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When I recently checked out Modern Warfare 3's Spec Ops, I almost had to laugh. I had just spent a couple of hours the previous night playing Gears of War 3's Horde 2.0, and it's pretty obvious the developers for both titles are going after the same thing — the next generation of survival-mode gameplay.
It's impossible not to compare the two. In both, you earn money for kills, buy new weapons or upgrades as you play, run into boss levels, build fortifications, and, well…empty clips into wave after wave of enemy A.I. until you die or until your significant other gives you the stink eye.
So I put together this massive chart comparing the two modes to determine a winner, not just in each of the 12 categories below but overall as well:
| Modern Warfare 3: Spec Ops |
Gears of War 3: Horde 2.0 |
Winner | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Activision | Microsoft Game Studios | Modern Warfare 3: Activision has Call of Duty, for crying out loud. That's like owning a money-printing printer. |
| Developer | Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games | Epic Games | Gears of War 3: Epic created a beefy, profitable engine that powers a lot of games that you and I play. Also, Infinity Ward might not be the same after a talent exodus not that long ago (resulting in new developer Respawn Entertainment). |
| Platforms | Xbox 360, PS3, PC | Xbox 360 | Modern Warfare 3: More is better. |
| Release date | November 8, 2011 | September 20, 2011 | Gears of War 3: Earlier is better. |
| # of players | 2 | 5 | Gears of War 3: More is better (remember?). |
| Starting weapon | FN Five-seven pistol | Lancer assault rifle, Retro Lancer, or Hammerburst rifle | Gears of War 3: Gears 3's starting guns can pump out way more bullets than any li'l pistol. Plus, the Lancer still has that chainsaw-bayonet thing going on…. |
| Other weapons | Submachine guns, assault rifles, machine guns, grenades, claymores… | Longshot sniper rifles, torque bows, grenades, pistols… | Modern Warfare 3: Gears 3 has more variety in its arsenal, but Modern Warfare 3 offers way more weapons overall. |
| Upgrades and support | A.I.-squad airdrops, sentry guns, riot shields, predator missiles, air strikes, red-dot sights and other gun attachments… | Sentry guns, manned turrets, barricades, cardboard decoys… | Modern Warfare 3: Gears 3 gives you the option to upgrade different fortifications in Horde 2.0 (to transform barbed wire barricades into laser fences, for example), but Modern Warfare gives you so much more to play with in Spec Ops. |
| Ultimate duds | Juggernaut suit | Silverback mech suit | Gears of War 3: You will know power when you step into the Silverback, rev up those arm cannons, and trample Locust dead with a thunderous foot stomp. |
| Bonuses | Bonuses are ongoing: Make more money with headshots, killing enemies in rapid succession (called "rampage"), or just staying alive. | Specific objectives (ex: get eight executions this round) will pop up randomly every so often for a chance to get extra cash. | Gears of War 3: The randomized objectives that only appear once in a while gives Horde 2.0 more variety in its gameplay. |
| When you go down | Your teammate can revive you, but if he doesn't get to you in time, you get one freebie "get out of being dead" card. After that, if you bleed out, it's game over. | Your teammates can revive you when you're down, but if they don't get to you in time, if you have enough cash, you can buy yourself back into the match. | Modern Warfare 3: This one's a close one. On one hand, Horde 2.0 is less frustrating with more possible players to revive you and the opportunity to buy back in. But that lessens the drama. Things are much more stressful in Spec Ops, but that makes the matches more intense, too. |
| The bad guys | Soldiers, more soldiers, dogs, juggernauts, helicopters, even more soldiers… | Locust drones, tickers, flame grenadiers, Maulers, Boomers, Kantus priests… | Gears of War 3: It's interesting to see improved versions of enemies come out in subsequent waves in Spec Ops (shotgun troops, explosives-packed soldiers, etc.), and both games have boss levels. But since it's based completely in fiction, Gears 3 can obviously offer a lot more variety in enemy types. The developers can design an entire spectrum of gross, slimy alien things when they don't have to base anything in the real world. |
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Overall winner: Gears of War 3's Horde 2.0 Although both modes provided plenty of exciting moments during my hands-on time with them (you can't go wrong with either), in the end, being able to play with four other people in a co-op game trumps all. Two players in Spec Ops' survival-style play just feels incomplete.
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