Raw Firepower!
You can hold two main weapons at a time, in addition to having your basic pistol and bolo grenades. These two items are always present with Marcus. It should be noted that the pistol has a minimal zoom feature, activated by pressing the right analogue stick. If you hover over a firearm on the floor, pressing X will add it to one of the two slots in your inventory, replacing the current weapon in that slot.
Switching between weapons is done via the D-Pad and is very quick and easy to use. Switching from sniper rifle, to your main Lancer rifle is rapid and just perfect in terms of speed. The COG have some seriously powerful weapons at their disposal. There aren’t many but they’re effective.
Lancer Assault Rifle:
Your standard Gear weapon, this has a lethal chainsaw bayonet which can be activated at close proximity by pressing B. The rifle fires automatic rounds extremely inaccurately in standard mode. Aiming precisely will bring up a crosshair for accurate aiming. This thing is awesome - it sounds great, has a great ‘lock and load’ feel to it and dishes out some serious firepower.
Sniper Rifle:
My personal favourite, I never leave this baby behind! Long range death! It’s a bolt action sniper rifle with a fixed zoom. As is typical with these rifles, a headshot will yield an instant kill. Reloads are slow unless you use the active reload feature.
Poxy Pistol:
The pooty gun as I call it. This is your standard non droppable single shot pistol. This thing is quite accurate but lacks much needed power. It has poor but functional zoom.
Shotgun:
As always, lethal death, which has incredible damage at close proximity, great for killing Wretches.
Bolo Grenade:
Fragmentation grenade, I can’t throw this thing to save my life. This uses a unique trajectory system that I’ve yet to get the hang of.
Hammer of Dawn:
Sera has many orbital laser platforms orbiting the planet. This object locks them onto any target you designate with the Hammer’s laser sight. Just lace your target and watch sheer laser death rain down from the sky above, onto your target. Moving the sight, allows the beam to follow its path.
There is a grenade launcher in the game, but I’ve yet to pick this up to play with.
Controls
Epic has used a context system for its cover system, also seen in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas and it works very well. Ghost Recon Advanced War Fighter also used this system but it wasn’t as good as GoW or Rainbow Six.
A= Cover/context sensitive, Hold A for fast run aka "roadie run"
Y= Show points of interest
X= Use/Interact, revive(in multiplayer)
B= Melee (hold to activate chainsaw)
RB= Reload
LB= Objectives/squad status
RT= Fire
LT= Hold for "aim mode"
L analogue= Movement
R analogue= Aim / click for zoom if pistol/sniper rifle is armed
D-Pad= Press up for grenades, down for pistol, left or right for other weapons
Reloading is something new in this game too. Upon running out of ammo, you’ve got the ability to gain extra damage as well as reload speed. In order to do this you’ve got a slider just under your ammo counter with a vertical bar moving left to right. Pressing the reload button sets off the meter and pressing it again will stop it. If you stop it within a marked region in this bar, you’ll not only reload quicker but you’ll also gain a small amount of extra damage as a result for that clip only. Also the muzzle tip of your gun will glow blue.