Gears Of War Judgment
Gears of War: Judgment takes you back before events of the original Gears of War trilogy to the immediate aftermath of Emergence Day where you follow Kilo. Gears of War: Judgment is a military science fiction third-person shooter video game, developed by People Can Fly and Epic Games and published by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox 360 in North America on March 19, 2013, with subsequent regions following later that month. It is the fourth entry of the Gears of War series.
Gears of War: Judgment has plenty riding on it. This is the first game in the groundbreaking third-person shooter’s franchise that is missing developer Epic Games' magnanimous former design director Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski. It's also the first to feature Epic studio People Can Fly at the helm, not to mention the first prequel in the dystopic Gears universe.
Meant to fill the gaps in the world’s backstory and provide new ways to play with friends, Judgment is an attempt to bring new facets of gameplay to the franchise — a revival effort with noble intentions.
Unfortunately, despite its brilliant detail and classic Gears gameplay, Gears of War: Judgment never reaches beyond feeling like a piece of Gears of War 3 DLC. Diehard fans of the series will be happy with what’s here, but the whole game never quite clicks — and can get frustrating to boot.
Campaigns: Ship Without a Sail
Gears of War: Judgment features two playable campaigns that are related in story but distinct in their gameplay. The first campaign opens 14 years before the events of the original Gears story arc and follows a young Baird leading a rag-tag group of COG soldiers called Kilo Squad to defeat the frightening alien Locusts. Fellow Gears alumnus Cole, 14 years younger, is just an uneasy superstar sportsman settling into military life. It introduces two new characters: Garron Paduk, a hardened soldier, and Sofia Hendrik, a young cadet forced out of training to fight the Locust threat.
The game starts with Kilo Squad on trial for treason, charged with engaging in 'unauthorized actions' to save the city of Halvo Bay from a Locust army. The rest of the campaign is told in vignettes of how it all went down, based on testimony from each soldier involved.
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Gears has never necessarily been praised for its story (being a badass and taking out as many enemies as possible), but the plot of the main Judgment campaign feels ham-handed at best. Although the intention is no doubt that the game sets a tone for the rest of franchise, those new to the series will feel disoriented and unsure how it all fits. Veterans will struggle to find a reason to care. The new characters aren't very interesting, and often feel like stereotypical ciphers (especially when interacting with well-established personalities Baird and Cole).
As for the action, Epic and People Can Fly deserve credit for going back to the drawing board to iterate how Judgement delivers the gory, mayhem-happy battle scenarios that Gears fans love. Every segment of the game is rated on a three-star scale, and users rack up stars by performing all of the classic Gears moves: ribbon-shooting multiple enemies, exploding foes and enacting lurid melee executions. There’s also an option to choose a “Declassified” mission, which enables players to rack up stars more quickly by adhering to certain mission restrictions, including reduced ammo, an impending time limit or more powerful enemies.
Although this is undoubtedly meant to offer more challenge and replayability, there’s no reason not to take the Declassified mission option. Though sometimes the sheer inanity of the restrictions, like playing one checkpoint with such reduced visibility that you have no choice but to take on powerful enemies up close, forced a ragequit. Add to that a very limited variation on gameplay, and the first campaign becomes a cycle: Get to the mission, pick up Declassified challenge, survive the hordes until the next checkpoint, repeat.
The second campaign, Aftermath, will be a treat for Gears fans. It takes place during Gears of War 3 and shows how Baird and Cole manage to rustle up backup for series heroes Marcus and Dom while they fight on Azure. However, this campaign noticeably lacks the star system of the previous, and only consists of two or three hours worth of gameplay; it feels like a piece of DLC that never made it out the door. It’s got a little more of that old-school Gears flair to it, though, with a few placement scenarios and a nail-biting trip on a zip line. For what it’s worth, Judgment does have all of the classic Gears vestments: beautiful graphics rendered from the Unreal 3 engine, which take advantage of the destruction befalling the hapless Halvo Bay, a snappy and sharp cover system, in-your-face AI that are super fun to chop into pieces, and some new guns to add to the overall gameplay.
But neither campaign leaves any lasting impact and doesn’t drop nearly as many callbacks to the other Gears games as they should.
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Multiplayer: Prepare for Reliance
Multiplayer is where the franchise really is meant to shine, and Epic and People Can Fly did their best to incorporate new concepts to keep gamers entertained for the long haul. It’s safe to say that the Gears multiplayer is where you’ll be spending most of your time. Surprisingly, only Team Deathmatch makes a return in Judgment — everything else is new. Some of them make for exciting gameplay, but there’s a lot to get used to.
The best multiplayer modes tap into what makes the Gears franchise so successful on multiplayer: sheer gory insanity. That feeling is obviously achieved in Team Deathmatch, but also makes an appearance in Domination, a variant on a classic King of the Hill game that pits two teams of five against each other to control three rings scattered throughout a map. And in a first for the series, there’s a Free-for-All mode, which lets nine people go against each other. Both are quick, classic, and exploit different characteristics of the game without drifting too far away from the Gears experience.
The trouble with the multiplayer comes in the two modes that rely on Judgment’s new class system — OverRun and Survival. The former is a humans versus Locusts battle that allows both teams to pick and choose their characters; the latter is a co-op game that forces all players to work together to protect a generator from waves of enemies.
The class system has tons of potential, but never feels realized due to its limited scope. Because each of the four classes has predefined weapons and special abilities, there’s no room for improvisation — one of the things that makes the Gears games great. In addition, some classes have access to vital necessities, like an ammo reload, which make them crucial to the success of the human soldiers in any scenario. The result is a permanent handicap for whomever plays that side; he or she must plan beforehand to make sure they have all the right classes represented and trust in one another to make it all work.
In addition, meaningful customization, something Epic has yet to tackle, feels sorely lacking in multiplayer. Characters and weapons have virtually no customizable features except for skins. Every few kills in both the campaign and multiplayer earn players a mystery prize pack they can open to earn more experience or a new skin for any number of items, but the rewards feel small.
Conclusion
In short, if you love the Gears series and want fresh content and multiplayer scenarios to get your hands bloody, then the game is worth picking up. But Gears of War: Judgment is by no means an entry point for any newcomer to the Gears franchise, and $60 may feel like a steep price to pay for a few valuable multiplayer modes.