Gears of War: Judgment: The Kotaku Review

Judgment takes place before the first Gears of War, shortly after “emergence day”—or, the day when the alien horde (Locusts) overran humanity on planet Sera. You are a part of the Coalition of Ordered Governments, or “COG,” as a soldier.

This Gears is called “Judgment,” see, because your characters undergo a tribunal where they are tried for disobeying orders—or, as Baird and Cole probably see it, for doing their job and trying to save lives. During the tribunal, each member of your squad (“Kilo squad”) gives testimony, and each testimony encompasses a different playable part of the game.

If we look at the narrative, Judgment tried to do something curious. The testimonies are broken down to smaller levels, most of which give the player the opportunity to tell the “declassified” version of what really went down. So, you can either choose to play the level vanilla, or you can choose to play it with special circumstances. Think stuff like, finish the level in X minutes, only use certain weapons, fight even more vicious enemies.

In their ideal form, these declassified missions present an opportunity for the player to add some spice to the basic Gears of War setup of shooting enemies with your lancer until they stop moving. It’s a shame, then, that half the time it felt like some of the challenges added annoyances instead of making things more compelling. I loved missions that would force me to get out of my comfort zone, like going through a level pistols-only, or adding an ambush where there previously was none.

And then there were levels that experimented with visual obfuscation. One level in particular I can only describe as running through fun house mirrors at a carnival while high. When levels like that came up, I’d pass on going declassified, even if it cost me “stars.” See, you’re graded on your performance, filling up a three-star bar depending on what you do. Declassified missions fill the bar up faster, though in these cases, it wasn’t worth it.

A star-bar is awarded if the player gibs an enemy (make them explode, basically), performs executions (drawn out, hyper-violent killing sequences, like punching an enemy’s skull off), lands a headshot, or gains any ribbons (awards tracked in both single-player and multiplayer). Some of you may want to chase the high score, three-starring every level. This will mean braving the declassified missions. Yes, even the awful ones.

The declassified missions initially impressed me, in that they seemed to promise a more nuanced story. A more complicated story—perhaps one that varied depending on who you ask, since multiple people testify. The type of story that the higher-ups would likely want to conceal and mark as classified.

While I won’t say Gears of War has ever been the vanguard of groundbreaking or moving storytelling, other games with a similar framework use it delightfully. I recall, for instance, loving that characters in Dragon Age would sometimes recount a story specifically in a way to make themselves look better.

Gears of War never really capitalizes on its framework. That’s a shame, as it’s the thing that makes the title unique, at least in the campaign, amongst other entries in the franchise. It almost does, though. There is a moment, for example, when one of your squad members sounds like she will contradict your story, but then doesn’t. There’s another moment when Cole tells the commanding officer to make sure to include the fact they only used a certain weapon in the report—as if boasting (which is cool!) It kind of makes you wonder—is what you’re playing what really happened, or is it just Kilo squad trying to make themselves sound more heroic?

But often, the game devolves into telling a covered-up version of the story that sounds ridiculous. There are only so many times you can have a tale where it turns out that suddenly, for no reason, you could only use a certain type of gun, or so many times you can claim to have gone nearly blind. Midway through the game, Judgment starts recycling declassified missions, giving the player even less reason to do them outside of star-farming.

The interesting structure also doesn’t save Judgment’s writing. While occasionally the star characters will jab the player in the ribs with a good one-liner, I was mostly left wondering what happened to the charming cast in other Gears games. Cole still sounds boisterous, but is mostly silent, and Baird still seems like the sharpest in the bunch, but that’s not saying much when the cast seems dispensable.

That’s a shame, because the dynamics between the squad were sometimes excellent in Gears of War—I lived for when Baird and Sam would bicker, and Cole’s introspection while visiting his hometown seriously made me pause while playing (it was the “ever feel like you’re dead, but nobody told you” line).

Melodramatic? Maybe. But the games tried, damnit, and sometimes they succeeded—if you were willing take it for what it was; an action romp. I cared (enough). In Judgment? Not so much. If you’ve watched the trailers or the intro cinematic—which is probably the most dramatic part of the game—you might guess you’d be in for a crazy tale of camaraderie, defiance and heroics. You’re not. You do shoot things, though.

The rest of the game largely plays like its brothers—not always, though. You can only equip three weapons instead of the franchise’s staple four, for example, which makes the game feel like a downgrade [edit: to clarify, I am counting grenades, pistol, assault rifle of choice and shotgun of choice—now you can have two equippable weapons, be they starting weapons or power weapons, plus grenades.] Fortunately I at least didn’t notice this as much in the campaign as I did in the multiplayer, where the game asks you to choose between an assault rifle or a shotgun. Judgment also doesn’t match the level of obsessive details that Gears of War 3 for instance did.

As an example: Gears of War has something called “active reload,” which is a reload minigame that allows you to reload faster than you would otherwise. In Gears 3, each weapon had a different sweet-spot for their respective active reloads to work, forcing players to be more self-aware of what they had equipped, and simultaneously distinguishing one gun from another even further. Judgment doesn’t add to or refine these types of details, as far as I can tell.

Judgment does have a few tricks up its sleeve, though. I enjoyed the campaign levels that had me set up defenses for incoming waves—it felt like a mix of the Tower Defense and Horde modes from previous games. I’m more of a competitive multiplayer player myself, but these levels were a welcome change of pace, when they played nice with the map on which they were featured (this wasn’t always the case).