Gears Of War 4 Is Getting A Free Trial

Gears of War 4
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Missed out on Gears of War 4 back in late 2016? Well the PC and Xbox One third-person shooter will give gamers an opportunity to play the game for free over the weekend for up to 10 hours, including the game's campaign and multiplayer modes.

Over on the official Gears of War website, The Coalition has a post up explaining that you'll be able to experience up to 10 free hours of gameplay between June 9th and June 15th. This means you can download the trial today, play a little bit over the weekend, hold off throughout the early part of next week, and then finish up before next weekend starts.

The trial will allow you to play the Versus and Horde modes from the multiplayer of Gears of War 4, along with being able to play through the opening act of the game's story campaign mode. The story mode follows Del, Kait and J.D., as the three infiltrate a COG facility and attempt to get their hands on a special device known as a Fabricator.

The first act of the campaign mode centers around battling a bunch of robot forces that attempt to apprehend the three kids. After fighting off the forces and making their way back to Kait's village, they end up encountering the real antagonists of the game for the very first time, the Swarm.

The Coalition put a lot of time and effort into developing an off-spawn of the Locust Horde and Lambent in order to give players a new threat to face off against, along with a new story mode to embrace.

Gears of War 4 was definitely better received than Gears of War: Judgment, but there was also the major issue of the story seeming to be very... safe. This was a criticism that former Epic Games front-man Cliff Bleszinski leveled at Gears of War 4, noting that while the graphics looked good and the gameplay was solid, there was a definite lack of thrills, unpredictability, and an overall safe tone to the way the story unfolded.

For those who played the game, there were a few moments that were quite harrowing, especially the first encounter with the Swarm at the village, which really set a tone for how they could have been portrayed, but after that the game kind of nestled into a rote way of laying out events.

Nevertheless, whatever progress you make during the story mode, or whatever achievements and accomplishments you acquire during the multiplayer mode of Gears of War 4 will carry over from the trial mode into the full thing if you plan on purchasing the game once the trial ends.

It's a dangerous time to be putting focus on a game during the weekend leading into E3 because there's going to be a lot of hype and excitement centered around the press conferences for each of the big game studios. However, The Coalition obviously has faith in Gears of War and likely sees this as a prime opportunity to get more eyes on the game now that the holiday season rush is done and over with.

The 10 hour trial is available for both Xbox One and Windows 10 users.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.