Gears of War: Judgment is a game that up until a couple
weeks ago I didn’t even think I was going to get. Then, I went to my local
GameStop and placed several pre-orders and one of those games was Gears of War:
Judgment. Here’s the good news about this, the game is great!
Graphically speaking, Gears of War: Judgment does some
things a little differently than previous Gears games. Generally, with some
exception to Gears 3, the Gears of War franchise has been based in a color
scheme of grays. Destruction has always been at the heart of this series.
Judgment changes this up a bit and shows a bit of what some areas of Sera
looked like before the Locust and COG destroyed everything. There are a lot of
brighter areas to look at while fighting through the war. Though, towards the
end, things do turn bleak and dark and the game goes back to feeling like its
set in the Gears of War universe we’ve all come to know and love. The
characters move very fluidly with the animations going off without a hitch 99%
of the time. Character models look great, though the age of the hardware and
engine are starting to show, this is still the best looking gears game yet. There were some hiccups with the chainsaw
animation for the lancer, occasionally not lining up correctly when done on the
stairs, or two people hitting the same enemy at the same time can look a little
wonky. There were also a couple times when I went for the execution and the
camera angle cut way back from everything instead of zooming into the kill.
These were all very rare occurrences but they were there from time to time.
Gears of War: Judgment sounds exactly like any other Gears
of War game. The characters sound great, with the original actors returning for
their respective characters. The banter between the squads that was standard
for the first three games seems a little lacking at times in this entry. There
were times that I thought Paduk was literally just there because there had to
be four people in the squad. There was a lot of underdevelopment for several of
the characters in the game which left me feeling a little uncaring about what
happened to them as the game went on.
Gears of War: Judgment plays like any other Gears game. It’s
a cover-based third person shooter. The controls are tight and responsive, I
had no issue aiming or moving my character around the map. This game does move
a little quicker than previous entries, which is an absolute treat. There is an
added measure of verticality to the levels that previously was not present in
Gears of War. These maps have been designed to give the player some options
when going into combat.
The game is broken up into six chapters; each played in
short sections that never took me more than about twenty minutes to complete.
Overall, the game took me around ten to twelve hours to complete the campaign.
The narrative is set up as being told through flashbacks from each member of
Kilo Squad. Each section of the chapters has an extra option of doing what is
called a “declassified” mission. These side missions add an extra level of
difficulty to the missions, but add a little bit of extra story to the game
that was otherwise left out of the testimony. I had a couple complaints from
within the campaign, chiefly that the main villain is completely pointless. The
sole reason he’s even included is so that there is something enormous to kill
for the final mission. I was also hoping that since this was a prequel there
would be a lot more back story given to Cole and Baird, but they didn’t really
develop the characters as fully as I’d like to have seen. Finally, while the
declassified missions added a little story, sometimes it would have been nice
to have them add new objectives or make the player take a different route through
the level. There were a couple of the declassified missions that were just
frustrating to play through.
Multiplayer for the series is largely unchanged. The
strategy is still dive towards your enemy with a shotgun and hope you hit them
for an instant kill. Though, I did notice more players not using this strategy
than I have before, this was the predominant strategy online. Deathmatch and
King of the Hill make their return nestled with two other modes that are class
based. Survival has the player outlast ten waves of AI controlled Locust while
defending a point. If you lose the first time, there are two more chances to
win the game. Overrun is similar to survival except that players play as both
the Locust and the COG. In Overrun COG must defend three points throughout the
map, and the Locust must attack and destroy them. These modes replace Horde and
Beast mode and do an adequate job of that.
Overall, Gears of War: Judgment is a great game with a
couple of missed opportunities within it. Characters are hollow, the villain is
completely worthless as a villain, and the declassified objectives feel like an
artificial way to try and extend the campaign without actually expanding it. We’re
giving a score of 8 out of 10 on this one. See you online.
