Gears of War: Judgment Review

Game: Gears of War: Judgment

Developer: Epic Games/People Can Fly

Publisher: Microsoft

For fans of: Third person shooters, chainsaws, disobedience. 

            With beautiful landscapes, smooth gunplay, and fun new game types, Gears of War: Judgment looks and feels like the trilogy that came before. Unfortunately, Judgment’s campaign has been striped down to the core leaving a skeleton of what used to be. Judgment’s plot precedes the original trilogy and stars Baird and Cole with former Kilo squad mates Sophia and Paduk. Kilo is on trial for disobeying orders while the destruction of Halvo Bay carries on outside the courthouse. The player assumes control of the plot by playing through the testimonies of each Kilo squad member. Despite Judgment’s breathtaking graphics and familiar cover and shoot action, getting fully immersed in the story is a daunting challenge.

            Like previous Gears games, Judgment follows an Act system with each Act containing several chapters. Each chapter of Judgment’s campaign uses a star system that awards players for style of kills and minimal deaths. At the end of each chapter, Judgment pauses to show a stat screen based on performance. The gamer is torn from the immersion each time this happens causing the overall experience to suffer. To make matters worse, most of the sections can be completed in five minutes or less making it impossible to fully consume the player.

            Each chapter also offers a declassified mission that aids the progression of the stars. These missions add extra difficulty to the level such as impaired vision, stronger enemies, and weapon restrictions. The declassified missions are explained as extra testimony that was left out, however, most of them will leave players scratching their head wondering why something so miniscule was omitted. Some make no sense at all. For example, the declassified missions with weapon restrictions don’t explain why Kilo squad was only able to use these particular guns.

            Judgment’s combat feel very reminiscent to previous Gears of War games with a few minor changes. The controller scheme is now more relatable to first person shooters. Gone are the directional pad options for switching between weapons and grenades. Instead weapons are switched to and from using the Y button while grenades have gravitated to the left bumper. Grenades can also be thrown without aiming them first, however, aiming is still an option by holding the left bumper down rather than just tapping to throw it. These changes feel good yet at the same time, they take away from the experience. The pistol slot merged with a primary weapon slot narrowing a player’s choice. The desire to flirt with different weapons is more of a risk without having a pistol option for comfort. Furthermore, choosing special weapons like the Boomshot or the Torque Bow now require special ammunition. The regular ammo only feeds into basic weapons leaving the rare onyx ammunition to replenish special guns.

            Another new addition to Judgment is Horde mode in the middle of the campaign. These moments, at first, feel genuine and fun. However, after playing three rounds of this in multiple

different chapters, the experience grows dull. The entire story comes to a stand still as Kilo squad defends a lobby. These moments tend to grow even duller with the games AI. Instead of facing down smart AI using special techniques, the number of enemies is doubled, most of which will rush your position forcing you out of cover. This makes for some fun combat situations, but overall it disempowers the player’s thought process. On that same note, Judgment’s AI does attempt to spice things up a bit if the player dies. Each section features different types of enemies each time it is tackled. For example, one sequence may provide Grinders that turn into Boomers the next time it is played.

             Judgment’s plot is where the game suffers the most. Newcomers to the franchise will feel lost most of the time and will be unable to understand the subtle comments. No explanation or back-story is provided for any members of Kilo Squad and only Gears of War veterans will know whom the blonde haired smart ass and his thrashball super star friend are. Little quips about Cole’s past as a thrashball player, Baird’s engineer capabilities, Sophia’s Onyx Guard status, and Paduk’s hatred for the team he fights for are never flushed out and explained.

            Judgment tones down the franchises use of extended cut scenes, which is never a bad idea, however the story telling suffers greatly. Kilo squad really comes off as quite boring as they scarcely speak to each other and the only dialogue to be heard is the testimony narrating everything the player is doing. It’s not much unlike watching a football game announced by John Madden. The dialogue feels forced as well with corny, “lets go get em” comments and horribly written jokes for Baird. Every now and then he will hit a homerun, but his sarcasm is often stale. Cole Train hardly speaks at all during Judgment’s campaign, which is a rare sight for any veteran of the franchise. He feels more like a dummy sidekick than an important character to the narrative.

         

   Two villains make first time appearances in Judgment, The COG’s own Colonel Loomis as the man overseeing the trial, and General Karn as the locust leading the attack on Halvo Bay. Loomis is a jerk for no apparent reason. Sure he is angry with Kilo squad for their crimes, however as the plot unfolds Loomis is unapproachable. He disregards Paduk’s warning of General Karn simply because the two used to be enemies. He talks down to Sophia because of her rank, and he is a jerk to Baird for no reason. There really isn’t much to say of General Karn because Judgment fails to build him up as a villain to be hated. He is shown once during the first act and only spoken of as being a super bad guy throughout the rest of the game. The only motive players have to hate Karn is the fact that he is leading the bad guys, nothing more.

            On the bright side, Judgment offers an additional campaign titled, “Aftermath.” This campaign is one act and takes place during the events of Gears of War 3. Aftermath doesn’t use the arcade style star system nor does it have declassified missions. Overall the experience was fleshed out very well and contained more story telling elements reminiscent to previous Gears of War titles.

            Judgment’s multiplayer is also a very sub par experience compared to what Gears of War veterans are used to. With only four maps shipped in the retail game, there is hardly any diversity and boredom is quick to sink in. The combat looks, plays, and feels almost exactly like Gears of War 3. Overrun and Survival, on the other hand, make up the crown jewels of Judgment’s experience. Overrun is a mixture of the Horde and Beast modes of previous games. Each team has the opportunity to play as both the COG and the Locust as the latter tries to destroy a generator powering the Hammer of Dawn. Survival plays more like Horde as players try to survive a maximum of ten waves.

            Gears of War Judgment provide a mediocre experience at best. The sub par campaign and multiplayer overshadow the beautiful graphics, smooth gameplay, and fun cooperative modes. The Gears of War trilogy ended wonderfully and in turn left gargantuan shoes to fill, unfortunately Judgment wasn’t up to the task.