Gears of War 4 review by Tyson
Overall
Rent
I am someone that enjoyed the previous Gears of War games on the Xbox 360 but I also got fatigued by the end. Playing through Gears of War 4 was enjoyable at times but it does very little to help freshen up the series. If you played any of the previous Gears of War games then you know what you will be getting with this game.
Gameplay
The story of Gears of War 4 starts off where the third game left off. Humanity has beaten the Locust and now is rebuilding. The COG is the main ruler of the planet but several settlements exist outside their rule. This is where our main characters come into play. JD, Kait, and Del are living outside the COG and are constantly bumping into them since they are raiding COG settlements for supplies. Another plot point opens up early in the game and introduces a new Locust like enemy called the Swarm. The Swarm ends up attacking the village where our characters live and its up to them to fight back this new Swarm and save some kidnapped villagers. The story itself wasn't too bad and it kept me playing the game to see what would happen next. What really disappointed me though was that I never felt a connection with the new characters like I did with Marcus or Dom.
The gameplay though is your standard Gears of War setup and I found this is a bit disappointing. The story mode pretty much has you go from room to room fighting off COG robots or Swarm enemies. You still have the same cover system from other Gears of War games. So you can hide behind things like walls or giant stone blocks to avoid enemy fire. You still have the basic guns like the Lancer but a few new ones like the saw blade shooting Buzzkill weapon. Still even with the new and old weapons the combat still feels a bit old but it still enjoyable at times. There was a lot of times where I got bored of going into a new room and having to fight another wave after wave of enemies. Some new features that I had fun with was this windflare mechanic that pops up as you play the game. This windflare can effect some weapon projectiles trajectory, or cause background items to be thrown around, or even cause lighting bolts to appear that need to be dodged. The games mech suit section at the end was pretty fun too. I wanted the game to have more stuff like this.
Even the games multiplayer suffers from a lot of the sameness of previous games. You have your Horde mode and various different type of deathmatch modes. While I found these to be fun at times I also got some fatigue by the end of a match. There are a few new deathmatch modes like Dodge Ball where you can bring a dead player back to life by killing an opponent or the Arms Race mode where to win you need to kill your opponents with different weapons a certain number of times. And while these do add some variety to the game it sadly doesn't change up the base gameplay. If you have ever played any multiplayer from another Gears of War game then you know how everything will play and this is disappointing. They really needed to do something brand new with the multiplayer after 4 games and they didn't do that.
Control
I didn't find anything on the control side that has changed from previous games. You use the left and right analogs sticks to move and adjust the camera. The buttons on the control will do things like shoot or reload your gun, or helps you open up doors, or break through some kind of blockade.
Graphics
I am torn here regarding the games graphics. While the game is way better looking then the 360 games and effects like the windflare are great to look at but its set themes got old quick for me. I just bored of seeing another torn apart building or torn apart area as I played through the game. Some of the best looking stuff for me was the COG settlements being build by robots that showed up a few times throughout the game.
Sound
I did like the audio presentation in this game. I liked how in the story mode the characters would all talk with each other. I felt that the voice actors and actresses did a great job voicing their characters. The guns and various explosions sound great as well.