A completely botched attempt at reinvigorating the GoW series. It abandons its roots in favor of an "arcade" style game.
Campaign
The campaign of Judgment is what I was mainly looking forward to, despite despising the choice of setting, since I enjoy the Gears campaigns. Not surprisingly, Judgment fell hard in the campaign department. The story was completely lackluster (even more so than previous installments), the settings were indistinct and unmemorable, and the new stars/points/declassified missions system felt tacky and out of place. The Aftermath mini-campaign was an interesting addition, but it too felt rather out of place and would have been more suited to be DLC.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer is where Judgment completely collapses. I would like to add that Overrun is an interesting concept and plays out really well, but it in no way makes up for the rest of the multiplayer. This is where the game goes crazy with experimental changes, some of which seem to serve no purpose. Namely, the Blue COG vs. Red COG setup. What purpose does this serve? Every single Gears game beforehand had a beautifully working COG vs. Locust setup that added to the immersion and has become a staple of Gears multiplayer. There are so many games these days with two factions that don't necessarily work in regular versus, for instance Halo, which has had to compensate by game modes like Invasion and a red Spartan vs. blue Spartan multiplayer. But a game like Gears with two factions that are nearly equals, it makes absolutely no sense to go with the red vs. blue setup.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg in odd, needless changes. The next that strikes my attention is the completely redone weapon carrying system. Instead of having a D-pad weapon "wheel" that allows the use of two primaries and one pistol, Judgment scraps this for the old-school two-weapon Y button swap. Now, pistols serve almost no purpose. This also makes it so when carrying a meat- or boomshield, you will use your large primary weapon as you no longer have a universal secondary. This system also requires that grenades are to be on a hot-button and can be instantly thrown and CAN BE SPAWNED WITH. This essentially makes the multiplayer devolve into a frag-fest, reminiscent of the middle-era Call of Duty games.
Among other multiplayer flaws are the over-simplification of gametypes into Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Deathmatch and the removal of classic staples like Warzone and Annex, the completely inexcusable lack of maps (4!!!), and quite possibly the most annoying addition:
Character skins and more ridiculous weapon skins. Since Gears 3's overly-flamboyant weapon skins weren't immersion-killing enough, they decided to not only carry them on into Judgment, but also allow you to apply equally ridiculous skins to your character. I'm sorry, but when I play Gears, the last thing I want is for every ounce of immersion to be squeezed dry from the game via people running around with animated rainbow guns and characters in Halloween costumes.
However, some changes I do enjoy. While the removal of DBNO takes away a huge portion of the gameplay (specifically revives and executions), it opens up a whole new window of opportunity for anyone not using a shotgun. No longer are you seriously handicapped for choosing a non-insta-kill weapon. It also removes the problem of kill-stealing.
Survival
Not much to say here, since Survival mode is so much less than what Horde was. Survival is Overrun, except you fight against 10 waves of AI players. While it's still fun, I find absolutely no reason as to why it should replace Horde. Time constraints? Laziness? We'll never know.
In conclusion, I did not find Judgment disappointing since I had very low expectations for it to begin with. Rather, it confirmed my suspicions and then some. Overall, it feels devolved and "mainstream-ized" to fit in with the likes of Call of Duty, completely abandoning everything that made Gears of War unique.