14 DAY TRIAL // We’ve reviewed Gears of War: Judgment earlier during the week and, while my final score is a good one, I really, really wanted to give the game a lower one but I found that I was unable to explain such an action within the limits of a game evaluation.
I was never a fan of the exclusive Xbox series that Epic Games has created, mainly because it shifted focus away from the Unreal series of first-person shooters and defined third-person as the genre of choice for the development team.
I liked the over-the-top machismo of the first game, and even accepted that Gears of War could be a gateway drug into more serious space marine-centric products, like Warhammer 40,000.
But the second game failed to change the formula in any meaningful manner, and the third one, while thankfully concluding the story, also added little in the way of interesting new mechanics, even if it rebuilt the multiplayer in significant ways.
I wanted Judgment to be a different kind of Gears, to take the prequel idea and run with it in order to change the universe and the gameplay in significant ways.
This was a perfect opportunity: the last title on the Xbox 360, a clear shift in narrative, the departure of Fenix, a new development team.
And People Can Fly and Epic Games let the opportunity pass them by, something that fans of the Gears of War series and those who love video games should penalize them for in some way.
I don’t endorse innovation for its own sake, but Judgment could have taken the remix idea, its best feature, and expand it to cover the other three video games in the series.
Settling for small modifications in a new game that many of the fans might ignore is not the way to push a solid franchise forward.