Hey, so it's been over a month since Gears of War Judgment came out. Most likely you forgot that the launch ever happened or you were just not paying attention to the game in the first place. Don't worry, I forgot that the game came out too and I fucking love these games. I don't consider myself too prevalent on these forums so I constantly feel the need to reiterate my passion for this franchise. Ignited by countless dumb online matches with friends in Gears 1, I've played the multiplayer of all of these games right into the ground so it hurts that my feelings for Judgment are the way they are which I will finally get to explaining.

Get Off My Lawn?

I wanted to like this game. I consider myself a fairly open guy that can accept changes and hearing about some of the changes in this game at first worried me, but then I accepted them because I wanted to see what would happen if the formula was messed with just a bit. Well it turns out that hundreds of hours spread across several years in 3 games that more or less share the exact same control scheme does create a negative effect when the 4th (arguably unneeded) game in the series decides that now is the time stop you from switching weapons via the D-Pad and puts a greater emphasis on the use of grenades.

Now I'm not saying that the new control scheme is worse, but for me, personally, it just sucks and it became more than just an issue of having trouble adapting. There was a specific playstyle for me when it came to online matches. I constantly used the Tac/Com option (the batman vision mode like thing that gives you situational awareness) and it was easy to reach by holding down the left bumper. Well too bad because now if you want to use the thing you'll have to do it by pressing down on the D-Pad and you can't keep it on forever. That right there was a big negative for me, I essentially lost having that "sixth sense" that was so readily accessible and helped me move around the map efficiently.

Team? Hello? ...Bueller?

There is also a shift in the pacing of the gameplay/multiplayer matches that I don't exactly care for. Gears 3 started this by speeding up the run speed of characters and it could just be me but that pace feels even faster in Judgment. There is a greater focus now on Team Deathmatch where you can basically spawn as soon as you die and matches now feel CoD esque in the sense that you want to get back into the game as fast as you can, roadie run like a speed demon across the map till you run into someone, kill or be killed, and repeat the cycle.

That feeling wasn't as large as it is with this game versus Gears 3. In 3 you still had access to more weapons which allowed you to have a more diverse set of tools to approaching situations in the right way versus only having two weapons that you can swap between in Judgment and having to choose between a rifle or shotgun when you first spawn. Hell you can actually shoot rifles/shotguns/just about whatever while holding a shield or meatshield. If that doesn't encourage more lone wolf styles of play then I don't know what does. There was a sense of tactical combat and a deliberate slower pace when moving around the map in the last game and if you're laughing about the concept of Gears multiplayer being tactical then you clearly haven't played with teams. No, constantly rolling into people with shotguns does not count as "tactical".

Get to The Point, You Think This Game is Shit?

Not exactly. Gears of War Judgment is well made and fucked with the formula just enough to create its own flavor unique to just this game. I think that if you are not as crazy as me when it comes to playing multiplayer in the past games then you will have a great damn time with this. I'm not going to get into the other negatives like lack of content, a bare bones story, and the weird shift to having a red vs. blue thing going on in multiplayer instead of just keeping the Locust (did they run out of space on the disc?!).

All I know is that I simply don't like this game. This is a game where I assumed I would feel at home (while simultaneously wondering why someone rearranged the furniture) but instead I feel like an outsider, I didn't finish the campaign (even though I think it's the better part of this game) and I didn't play near as much multiplayer matches as I would have expected. It's just a bummer to end my ties with the franchise on such a poor note, but on the bright side I now can go ahead with getting rid of my Xbox that I've been looking forward to doing for quite some time. So yay?