Gears of War: Judgement

When Judgement was first announced, I wasn't particularly excited. I'd loved all the previous Gears gams, but when GoW3 ended, that's when I figured so did the franchise. Yes, I was naive enough to believe that after a successful trilogy Epic would create something new. I didn't have high hopes for Judgement. I knew the gameplay would be tight, and the graphics would be beautiful. On a visual and technical level I knew it wouldn't disappoint. I wasn't so sure about the story though. I knew there was nothing left for Marcus to fight for, and I figured any new Gears games would be prequels and focus on Marcus' early life in the COG. I never saw Gea...

Gears of War: Judgement

When Judgement was first announced, I wasn't particularly excited. I'd loved all the previous Gears gams, but when GoW3 ended, that's when I figured so did the franchise. Yes, I was naive enough to believe that after a successful trilogy Epic would create something new. I didn't have high hopes for Judgement. I knew the gameplay would be tight, and the graphics would be beautiful. On a visual and technical level I knew it wouldn't disappoint. I wasn't so sure about the story though. I knew there was nothing left for Marcus to fight for, and I figured any new Gears games would be prequels and focus on Marcus' early life in the COG. I never saw Gears as the bro'd up fist pounding shooter that everyone else did. I was fine with the characters portrayal. But after three games, I was ready to be done with Marcus and potentially Dom. That didn't mean I was stoked when I'd heard that the new game would focus on Baird.

Baird wasn't initially a likable character for me. I liked Dom. He was chill, cracked jokes, added some levity. But then Baird's sarcasm started coming through. He was well written, and the voice actor was great. But a whole game based around him? While he was certainly no Joey Tribbiani (more of a Chandler), I don't know if I could watch a FRIENDS offshoot based solely on Chandler. So, in a first form me, I didn't pre-order this Gears title. I didn't buy it day one, or week one, or probably even month one. I recently rented it just to meander through the campaign. I had my expectations low. That was my first mistake. I wish I would've set the bar higher so that when the game blew it away, it would've meant something.

The core mechanics remain largely the same. Cycling through weapons via the D-Pad is gone. You don't carry two primary weapons and a pistol anymore. You just get the two primary's and if you want a pistol...well then you gotta make a choice. The cover mechanic is still the same, which is annoying . In every game when I try to roadie run to an objective (be it a downed team mate, or an downed enemy that I'd like to execute), anytime I get to close to a wall it drops me out of the run and into cover. I don't want cover, I don't want to be slowed down. I know it's a small something but it's a small something that can get very very annoying.

The AI could use some work. Once when I was downed, across the map I saw that two other members of my squad were down as well, and what was Cole doing? Running around them. He didn't revive them, and he didn't meander over and revive me. His dumb bot self just let me get torn to shreds. Thanks Cole Train.

In a few reviews I've read, some folks have made mention of the way the story is told in Judgement. How it differers from the straight forward angle of the previous titles. Some didn't like that so much. I thought it was refreshing for the franchise and liked bouncing between the "trial" and the "testimony". The Declassified Mission options are fun, I really like the options they bring. The Lancer seems to be more accurate than in previous titles, at least in campaign. I haven't touched multiplayer yet. It also seems to be more powerful than before. Even on casual, taking down a Boomer is easier. Another thing I really liked about this game is that the profanity is scaled back considerably. Without making any menu changes to mature content, just playing the game as-is I didn't hear one F-Bomb. I heard bitch or son of a bitch a few times, the occasional shit, but other than that it was a pretty verbally clean game. That more than anything pleased me the most. It's what annoyed me most about Deus Ex, Black Ops 2, or BF3. Too many developers think excessive profanity is necessary to convey realism. It's not. Some things can be done without. They spent so much time wondering whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.

From the very beginning, no one really questioned the core mechanics of the game play of the Gears franchise. In that respect, it was something of a watershed game. Aspects of it had been tried and done before, but not as smoothly as in Gears of War. But many laughed at the dialogue, the relationship of Marcus and Dom. They looked for things that weren't there, either to put down those who were fans, or to justify their own socio-political ideologies. They wanted Marcus and Dom to have latent homosexual feelings for each other that linger just below the surface so they could rub it in the faces of the bro frat boys who sling homosexual slurs to each other all day on xbox live. Too bad it didn't play out like that /sarc. Stupid Anya and Maria had to get in the way of that little agenda huh? But to me, the relationship of Marcus and Dom was successful. Marcus wasn't really as one dimensional as a lot of reviewers claimed him to be. He gave hints of what was just below the surface, but you could tell he was keeping things in check. Dom was the other side to Marcus' coin. Dom brought the emotion that was needed later on. Baird brought the biting sarcasm, and Cole brought the humor. And through Cole, the gravity of certain situations could be magnified. If Cole wasn't funny, you knew it was about to get rough. These facets of each individual always seemed integral to the story, these four together were perfect. How would a whole campaign fare with only two? Better actually. While Marcus does make a cameo via radio chatter only, at no point in the campaign did I miss him or Dom. Two new characters are introduced, but to me they felt kind of throw away at first. One character serves to underscore the still present tension between nations even in the face of a still relatively new threat. And the other is a female character, who they didn't bother to make particularly attractive. She's pretty, but she's no Samantha Byrne.