Gadgetory

it's been a decade since the original Gears of War came out and we're now officially five games into the series so how do they all stack up to each other is the brand-new Gears of War 4 the best worst middle let's rank them and find out at the bottom number five is Gears of War judgment easily the worst Gears of War game it isn't necessarily bad if it were the only Gears game made it might even be considered great but compared to everything that came out before it it just falls completely flat on its face offering one of the worst campaigns in the series it tried to do this whole mini mission approach to things where you'd competitively try to get top scores for each chapter but this led to a campaign that just felt like a lot of mini missions with a bear thread of a plot connecting them all together and this isn't helped by the game having some of the weakest dialogue in the franchise the actual core gameplay was still solid but it did little to nothing to differentiate itself from what was already done in three making it feel like it really wasn't a new Gears game at all and ultimately pretty forgettable coming in at number four is the original Gears of War now when it was first released this was an excellent game and for many people was the reason they got a 360 in the first place it didn't reinvent the wheel exactly cover shooters existed before it but Gears of War represented a refinement of that genre to a whole new level offering tight cover controls and environments built specifically around the cover mechanic not to mention it was one of the best split-screen co-op games of its generation sadly though time has not been the best to it and while it was great for its day it just doesn't hold up as well when its sequels did such an excellent job of building and improving upon it the AI is not exactly the series finest and the plotline is really really straightforward and is honestly kind of adult backdrops just justified needing to kill a lot of things until you see the credits roll if you haven't played any of the Gears games before this one can be worth checking out first but doing it later it's just not gonna hold up now right in the middle at third place is Gears of War 4 while coming from a new studio this game did a much better job of acting as a sort of mini reboot to the series than judgment wise its team of heroes are a lot more glib and give a greater sense of energy than weariness present in the originals and while the overall story has its problems or easily has the best character banter its biggest strength really comes from what few changes they did take risks with introducing a lot of new environmental factors like strong winds and cover that can turn into enemies if destroyed and some really interesting new weapons like the drop shot rendering cover is kind of pointless if you can time it right an upgraded horde mode and redone multiplayer unlock system around all this out really nicely but the one thing holding this game back is it knew it wanted to be the start of a new trilogy and drove that point home a little too hard the last act while fun is a rush to a finish that doesn't really feel like a resolution at all with a cliffhanger that's kind of cool and concept but doesn't really have that much impact in the way it's delivered in the end making it feel like an action heavy prologue to something greater we could hope to see in a couple years it's a great start but the assumption of future games and having little exposition about the world keeps it from really topping the better games in the series which leads us to number two on this list Gears of War 3 there's a lot that Gears of War 3 did right it had easily the strongest and best opening in the whole series and for the most part the campaign kept that energy up it had some of the greatest variety of environments even if they were all still multiple shades of brown it introduced a whole bunch of new enemies and offered some of the best specific fights and battles to stick into your memory its biggest problem though is how it served as the original trilogy's finale as much effort as there was to expand the scope of the campaign that much more when too trying to add a layer of emotion to the story that just couldn't help but feel forced and unsatisfactory there's a lot of character development and plot revelations that come out of nowhere in the last act it was just trying to do so much all at once it killed any sense of pacing it was still a fantastic game overall but much like for it felt like had just missed a few important beats to really put it at the top and that's what leads us to the best gears of war game which you've probably figured out by now by process of elimination Gears of War 2 while 3 did a good job of fine-tuning the gameplay of to 2 was leaps and ahead of the original two took what was originally a macho fueled non-stop action game with a few hinting zuv greater plot that was left unexplored and actually started to take its time fleshing everything out characters started to have more backstory and personality and the thematic tones running underneath the campaign began to have a lot more going on aside from just hell yeah blow stuff up well it didn't try to tackle his grand of a story as three that's part of its strength it has a much more focused plot and storyline with a handful of emotional scenes that are still some of these strongest moments across the whole franchise and let's not forget an opening that was pretty much just straight out of Lord of the Rings corny but pretty epic feeling at the same time tack on to this the introduction of the Horde multiplayer mode a lotta refinements to core gameplay like chainsaw duels and a much more fleshed out an interesting Locust civilization and to just hit all of the right notes