Xbox |OT|

[G2ThaUNiT]

After finishing Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, what a fantastic trip down memory lane, I decided to go ahead and give Gears 4 and 5 a playthrough as I had stopped with the Gears franchise after Judgement. Finished the story for Gears 4 last night. Graphically and presentation-wise, absolute masterpiece! Even for an 8-year-old game, the graphics, art style, and game mechanics are insane!! The windflare sequences were quite a sight to behold and animations are so realistic. There were some legit great action set pieces that had me going "that was so cool!" but, that's where the positiveness ends.

Combat didn't have that same feeling of weight or intensity to it as the original trilogy (roadie run looked and felt like a casual jog as one example) Did not like JD or Del in particular at all in terms of new characters (way too much MCU-like humor for such a dark and gritty franchise) the Swarm aren't as interesting of antagonists as the Locust, especially since they're just a variation of the Locust, which also feels like a cop-out. The robot enemies were annoying as hell and last for way too long. And the story itself was very safe. Not much really happened. You literally spend an entire Act just trying to hunt down the Snatcher that took Marcus lol. Although I can't ding the game too much on the story as Gears 1 had a very simplistic story as well and that games biggest focuses were the graphics, presentation, and gameplay. The latter being one of Gears 4 biggest weaknesses though imo.

Not a bad game overall, but it didn't really bring much to the table at all in terms of a proper sequel outside of being made on much better tech. Which it definitely shows! 6/10

Although I hear Gears 5 did fix a lot of these problems, so I'm looking forward to getting into that story.