In the Gears of War series, The Locust have always seemed like such a bully. Sure, they’re trying to completely eviscerate any traces of human life, and they pop up from the ground and swallow cities, but have we really taken the time to get to know what they are really like? No, and because they’re alien bastards they can still stick it. But that’s no reason why we can’t play as them, right? So ditching any reason, Epic is giving us a chance to do a Horde Mode role reversal and play as The Locust in the new Beast Mode. We got our hands on a demo at this year’s Comic Con and were pleased with how it is turning out thus far.

Now, obviously if all that was changed about the mode was who you can play as, it would be almost a complete waste of time. So there have been somewhat substantial changes to how the mode is played. Once again you play in waves, but you are given selections of tiered Locust to choose from. There are four tiers in all, each maxing out with about 5 or so variants. You’ll find Tickers and other similar Locust on the bottom tier with the top being reserved for the Boomers.

And rather than a one-and-done life mentality, you can come back as often as possible within the time limit given to kill the COG soldiers. Every selection of a Locust will take a certain amount of credits. You are issued a handful to get you started and then you earn the rest by killing COGs. And as you would guess, Tickers are cheap but Boomers will cost you a decent amount. But when you re-select a Boomer, it will cost you significantly less. From the four rounds we were allotted to play, we never ran into any issues with running out of credits. We died a few times here and there but never had to watch our credits, so unless you are performing terribly in the game you shouldn’t have any issues either.

When it comes to picking a Locust to use, it really comes down to how you’ll want to play. Tickers move incredibly fast and explode on a second’s notice. Tickers handle decently well, although involve a bit more dual-stick controlling, but the one down side is you give up any sort of defense in hopes of just causing havoc. Boomers move around cumbersomely but are still able to bull-run to some extent. Because of the heavy feel to the Locust, it takes away a portion of tact to how you play. You’ll see your COG enemies doing their best to hide and work out a strategy to survive your advances. But the weight of the Locust sort of balances things out so they won’t have too much of an advantage.

As far as aesthetics, the game looked amazing. Though we only played in a single environment, the detailing and style were consistent with the previous Gears installments. The sound was potentially better than the look, but that could have been due to the fantastic earphones being used for the demo. Regardless, the game is shaping up to look and sound very pretty.

Though only going through four rounds of the demo, Beast Mode is shaping up quite nicely. It has enough of a variant to it so it doesn’t seem like too much of a clone. And the style that comes with playing as a Locust brings enough of a change within itself.

Gears of War 3 releases in April 2011. Be on the lookout for our review!

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