Judge, Jury, and Execution by Lancers
The idea of using a chainsaw attached to a gun to cut enemies into pieces might come across to some as a problem with modern videogames, and the concept of overly muscled dudes with soul-patches and gravelly voices wielding these guns doesn’t necessarily help promote videogames as art.
It is easy for critics of the industry to forget that videogames, while they certainly can exist as art, also exist for entertainment, and not every game needs to have some deep philisophical “substance” to qualify itself.
To overlook Epic Games’ Gears of War franchise because of its seemingly “simple” aspirations would be a great mistake for any owner of an Xbox 360, and to miss out on People Can Fly’s newest addition to the series in Gears of War: Judgment is alike to condemning yourself to guilt in a Locust-occupied courthouse.
People Can Fly, the creators of the tragically advertised Bulletstorm, have taken the classic Gears formula and molded it into a faster-paced, more matured version of itself in GoW: Judgment.
The game takes place before the other Gears games and begins with Lieutenant Damon Baird, the wise-cracking tech specialist from previous Gears games, and his Kilo squad being arrested for disobeying direct orders by Ezra Loomis, an angry Colonel of the COGs. Kilo squad, including fan-favourite Augustus Cole (The Cole Train, baby!) and newcomers to the franchise, Sophia Hendrik – a cadet – and Garron Paduk – formerly of the wrong side of the Pendulum Wars – are brought to trial and told to recount their story and explain their actions. This set-up serves as a frame story to base the majority of the game within and allows for some interesting twists to the typical Gears of War mechanics.
The story essentially boils down to each member of Kilo squad explaining their part in the “treason” while the player (or players – the fantastic co-op of Gears is still here!) lives out the testimony in question.
New to the series is the “Declassify” option, which plays into the story in some truly innovative ways. Before each enemy encounter, there is a safe-room, similar to what we saw in Left for Dead, where the players can stock up on ammunition and weapons and opt to declassify the mission, allowing for better scores and more stars when the mission ranking screen appears at the end. Every mission has its own declassification, which result in mutators for the battle, such as poor visibility, low ammo to start, the restriction of certain weapons, or even environmental effects like wind. When the player chooses to declassify, more dialogue opens up as the current Kilo squad member explains the situation the team found themselves in.
The story in Gears of War: Judgment, while not a “roller coaster ride” by any means, is functional and serves its purpose without much exposition or fluff. Both Baird and Cole seem subdued in comparison to their characters in the main trilogy, but this being a prequel, it makes sense within the fiction. While I certainly missed some of the characters’ personalities, I think it is fair to say that anyone who found Baird to be a bit obnoxious in other Gears games will find Judgment more to their liking.
Upon starting the game, players will immediately notice new colour schemes at work. No longer variations of brown, dark brown, grey, and grey-brown (Yup, that’s a colour now), the set pieces in Judgment are much brighter, sporting blues, reds, and yellows previously unknown to the world. This use of colour is an apt metaphor for how People Can Fly have re-infused life into the franchise.
The gameplay is where this game reaches new heights as the definitive third-person cover-based shooter on the Xbox. People Can Fly have remapped grenades from their previously janky positioning on the d-pad to the much easier-to-reach LB, and added weapon switching onto the Y button. These brilliant changes allow for a faster, more frenetic style of play, and personally, I have never used grenades in a game as much as I have in Judgment, to quite explosive effect.
One other great decision was the inclusion of the “Smart Spawn System”, another element similar to Left for Dead. This new system allows for the hordes of enemies in each mission to be swapped out for others in different playthroughs. For instance, the players fight a wave of tickers and wretches but get wiped out. On reloading from the checkpoint, the players might face maulers and grenadiers instead. The addition of varying enemy types and the arcade-styled nature of collecting stars for missions allow for extra reasons to go back and try the campaign multiple times.
I had a fantastic time working through the campaign in co-op, but the majority of my play-time has been spent racking up medals and ribbons in the online component, which, while limited, is still a great experience.
People Can Fly saw Horde mode’s success and decided to tweak it into their new class-based Survival game type. In Survival, a team of five players choose between being an engineer, soldier, scout, or medic – each with their own perks – and defend a covered emergence hole from ten waves of escalating Locust enemies. Unlike Horde, players can not build barricades (They are already placed in the map) or turrets (With the exception of the engineer class, who is able to repair damaged barricades and drop turrets on a cool-down timer). If the Locust manage to break through and take down the e-hole, the next location on the map is unlocked where another must be defended. If the players fail to defend the second, the third section of the map is opened where a generator must be protected. Failing that starts the mode over again, with players losing their progress. Throughout each third of Survival, the humans maintain their wave level, which culminates in some intense hold-outs at the generator, with players hoping to get to the tenth and final wave.
In the versus modes, Judgment feels lacking, particularly when compared to Gears of War 3′s many game types. Aside from free-for-all, team deathmatch, and domination, which are all standard multiplayer fare, there lies a gem – Overrun.
Overrun is Survival mode with a twist – players control the Locust side against humans playing the COG, switching teams only when the generator is destroyed. Unfortunately, Overrun does not feature the number of Locust creatures that Beast mode did, but still, playing as a Corpser and blowing through the enemies and their fortifications to destroy their e-hole just can’t get old.
As someone who only casually played the previous titles in the series, and hardly touched the multiplayer aside from some Horde and Beast modes, Gears of War: Judgment has completely changed my opinion on the franchise. I can’t stress enough how much fun it was to blast through the campaign (and the added “Aftermath” missions, which fill in some time gaps in Gears of War 3) in co-op, and my disappointment in the game having to end reigns as my biggest complaint.
While Gears of War: Judgment is not a strong example of games as art, it functions incredibly well as an entertaining videogame. Despite a weak showing of multiplayer modes and a lack of a particularly exotic story, Judgment is a well-polished, forward-thinking title in an already strong franchise. With the improvements to gameplay mechanics and the perfectly executed co-op play, this game is a must-purchase for anyone that owns an Xbox 360.
