This game is underrated

I’ve been playing through some of the old Gears games in preparation for 4 and it occurred to me that Judgment is actually a really solid Gears game.

It came out at a time when the world didn’t need another Gears and without the marketing push you might expect. Basically it felt like an expansion to Gears 3. But despite what some would have you believe, Judgment offered a lot of interesting changes to the series, some that worked better than others.

Being the last of the 360 Gears titles, PCF/Epic had pretty much mastered the engine and movement system with Judgment. Seriously - the strafing, wall bouncing, and overall mobility in this game is so sublime and snappy, and even more refined than 3 (which is saying something).

I must mention how great the moba-inspired Overrun mode is. People always complain about Gears gameplay feeling stale, so they made an entirely new mode that featured various classes that each had different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. Sadly, it was arguably too advanced for a console audience to ever pick it up en masse. I played this mode for hours in the free demo and the full game and adored the extra strategy it required.

If you’re thinking about giving the old games a try, don’t skip Judgment. The game looks and plays great on Xbox One. The campaign gives you a bunch of horde-like arenas with an extra difficulty modifier. The standard multiplayer is there but I’d say there’s no more than 1000 people nowadays on at peak hours. Definitely check out the aforementioned Overrun if you have not already, as we likely won’t see it return.

I guess my takeaway is that a rote Gears game is still better than 99% of the shooters out there.

I think 2 is the most underrated. At least Judgement comes up in conversations.

@hunkulese: I could agree with that. I took a break from games in 2008 so I missed out on 2 until later. It's still the one I've only played through once. Would be nice to play it again but I'm waiting for them to send the codes for pre-ordering 4.

@hunkulese: 2 has my favorite Horde mode. With all the map DLC especially, it's just endlessly fun.

3's is good too, but it felt more tower defense-y and a little more frustrating solo. 2 struck a golden balance in difficulty and simplicity.

I enjoyed Judgement. Though I was a competitive multiplayer guy and i never finished the campaign. What I remember of the campaign is that it was fine. I liked the modifiers. But I remember none of the actual fights. I liked the other gears campaigns more. I wanted to play with Dom and Marcus even though I think they are stupid characters, they are still lead characters unlike Baird.

The overrun mode was just a much better mode than the Beast Mode in Gears 3. That was a lot of fun to play and it looks like they are bringing some of the class systems from that into gears 4 horde. Judgement should have had horde. Its what a huge portion of the audience loves to play and it didnt have it. So I think a lot of people didn't even want to get it just from that.

I really wish they would bring the Breechshot back because it was my favorite gun. Basically the no scope snipers dream gun. Most satisfying gun in all the games for me to use.

Gears 2 was my least favorite just because of the multiplayer. They tried to force the lancer into being a good gun and it really ruined it for the meta of shotguns which was more fun and random. But non-multiplayer people are gonna disagree with me on that one. Also the servers were terrible for a week or two after launch. Some of the maps in 2 were incredible though. Some of the best maps in the series. The campaign in 2 was really cool though. I liked all the gears games and 2 is still an amazing game just slightly worse than 1 and 3 in my opinion.

Yeah, I liked Judgment. The things I didn't like so much was the areas you'd go into and you'd basically be playing a horde match; it took away from the story structure to me. The game wasn't as good as the previous ones as I felt the story wasn't as strong, just for what it was, and for how things felt to go against the flow of it. While I didn't care for the events that took place, I did like the two new characters. I still thought it was great though. The first three are in the nines to me, Judgment is in the eights. Also, many people spell the Judgment wrong... I've been playing Gears myself recently since four is coming, though I wasn't planning on playing Judgment again in that process.

This is honestly why many people including myself think the game isn't great.

Judgment is without a doubt for me at the bottom of the list of Gears but it's not garbage. I like Baird as a character and the story was pretty well done. The idea of a more arcade like campaign seemed cool but I think it ruined the flow. They also did the mistake of putting new Locust that had not shown up in previous games even though it was a prequel. On the multiplayer front I think they made a mistake going for the Call of Duty crowd as it pushed away a lot of Gears fans. I think trying to speed the pace up was pretty fun for a mix up and I enjoyed free for all (Would like that in Gears 4 but I doubt we'll see it back). The survival and over run modes had some merit but it wasn't as good as Horde. In the end I just view Judgment as an experiment that was just OK.

@frostyryan said:

True. There's also a reason the changes made to multiplayer weren't conducive to competitive play and the community never picked the game up.

Personally I liked the campaign levels because they trimmed the story fat and cut to the combat bits and had plenty of replayability. Not that I went back and replayed that game much. None of my friends bought it.

I liked it when it came out. I specifically liked that they added free for all, because I don't play online and it's fun with bots. I also like that you can finally fall off of ledges. Oh, the story was neat too. Baird sucks in Gears 1 and 2 (after replaying those) but I don't remember him being as bad in Judgement.

I also liked the idea of the campaign mode challenges, but it made me care about the story as much. I think it was the best-playing one in campaign, or tied with 3.

@haxdax: Yeah, I think Overrun is really the hidden gem of Judgment as a package. You can tell they meticulously balanced the character abilities and map lanes so that the game would have depth and longevity. The competitive potential was there. The regular multiplayer? Not so much in the balance department. It's so easy to cheese people in that game with the melee and the vertical maps didn't have the same symmetry or balance to them. But no stopping power was a godsend after retro abusers in 3.

I think the Markza might be coming back in 4.

And GoW Ascension is a pretty good GoW game, I think people were just burnt out on the franchise at the time, so more of the same but not quite as good just doesnt cut it.

@boozak: Isn't that the God of War game where they completely changed the counter mechanic? I remember that pissing me off.

@huntad: Yep, I just remember it being faster and rewarding you for playing well, and I thought the time power was pretty cool. But it wasnt quite as epic as the other games.

I've had the digital version for a while, and I'm keeping my expectations at "should be pretty good." Some day I'll play through it and probably enjoy it ok.

I already own these digitally if anyone wants them:

Judgment - HFJ2C-2J29T-7TD7T-7FW4P-2VDTZ

Gears 1 - 4KY73-KFGVC-6W7Q3-9FCCV-CRF2Z

edit: taken

@dharmabum:

Thanks Duder! I took the Gears Judgement Code, I've been meaning to play it for a while now. I'm a huge fan of the first 3, but never got around to playing Judgement.

@favoritobandito: No problem, glad it didn't go to waste.

The lack of a real horde is what to me kept Judment from being one of the best gears. I also don't like that after each mission you go straight to a scoreboard basically stating you how did instead of just letting the narrative unfold naturally. They should have done the Halo scoring method and just let it be a separate mode.

Overall though Judgment was great though. The minor changes the made to how you throw grenades and the responsiveness to weapon swapping was minor but fantastic. Also the classified sections were legitimately challenging if you chose to do them. I have a soft spot for it because I'm probably the only person in the world who freaking loves Damon Baird as a character.

Judgment is a solid game. It's just underwhelming compared to 3. I got it for free through some competition at work, so I would probably be way less charitable if I paid full price for it. People were likely burnt-out on the Gears formula when it came out, which is why it got a lukewarm reception.

Baird is a poor choice for protagonist, but there were some genuine improvements. The scoring and bonus objectives were fun to play around with.