Gears Of War 3

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Cliff Bleszinski has changed his mind about beta testing. During Microsoft's Xbox showcase event in February, the designer of Gears of War told me, "I made an inappropriate joke about it a few years back. I said it was like pointing out a girl to one of your friends and saying 'yeah, I hooked up with her already – there's no reason to hang out with her anymore'. That was very shortsighted… I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong."

So here we are then, a few weeks into the beta test for Gears of War 3, the latest chunk of testosterone-soaked gun chaos from Epic Games. It's the first time the sci-fi shooter has been opened up to public scrutiny in this way, and Bleszinski reckons his team will be getting a variety of data out of the endeavour, including game design ideas. "It's a smoke test to make sure everything works, but it's also about user feedback. We've learned that you need to listen to your users – to a point. You need to placate them, give them what they want some of the time, but every once in a while, you've got to listen to the numbers. We track every kill in the game, every weapon, where people die – and sometimes there are major discrepancies between what players say they want on games forums, and what's actually happening. It's up to us to figure out our best gut solution."

So far, the beta testing experiment seems to have been a successful one. At the moment, four maps and three game modes (Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill and Capture the Leader) are available and they're all solid, enjoyable blasts. There have been the usual grumbles about certain weapons being over or underpowered (especially controversial has been the sawn-off, with its 180 degree firing range and atomising power), but the important elements of the multiplayer experience – diverse weaponry, tactically varied environments – are all there. Gears of War 3 is a lot of big, brash, blood-splattered fun.

The first surprise, though, has been the tactical nature of the gameplay. Although it's quite possible to get by in the confined maps like Thrashball and Check Out (find out more about these in my multiplayer preview) by just sprinting through the centre of the map and blasting anything that comes at you, what tends to happen is a series of emergent team behaviours. Players will often fan out over the terrain until first contact is made with the enemy before bunching up and covering each other. I've been in lots of set-pieces where surviving team-members have got caught cooped up together in one of the Thrashball side-rooms, soaking up grenade attacks before charging out en masse like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – but with space blasters.

"One of our core design mantras is never fight alone," says Bleszinski. "We want you to play on a team and like a team. Even on public servers where you don't know anyone else, hopefully there will be players spotting for each other [holding down the left analogue stick lets you tag enemy soldiers so your team mates know where they are] and leaders calling things out using the headset. Certain weapons encourage co-op behaviours. If you look at the One Shot and the Mortar – those weapons become twice as effective once you implement the spotting mechanic. But then there will be players who throw in smoke grenades to stop their opponents from spotting, so you get this finely layered gameplay."

There's also variety. While the smaller arenas can often congest into horrendous sawn-off /gnasher blast-fests, the larger Old Town map has these ever-shifting front lines, as skirmishes flow from one cramped plaza to the next. There are also long-lines to shoot down for ranged combat fans, and the scenery – all crumbling Mediterranean villas and scuttling livestock - makes a lovely contrast to all the exploding limbs and gurgling death groans.

There are other enjoyable aspects. Lots of players have developed ninja-like skills with the Retro Lancer assault rifle, which offers a bayonet charge rather than the usual chainsaw attack. Skilled protagonists, use long cover sections to speedily sneak up on victims (I believe the kids call this cover-sliding) before hitting B and scorching out to impale unwary victims. It also seems like the placement of the big messy weapons has been well-thought out; the mortars and mulchers are deadly and potentially match-changing, but they're usually in elevated positions, and open to attack from a multitude of covered angles.

For me, the most successful element is the structure. In Team Deathmatch, each side only gets 15 spawns, and when they're gone, the last four players must engage in a tense game of cat-mouse-and-exotic-weaponry, hoping to pick off the surviving members of the other team. It's so subtle and gripping, it feels much more like the sort of gameplay dynamic we'd expect from a squad-based tactical shooter. I imagine that played with friends, these are going to be the encounters that really stick in people's heads.

So far so good, then, for Epic's push into the controversial world of the beta test. If nothing else, it'll show sceptics that there's more to the Gears universe than mindless gunplay, and it'll impress veterans of the series with its solid matchmaking, well-balanced new weapons and scenic diversity. I still occasionally struggle with the prescriptive cover and running mechanics, I'm not sure about some of the more esoteric firearms (the flamethrower-like scorcher seems a bit of a dodo), but this is a multiplayer game that just chucks out memorable moments like molten chunks from an exploding frag grenade. Roll on September 20