gears update
GEARS OF WAR JUDG[E]MENT has zero combat design. and lots of colour. there are some okayish things, i think, like there’s one or two ok new weapons, and the mechanical changes arent necessarily negative. but they introduced a scoring system in the stupidest possible way, i.e. by scaling every single encounter up enough to justify scoring them individually. this leads to things like killing 8 boomers in a single encounter in a small room, and then you turn on the modifier because why wouldnt you, what are you, a chicken who doesnt want the 100% unfiltered experience? and it just gets more irritating most of the time. oh and enemy waves are semi-randomised so if you die the enemies will be totally different when you respawn which can be… less than satisfying
also there are horde bits where you have to set up turrets and stuff. i hate that shit. the bad guy is cool tho. you see him in a single shot until the end, when you kill his mount and then someone else kills him in a cutscene. his name is karn as in carnage. the final fight takes place at the base of the courtroom stairs you see on the title screen. there’s a morgue in the courthouse where dozens of cog tags are hung on a statue. it’s pretty good. also cog tags are the collectable again, which is good. marcus fenix taught me that it’s important to remember the dead and i was perturbed by the fact that gears 2 did not give me the opportunity to.
my knowledge of this game going in was that they had hired a Writer to write it and boy, they hired a shit one. and didn’t hire any designers. it’s not good.
e: there is a bonus chapter made from gears 3 leftovers and it’s night and day. there’s actually level design! it’s nearly entirely good! some of the combat situations are still a little iffy but gd. also strong cop content. cop fountains and cop walls abound.