locust |

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Developer: People Can Fly/Epic Games

Release Date: 3/19/2013

Available Exclusively On

Gears of War is the Xbox 360’s best series and one of the best of this generation. It introduced cinematic gameplay in a gritty post-apocalyptic world with revolutionary gunplay and cover systems. Judgment proves that all series run out of steam. It’s the worst Gears game, but not terrible. People Can Fly (of Painkiller fame) took the driver’s seat thanks to their successful collaboration with Epic during the development of Bulletstorm. Judgment isn’t anything like the previous games in a bad way. It’s dragged down by balance issues, linearity, and a poor story.

Let’s start with the story. It takes place years before Delta Squad was formed and Baird was a lieutenant. He’s accompanied by UIR Paduk, Sofia Hendrick, and Augustus Cole. They are arrested and are being held in a trial in the middle of a battlefield by Colonel Loomis. You play their flashbacks as testimonies. Honestly, the story never goes anywhere, and there’s nothing gripping about it. You just play as each character in short 30- to 45-minute chapters. Once you catch up to the present moment, you play one more chapter, and that’s it. Nothing interesting at all. Even the bonus chapter called Aftermath is pretty lame. It takes place after Gears of War 3, but all you’re doing is finding a boat to get out to sea. There’s nothing revealing about the overall story.

Challenge and pacing take a back seat as well. Judgment is all about the kill count, and tactical combat takes a back seat. All the enemy’s health has been dialed back a lot, so you can run around pumping them with lead. It got so bad that 5–6 enemies would pile up on you or an ally. This would never happen in previous Gears games. I honestly rarely used cover and just went around blasting enemies with the Gnasher. The game is broken up into sections, with score totals at the end. The only awesome thing about Judgement that impressed me was the declassified missions. These are giant red gear logos on the wall at the beginning of each section, which makes the game a bit more challenging. Ranging from time limits to certain weapons, more enemies, more defenses, etc. These also increase your star rating, which is used to unlock items and achievements.

Halfway through the game, it starts getting extremely repetitive. I honestly almost hated the game, but the action itself kept me hooked because it was faster-paced than previous games and a bit more exciting. There really isn’t much new added to this game either. There’s one new enemy that acts as a mini-Berserker. Once you shoot it, it will grow bigger, and only headshots will kill it. There are a few new weapons, but they are UIR weapons. The Booshka is a grenade launcher, and the Markza is a sniper rifle with a fast firing rate. There’s also another rifle that is nearly as deadly as a Longshot but fires four rounds before reloading. I wanted more content; honestly, even the levels were generic and boring. It’s the same hallways and battlefields over and over. The overall game is just really disappointing.

Once you finish the campaign, there’s really no reason to go back unless you really want all the stars, find the hidden COG tags, or play co-op. The multiplayer is probably the best out of all the Gears games, but it lacks content. There aren’t many maps, and Horde mode is absent, but there’s a substitute mode called Survival and Overrun. Survival pits a Gears team against an AI-controlled locust, and Overrun lets players control the locusts. This mode is intense and another small step in the evolution of the Gears multiplayer suite. The classic modes are back and feel as solid as ever, but the lack of maps may bore players quicker than in previous games.

Overall, Judgment is a huge disappointment. The campaign is generic, short, and almost boring; the tactical side of Gears is taken away for running and gunning. Multiplayer suffers from a lack of maps, but at least there’s a lot of customization stuff to unlock for your characters. You now get rewarded for all those kills and ribbons you earn in the form of prizeboxes. The graphics look great and push the 360 to its limits, but the console is seriously aged, and it shows. Judgment is a fun weekend rental or bargain purchase. At this point, Gears of War needs a reboot to keep going.

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Developer: Epic

Release Date: 11/7/2008

Available Exclusively On

I have been hyped about GoW2 ever since I finished the first game, and with information slowly leaking out of Epic’s mouth, I just couldn’t help myself from getting all giddy and mushy inside. Ok enough, seriously, Gears 2 is just amazing on so many levels with tons of new multiplayer modes, weapons, enemies, environments, etc. The game is just a whole new beast, and old Gears fans will not be disappointed. First, let’s start off with the campaign. Do you remember Gears One being huge and sprawling with wide vistas and beautiful architecture? Ok, well, that was nothing compared to Gears 2. You really do have wide open vistas that stretch as far as the eye can see, and they are absolutely breathtaking, especially on an HDTV. The graphics are still what we’ve grown to love, but with better lighting, higher resolutions, and more objects on-screen, everything is just crunchier and more big, beautiful, and hectic than ever before.

Speaking of crunching, the game’s audio has been tuned up, and everything sounds more gruesome and brutal than ever before. Headshots pop and sound and feel more satisfying than before; curb-stomping an enemy looks more painful (and sounds it!); sawing Locust in half with the Lancer feels more powerful and just looks, feels, and sounds nastier. The whole game is like this, and it feels like a true sequel instead of just Gear of War 1.5. All of your core elements are here, like the great cover system, the Roadie Run (TM!!), the voice actors, characters, Locust, and story, which are all set in place, but you are a bigger part of the whole thing, and you feel more like a participant than a spectator. The story is more involved, in which the Light Mass bombing failed, the Locust are coming back with their full force, and the Delta Squad is sent in to rip out the heart—three of them! Anyways, Dom is trying to find his wife along the way, and a few new characters are introduced but aren’t fully developed since they don’t make many appearances, like Dizzy, Tai, Chairman Prescott, and a certain dad who will go unnamed. The story goes even further with 41 collectibles you can find that you can read and help evolve the back story some more. Gone are the COG tags people; now you gotta find papers and more of them too.

Getting back to the campaign’s weapons, there are about double the amount with a whole new weapon class: heavy weapons. You still have the Lancer, Boltok pistol, Shotgun, Longshot, Boomshot, Snub—you know all those—but now you have better, crunchier, and kick-buutt weapons like the Hammerburst (gone is that dinky little Locust assault rifle), Gorgon Pistol (a semi-auto three-round burst Locust pistol), the Mulcher (a heavy weapons KICK @$$ mini-gun that you CRANK!), a Mortar (yes, like a WWII mortar, only better without all those Krauts), the Scorcher (a flamethrower that you can blind fire!), Ink Grenades (go figure), and a whole bunch others. These weapons feel powerful and sound powerful, and they are all useful—in fact, it’ll be hard to choose which gun you want to use half the time! Now this time around, you also get to use more “vehicles” like the Centaur, which is a monster truck tank…a Reaver, a Brumak, you know, just cool “vehicles” like that. Yes, they all feel powerful and are just amazing to “drive.”.

The campaign together is just more riveting and more cinematic thanks to the HUGE open vistas and massive hordes of enemies, and the campaign is just perfectly built. The only problem is that it’s about the same length as the original, and there’s room for a sequel. I just really can’t express how great it is to feel upfront in Gears and really drive things home with all of the awesome weapons, graphics, and audio. Of course, I have to mention the new awesome Locust like the Tickers (little ticking and crawling “bombs”), the Kantus (these guys summon Tickers and can resurrect downed Locust), Brumaks (only seen in GoW1 for the PC and at the end of the fight at Fenix’s mansion), cooler-looking Reavers, a whole “Boomer Class” like Butcher Boomers, Maulers (which have spiked shields you can carry!), Grinders (which carry Mulchers and yell “GRIND!”), Flamer Boomers, etc. The whole old crew of enemies is here with great new ones, and they are all fun to kill, and the game is perfectly balanced.

Speaking of balanced, let’s move on to multiplayer. Ah yes, good ‘ol Gears multiplayer is back with a ton of new modes along with the old ones. First off, you all remember Annex, Execution, Warzone, etc. Now here are the really fun modes that make me really get into Gears multiplayer. Horde. Just one word: horde. You and four other people are pitted against 50 waves of increasingly difficult enemy AI. Yes, this is addictive and super fun, and you need a couple of hours on your hands if you and your teammates are really good. Getting through all 50 waves can take a good couple of hours, but boy, isn’t it fun? Just imagine one guy sawing a drone in half while the guy next to him is popping off headshots at Wretches and Boomers. You are at the enemy spawn point, sticking grenades on walls, and that last quiet guy is just hiding in the middle somewhere, scorching Locust. Ah, it is joyous and wonderful at best, and you are sure to come back until you clear all 50 waves (I could only get to 36).

Now there is Wingman, which is 5 teams of 2 against each other, and you can only kill with executions (more on those later) or one-shot kills like a grenade or something. This is extremely adrenaline-inducing since all you can rely on is your buddy, and if he dies, it’s just you. Meatflag is very interesting since it utilizes GoW2’s new “meat shield” system, where you can press A near a downed enemy (even in single-player!) and use them as a “human shield,” as most of you would know. Other executions include the classic curb stomp, but if you press Y, you can do “long executions” with other weapons, like a golf club swing with the Longshot, or just use your fists and beat the guy up, but back to the multiplayer mode. In Meatflag, it’s like capturing the flag, but you have to bring the locust back to your base, so he’s a moving, shooting, ugly flag. This is super fun and an original twist on Capture the Flag. There are a few other modes, but these three are the “blue light” modes that really stand out and are super addictive. If you haven’t noticed, the player count has gone up by 2, so now there are 10 people playing instead of 8. This makes things more hectic and fun, as you can tell. Thankfully, the online mode plays perfectly with no server issues, and there are a ton of new maps to play that are very well laid out, which you’ll grow to love.

Before I close this out, I have to mention the new achievement system. For once, a game updates you on your achievements in-game while you’re playing without you having to pause and go into the guide. Let’s say you’re aiming for the new Seriously 2.0 achievement. cough It’s, oh, nothing, only 100,000 kills, so every 100 kills you get a widget that will pop out at the side and update you on this. Try the new Said the Spider to the Fly (killing 10 enemies will grenade wall tags), and every 5 kills you’ll get updated. This is very helpful and is just a reminder of why you should keep playing this wonderful game. I love this new achievement system, and more developers (multi-platform or otherwise!) need to take note of it. This takes full advantage of the system, so please learn! Now, this game isn’t perfect.

There are a few flaws, as we’ve seen in the core of all of this before (GoW1 I gave a perfect 10), but there are still a few bugs, and they were tweaked like the cover system. Turn the left stick a certain way, and a little sketch will show up on-screen telling you what Marcus will do. While this is fine and all, it’s just not perfect. There are times when you’ll want Marcus to roll a certain way, but he’ll snap against a wall. Yes, they let you change the buttons for this, but it’s still annoying. Multiplayer can be a bit challenging for people who aren’t very good at it. Gears veterans will smear you on the floor within seconds and will make a lot of newcomers hate multiplayer. There are mainly glitches that are only noticeable on insane difficulties, like collision issues that let enemies shoot through walls that will kill you in one hit, etc. These are super minor, but we STILL have seen all of this before two years ago, and I just can’t wait for Gears of War 3.