Gears of War: Judgment isn't a bad game, but it's the weakest in the series by far.

User Rating: 6.5 | Gears of War: Judgment X360
Gears of War: Judgment is a prequel to the very popular trilogy of Gears of War. As a huge fan of all 3 of the previous Gears games, I was looking forward to this game. After I played through it, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.

The story of Judgment takes place shortly after Emergence Day, also known as the start of the Cog and Locust war. It's about 15 years before the events of the first game. The main premise is that Damon Baird and the rest of his squad are on trial for disobeying direct orders from their superior. Nearly the entire the campaign is played through flashbacks, as each member of Baird's squad retell events in their testimonies. It sounds like it should be an interesting and fun campaign, but it really felt kind of dull and not that exciting. Each previous Gears campaign had huge epic battles and many extremely emotional moments and climaxes. Judgment's campaign honestly didn't have any of that. The story in Judgment is extremely anti climatic. It's just very plain and just not nearly as great as any of the previous games. The declassified missions are interesting. Before just about every combat section you have the option to accept the declassified mission, which added some sort of stipulation or challenge. There will be things like time limits, fog or smoke to make it difficult to see, limited ammo, and certain weapons. It's something different from previous Gears campaigns. It's kinda fun sometimes, but at the same time it disrupts the overall flow of the story. It didn't really do anything to improve the lackluster campaign. You earn stars after each combat section, which can depend on if you did the declassified mission. It's a good addition maybe for another type of game mode, but it shouldn't be in the main campaign. It's also the shortest campaign of the series. It took me about 6 hours to beat the main campaign. The characters aren't too bad. Damon Baird and Augustus Cole are great as always, and the new additions of Paduk and Sofia are okay. But there really isn't a wide cast of interesting characters like each of the previous games. Overall, the campaign isn't terrible. It has the fun, classic Gears of War gameplay. It just didn't have any of the epic type moments or battles that made the each of the three main Gears of War campaigns so fun and memorable.

Judgment has a second, and much shorter campaign called Aftermath. It actually takes place during the events of Gears of War 3. The Aftermath campaign is only about an hour and a half long, but I thought it was actually better than the game's main campaign. What I liked about it was that it played just like Gears of War 3. It felt like fun classic Gears of War campaign gameplay. It didn't have all of those unnecessary additions that the main Judgment campaign had. It felt like I was playing the Gears of War that I loved. Unfortunately it's very short. I wish the main campaign played like the Aftermath campaign and didn't try to add additions that really had no place in a campaign. Had the main campaign played like Aftermath, I would've enjoyed it much more.

Multiplayer in Judgment feels a lot different from previous Gears games. They made it feel easier than previous games. I enjoyed the challenging multiplayer of the previous games, but it felt like they were trying to be like Call of Duty or Halo. They really got rid of the formula from previous Gears games to try to appeal to those who play these other shooters. It's not dramatically different, I mean it's still Gears of War. They added much more customization options. It's good additions, but the overall experience of the multiplayer is just okay. I don't see many people getting that hooked on and playing regularly for a long time, at least I didn't. There's very few maps as well. For some reason they only made about four maps, which is extremely low. The overall multiplayer experience of Judgment is just okay.

Horde mode was one of the best parts of both Gears of War 2 and Gears of War 3. Unfortunately, they got rid of that mode and replaced it with a new mode that shares some similarities in Survival mode. It has a similar basic concept of fighting waves of Locust cooperatively. It can be fun, it really is a fun mode to play. I prefer Horde mode personally and probably would've preferred another updated version of Horde mode, but Survival mode actually was enjoyable.

The gameplay of Judgment is fun. Any Gears of War game is gonna have fun combat. It felt like Epic Games didn't really go out of their way to add anything new to the combat. There's a couple new weapons and types of Locust, but there really isn't many new things beside that. I would've like to see a lot of huge boss battles and many more battles with huge behemoths of Locust, but there wasn't much of that. In fact, there's only one real boss battle, which is at the end of the game. Even that battle didn't feel very epic or anything. It was actually too easy.

Gears of War: Judgment is by no means a bad game. It can be enjoyed, but is really a disappointment. I loved all three of the main trilogy Gears of War games. I wanted to love this one too, but it really let me down. It felt like Epic Games didn't put half the effort into this game as they did with Gears 1, 2, and 3. This game is good for a rental. This game isn't worth $60. Either rent this game or wait for the price to go down and buy it used. I give Gears of War: Judgment a 6.5/10. Not a bad game, but just doesn't come close to the greatness that other games in the series have had