nice cache of weapons and ammo, but generally there is no need to venture down there as you can plough forward as there is a near limitless amount of ammo to hand. Perhaps it would have been nice to see some sort of collectables added here, to make the player explore. Or perhaps, these areas would be great spawn points for the Locusts giving the experience a more claustrophobic feel.

The difficulty level is pretty much the same as Gears 2, if you are somewhat experienced with Gears, then you’re better off sticking to the Hardcore setting as anything lower will be a stroll in the park. Bleszinski did mention on Major Nelsons podcast that the chapter should take around 1 ½ hours to finish, and I would agree with this, but again only if you do it at the Hardcore difficulty. I replayed the game on Normal and I blew through it in 40 minutes or so.

Overall, the experience is a lot of fun and it doesn’t move away from what you’d expect a gears add-on to be. There are at least 2 points in the chapter where I was over-whelmed by what was coming at me and agreed with Dom’s liberal use of the four letter word, so it certainly has the wow factor. It is great to see some single player / co-op DLC coming to gears but I fear, if it wasn’t for the addition of several new multiplayer maps, this would be a very hard to sell as a standalone addition.

I will be previewing the Stealth option of the campaign later today, so stay tuned.