Horde

Overview

The term "Horde Mode" was invented by Gears of War 2, and is one of the two available co-operative modes in the game. In it, up to five players can battle against fifty waves of Locust enemies. With every ten waves, the difficulty increases as the Locust grow stronger and deliver more damage. Although variations on the idea, generally called " survival mode", had existed for years, it was Gears of War 2 that popularized the concept and brought it into mainstream gaming.

Variations

Since Gears of War 2's release, the Horde Mode concept has been adopted & modified by several other video games:

• In Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombie Mode, players are tasked to survive against wave after wave of undead German soldiers.

• In Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 there is Survival Mode, in which players are charged with killing zombies and staying alive as long as possible, although unlike a traditional Horde mode, Survival Mode has no ending; players simply fight for as long as they can until they die.

• In Halo 3: ODST, Firefight mode pits players, as UNSC marines, against waves of Covenant enemies. Firefight Mode also adds the skull concept from the singleplayer mode; after every few rounds, a skull is triggered, and the game is modified in some way to make it even more difficult for the players. For example, when the Catch skull is activated, enemies will be far more prone to throwing grenades, and when the Black Eye skull is activated, the player's stamina no longer regenerates, and the only way for players to regain stamina is to melee attack enemies. The follow-up, Halo: Reach, also features an updated version of the Firefight mode. Borderlands also has these "game modifiers" in its version of Horde mode, the underwhelming "Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot" DLC.

• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has released a DLC pack containing "Siege Mode". In this variation of Horde Mode, all players must remain within a predefined zone on the map in order to score any points, and the zone changes location after each wave of enemies.

• Horde mode returns in Gears of War 3, along with a new "Beast" mode, which is essentially the traditional Horde mode in reverse; as Locust soldiers, players must invade an area and attack a group of entrenched A.I.-controlled COG soldiers. The various types of Locust feature unique weapons and abilities, thus making it far preferable to play as the villains.

A newly recurring theme in such modes is the addition of more players who serve as antagonists; in Halo: Reach's Versus Firefight mode, two players are set as UNSC Spartans and tasked with surviving against waves of Covenant. Another two players are Covenant Elites; Spartans earn points by staying alive and killing hostiles (killing one of the player-controlled Elites grants them an extra life in addition to a serious point boost), but the Elites, who have an unlimited number of respawns, cannot earn points and have no goal other than to attack the Spartans. Two-man teams alternate roles between rounds, and the team who earns the most points while playing as Spartans wins.