A great game in a limited package.
Instead following the story arch that lead Marcus into the jail sale where we first met him, we follow Baird and the rest of Kilo squad as they stand trial for treason. The plot pieces fold out in the form of testimony. When a member of Kilo squad begins to testify as to what happened, you take over control of the mission and play through the testimony while a member of Kilo squad narrates what is going on. It is an interesting twist new to the Gears franchise. These missions stand alone and you even acquire a star rating at the end of the mission similar to an arcade game or many popular hack and slash games. With People Can Fly handling the single player, this should come as no surprise, but it works and works well. Tracking how much ass you are kicking through a mission in a Gear Of War game feels natural even though we haven't seen it before.
Adding to the arcade feel is the declassified options. At the start of a mission you can declassify it, which changes the testimony and more importantly adds much difficulty to the mission. These added buffs to the mission can range anywhere from only using a pistol from having a short time limit to finish the mission before your player dies from poison. It really makes for a challenge that a Gears game hasn't provided before and adds endless replay value in the single player. Adding to the difficulty and replay value is the new smart spawn system. This system removes the spawn systems of old and ushers in a brand new system that is no predictable and changes every time you play. The spawn points for NPC enemies change depending on how play. This means that if you die during a mission, when you retry, it's different than what you just played through. What this does is make you get better at the game before progressing instead of just learning the spawns in order to get a jump on your foes. This can become down right punishing. But don't worry, you will not have to push through this slaughter alone. While it is a fine stand alone experience, it is designed for and much more fun when you have your friends playing with you. It supports up to 4 player co-op through out the entire campaign. This makes sense seeing how many of the campaign missions are formed with the horde mode mentality. In essence they mixed horde mode right into the campaign and while it sounds like that is a bad idea on the surface, it works and works very well, providing an intense experience especially when grouped with friends. This for my money, is the best campaign experience that the Gears franchise has ever offered by far. While the story being told does not bare the same weight of the first 3 titles of the series, it still holds merit due to the fact you are seeing members of Kilo squad that we have already met grow and develop into the Gears that we now know them as.
The multiplayer component to this game is where I get conflicted. On one hand, it's the best in game experience I've had in any Gears multiplayer, but it's also the most limited. Allowing quick grenade throws and a smoother control scheme makes this the most perfect multiplayer experience that Gears has ever offered. No longer do shotguns rule the day. While still effective, players of all types now have their own advantages and disadvantages. It's balanced. The first time I've ever been able to say that about a Gears game.
Overrun is the new power house of the multiplayer. Take the locust and point system from Beast mode in gears of war 3 and put them up against a team of 5 human players playing a role of a medic,soldier,recon and engineer. The COGs goal is to defend an objective from the horde. While the horde's goal is to destroy the objective. Once the first objective is destroyed, you move to the 2nd one and if that is destroyed you move to a third and final objective. On the COG side the Engineer builds torrents to help slow the horde, the medic throws stem grenades to revive fallen allies, the soldier drops ammo and the recon throws a area of effect beacon that tags enemies to where allies can see them through walls. On the locust side you have locust who are aimed at destroying fortifications and others aimed at killing COGs. You start off with a low level locust and once you accumulate enough points you unlock other stronger locust to use. This new game mode is exactly what is sounds like, chaotic. Each team takes turns, first playing as one side and then switching to the other for the next round. Seeing how the mode feels as if it's set up for the Locust to have the advantage, which ever team destroys the 3 objectives fastest wins.
Survival mode is what has replaced horde mode but fails doing so. It's Overrun with a twist. You must defend the 3 objectives against 10 progressing waves of computer controlled locust. It's fun and has it's peak moments, but compared to Overrun or Horde mode from the past, it falls flat. With that said it is far from easy and in order to survive you are going to need a team of people communicating and working together.
Also the game ships with 3 more modes. Team death match, Free for all (a first for the franchise) and a domination mode where you capture and defend 3 capture points through out the map. While these are fun and with the new mechanics of Judgment, the multiplayer is better than ever, the lack of maps and game modes leaves you a feeling of a game that is lacking content. Overrun/survival gets 4 maps and TDM/FFA/DOM get 4 maps. Yes these maps continue the gold standard of level design that gears has always provided, only having 4 maps just feels hollow. Clearly this was done to promote players to buy DLC. Since this is a prequel and a fan service, why not add maps from the first 3 gears games? That would have been an easy fix. Provide the 4 new maps along with 1 or 2 maps from the first 3 gears games and boom, everybody is happy. But no, Epic is going to continue down the path that every other dev/publisher is going, cash farm their games and encourage people to buy the VIP pass and don't worry,it doesn't end their. The game is loaded full of DLC weapon skins and armor sets you can buy in the xbox market place. I would be much more pleased if they would have spent more time making more content for the retail game instead of loading it full of DLC dressings.
Gears Judgment is a game that lives up to the hype of the franchise. It improves on the Gears formula in almost every way. The multiplayer is better then ever and you could spend countless hours in the campaign. This game could possibly be the best and most polished Gears game to date. With the improvements in multipalyer it could possibly reach a fan base that it couldn't before and this is a game that will be getting much playtime by the community. But with all that said, there is no excuse to ship a game with so little content. Only 4 maps and 3 competative modes outside of the Survival/Overrun variety is simply not enough, especially seeing how Gears of War 3 launched with a bundle of content. The game it's self is deserving of merit and a buy, but it's limited content holds back what could have been the best in the franchise.
I give Gears Of War Judgment from Epic games and People Can Fly, an 8 out of 10.
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