Gears of War: Judgment Review (360)

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.