Ten years ago, on November 4th, "Gears of War" introduced the gaming world to revolutionary gameplay as a cover-based third person shooter. Its dark tone, harsh gothic architecture, and trademark close-style combat spoke to mature audiences, forming an entire community of Gears fans that only grew larger and larger as the franchise evolved.
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Almost marking GOW's ten year anniversary, "The Coalition" takes the reigns from "Epic Games" and aims to introduce new fans to the Gears world. The eight-year-olds who saw the spectacular blood and gore but who were never allowed to play can finally get their hands dirty.
The Campaign
The detail etched into every scene, environment, armor, weapons, and characters had a GOW defining feature to them while introducing a nature element that gave a theme of renewal and growth to the game. In fact, the first time we play as JD, we get to see an animal distinctly native to wilds of Sera. Sure, we've seen pigs and dogs in the slums of the Stranded encampments, but Oscar's horse-looking friend he calls Ugly is the first in the Gears series that we don't recognize. However, Ugly isn't the only new history of Sera that Coalition had unveiled.
Introducing us to events prior to the first GOW game, the prolog drops us in two different distinct and table-turning places in time, the first being the raid of Aspho Feilds during The Pendulum Wars. In a brief description from Gearspedia:
The Pendulum Wars was a massive, global, 79 year-long conflict waged by the two superpowers of Sera, the Coalition of Ordered Governments and the Union of Independent Republics, for control of the planet's natural resources,namely Imulsion. Millions of human lives were lost in the conflict and the environment was significantly damaged by devastating weapons. The war was a deadlock for the majority of the years until the COG broke the stalemate by going around the land warfare with the UIR and staging a daring raid in Aspho Fields.
We get a glimpse of the impact these wars had and the history that ties all of the previous games together. But despite such a strong beginning, the game falls into a narrow narrative and gameplay. Yet, this could be a boon for those who want to play the original game and can appreciate the freedom of movement. In Gears of war, "choose a path" became one of the most critical aspects of the campaign and allowed the player to have fun with different styles of playing. You could choose to take the upper path for the height advantage and the sniper weapons or you could choose a lower path with close-quarters weapons conveniently laid against a piece of cover. Either way, the liberty of having these simple options maximizes your replayability, which is one major key to the Gear's game.
"Gears of war 4", however, uses this strategy only once throughout the entire game and it's given way too late in the story. There is not much of a difference between paths, besides one type of heavy enemy that you must face on either path. Otherwise, both terrain and weapons (both heavys carry the same weapon) are the same. I remember replaying that specific chapter just to say to myself, Wait. I thought I chose the other path.
That is to say, throughout the game, it looked like a Gears of War game, but it didn't really feel like one. Even the anti-climatic ending ended with a boss battle felt lazy, linear, and rushed. Having to repeat the same two-step process only twice to defeat a stationary enemy did not feel like a boss fight in Gears of War. What's more is the huge in-your-face cliff hanger that slapped me in the face just before the credits started rolling. When I realized that end of the game, I felt cheated of my Gears of War experience. But then I remembered, Coalition did not make this game for the campaign but to invest all of their time into the multiplayer for the MLG tournaments following suit of the game's launch. Hopefully, The Coalition doesn't make a habit of this and helps create a memorable game next time. #MakeGearsGreatAgain2016.
