I was one of the first people in the entire world to finish Gears of War 4’s

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Waves 1-10

The first few waves were a breeze. We set up our ‘Fabricator’, the box that serves as a menu to let you set up fortifications for whichever section of a map you decide is most defensible, right near our spawn point, and started farming the energy enemies dropped in preparation for the first boss wave - wave 10. We put our slowly-building resources towards barriers to begin with, but everything was placed with the boss wave in mind, rather than just the ‘next wave’.

We were largely pitted against DeeBees to begin with - Gears 4’s new robot enemies, who, outside of a few variations, walk slow enough to be easily avoided, or taken down with a Lancer from a comfortable distance. The first genuinely concerning appearance was around wave 5, where a locust-like creature with a Lancer of his own showed up, threatening an instant kill with the chainsaw if he snuck up behind you. Gears 4’s horde mode does allow you to revive dead players if you can collect their cog tags, then make it back to the fabricator to revive them for free once, and then for an increasingly hefty fee every subsequent revival.

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The latter waves started introducing Pouncers, which are ‘heavy’ Swarm enemies that I’d liken to Hunters in Left4Dead - they might look a lot more like arachnids than zombies, but the shock when one of those things pounces on top of you is similarly concerning. You have to look out for them on the map, always, to avoid getting tackled and rendered useless. Thankfully, clicking in one of the thumbsticks lets you ‘tag’ enemies for your whole team to see.

The first boss was a Snatcher, but with our 10 waves of preparation, the hulking monster didn’t give us too much trouble. We were fortified, and we were organized. Take down the boss first, and only shoot the peripheral characters if they got close enough to present a serious threat. The Snatcher did manage to swallow our sniper and have him ‘downed’ inside his stomach for a while, but we shot him out of there.

Waves 11-20

The escalation was obvious. Enemies had 2x the health, and started throwing power weapons at us - the beeping of the DropShot as it neared its target is etched into my mind. Boomshots started downing three of our teammates at once, so this is where we really started building strategies. I'd run out at first, picking off the Trackers so they couldn't sneak up on anybody else. Our sniper found his groove with the Embar in the higher ground, popping off the enemies with power weapons so the rest of the crew could focus on the Pouncers and Guardians. Guardians particularly started showing up more, too - the shielded, flying sentries became the focus of our team whenever they showed up. We'd mark the Guardian and take it out, usually falling back into spawn as we did.

It was getting harder, but we were rich. We had defenses and reinforcements in spades. We still hadn't failed a wave, and when the next boss showed up - another Snatcher - we were prepared. The sniper moved closer to our spawn point to stay out of harm's way while he took out the peripheral enemies, and we unloaded clips into the belly of the Snatcher, until he was gone.

Waves 21-30

More enemies, more power weapons. I stopped running up ahead to take on the first enemies as they flooded in from the far side of the map, and favored sticking with my team-mates back near spawn. Getting downed when you were too far from the team was far too easy, and too much of a risk for everyone else. It started resulting in deaths. We had enough cash to revive fallen teammates, and decided to make sure we kept some spare for wave 30 just in case, but clearing an area enough to safely retrieve their dogtags without getting downed was tough, too.

We just couldn't make rushed decisions anymore. Communicating was very important, especially when you were downed - sometimes someone would just assume the team realized, and would get very, very close to bleeding out before we got to them. We started calling out when we were downed, what player we were closest to, and what we were crawling towards. 'Coming back towards spawn, through the middle' became a pretty common phrase.

The next boss wave took everything we'd learned, but we managed to get through it without any deaths - just an unfortunate amount of damage to our fortifications.

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Waves 31-40

The worst waves. Some of our team swapped out for other players. It ruined us. Two of the new guys simply weren't communicating with us - maybe it was that they had jumped in so late and weren't familiar with our methods, maybe they just weren't talkative people. They didn't tell us when they were down, they didn't help when we were down, and we started failing waves. Our fortifications were damaged and disappearing, we were quickly losing money, we stopped reviving people if they died. We couldn't afford it.

With the strategies we implemented in waves 20-30, I genuinely believe our core team could've made it through 31-40 without error, and it goes to show how important teamwork and communication is in the later waves. We were starting to run behind at this point - we might've spent an hour just on these ten waves, failing and trying again, never able to reverse the damage that had been done to our energy resources and base defenses. A group of developers gathered behind us and tried to give advice, but nothing worked. We had screwed up too badly.

One of the new guys recognized our frustrations and swapped out for someone else who, thankfully, was a pretty good communicator. It helped enough to completely fluke us through wave 40, which had the most downs and deaths we’d seen. I’m still thankful for our stubborn determination.

Waves 41-50

All of our defenses were gone, and enemies were 2x as accurate. People were getting worried we wouldn't make it to 50. The other teams had already given up and I started playing badly - making stupid decisions in the interest of just 'getting it done' in both my frustration, and under the increasing time pressure. One wave I got boomshotted before I'd even killed anyone, so I somehow ended the round with -66 points. It wasn't pretty.

I've never hated anyone I haven't spoken to before, but I might hate the remaining teammate who wasn't talking. It was a complete blessing when he finally swapped out, and all but one of our original team was back. Morale picked up. At first we persisted with our original form of communication, but our base had taken so many hits from 30-40 that it was obvious it couldn't work. We had to rebuild, so we started farming.

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At the end of each wave, we'd leave all the energy on the field and have one enemy left alive, then send our Scout out to collect all of the energy. If it was during a wave rather than during the countdown prior to the wave, the Scout collected 2x the energy. It also disappeared at the start of every new wave, so we stocked up on it as much as we could. Sometimes one of the new turrets we'd built would accidentally kill the last remaining enemy, so this didn't always work, but the fact that it did at all is what saved us. We rebuilt our defenses. We got our weapons lockers back, letting us continually get ammunition for the power weapons. We had automated turrets right outside our base. Everything was coming up Millhouse.

We made it to Wave 50, and were pitted against the Kestrel, which is basically a glorified attack helicopter. It flew right into our base and targeted each of us individually, meaning we had to constantly dance between cover, reacting to whichever angle it took. There were a lot of downs, here, and a lot of empty clips. That was the biggest issue for me - running out of ammo meant straying into the middle of the map (I fondly remember when that was a totally safe place to be, in the first 20 waves), leaving myself wide open while I grabbed a box. I had to do it three times, and all three, there was the enormous risk of getting downed, and having another team mate get downed while trying to save you, piling up the bodies we so desperately needed.

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There were deaths here. The Kestrel blew up our turrets with its rockets. It seemed like it was going to stick around forever, long after all the smaller enemies were gone, but then, with one final near-empty clip, the helicopter burst into flames and we were some of the first people in the world to finish Gears of War 4's Horde Mode. The two first outside of the development team, they told us. We cheered, the crowd of devs behind us, who were growing concerned we'd never make it, applauded, and I sighed in some of the most significant relief I've ever felt.

It was exhausting, taxing, and intense, but I can't wait to take what I learned and put it towards a smooth, painless horde mode experience in the future. If I had to give those of you on the race to 50 any advice, it’s this: use your resources wisely, let the Scout grab the energy, stick together (but not so close that you can have a whole group downed with one Boomshot), have your Sniper dedicated to specific targets that can be headshotted, and make sure your team is full of people who can communicate.

Alanah Pearce is an editor at IGN, and Gears 4 is her most anticipated game of 2016. You can find her on Twitter @Charalanahzard.