Poll of the Day > Gears of War. What's changed with the franchise since the first one?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I only played the first game way back on launch day because of the hype. All my Xbox Live friends were playing it at the time. I personally found it pretty generic back then and had way more fun with Perfect Dark Zero.
The game was linear, environments all extremely bland, couldn't get into the multiplayer or co-op, the gameplay was like every other shooter at the time, never understood why everyone loved it so much. I dunno it just felt average to me.
I just got an Xbone recently and I decided to look at some screenshots for Geow 4 and 5, they actually look pretty cool. The bland grey from the first game isn't really there. It looks better and the character designs look cool too.
To those who have played any games after the first one, how are they?
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well apparently it's not called gears of war anymore, just gears. the new one is just called gears 5

that's about all i know
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gears of friends
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I've played a few of them, iirc I finished 1-3 and played a little through Judgment. Never really got into the multiplayer because I'm not really fond of the way the games feel, but I do think the campaigns are fun enough to go through with friends.

I never really noticed any huge differences, at least regarding the core gameplay. Seems like the biggest change between the games is just making them look better and progressing the story. Not that there's anything wrong with that, in fact I wish more sequels of successful games wouldn't make such radical departures from their basic mechanics.

It kept the dark color scheme for a while but got less grainy with two and had some okay variety, 3 was much better about lighting and had some cool level variety. Core gameplay is always the same but they add new weapons and small features to mix things up. I think there's a good chance you'll like 2 and 3, I didn't much care for 1 either.

2 and 3 are good games( I would say 3 is great) but Judgement is abysmal and 4+5 are continuing the story for some reason when 3 was supposed to be a definitive end. Gears 4 also somehow regressed in the weapon category consisting almost exclusively of weapons from the first game and weirdly edited versions of guns from other entries.

Not dissing you but I've never saw anything really wrong with the gameplay barring control clunkiness, I wish more games had gunfights that didn't end in 20 seconds or less.

TheWitchMorgana posted...

well apparently it's not called gears of war anymore, just gears. the new one is just called gears 5

that's about all i know

theres a reason for that
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I religiously played the Gears of War games back in the day when they were relevant.

While Gears 1 was fast paced it was also glitchy as heck and people were exploiting said glitches.

With Gears 2 they made the game slower which many didn't like but I think 2 was at the franchise's high point.

Gears 3 is my favourite and it was the first Gears game where you could actually use anything else but the shotgun.

Judgment was a disappointment. They changed so much and took away what made Gears stand out from the other shooters.

I barely played Gears 4 because I was so letdown by the developer's incompetence.

Campaign-wise I'd say the original trilogy is one of the best trilogies on the Xbox 360.
2's campaign makes you go through all kinds of crazy shit.
The pacing in Judgment's campaign was atrocious though. So many flashbacks that killed off the immersion.
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Gears 1 - Dark, slight horror themed world. One of the few TPS out with good controls. MP was balanced by being unbalanced and featured server lists over matchmaking.

Gears 2 - Improved story and world building, with expanded color palette. Improvements to game mechanics, expanded cast and weaponry. MP IMO was a step back. MP attempted balance with a matchmaker, but resulted in many not being able to connect to matches and still did not address issue like host advantage or bullet lag. Horde mode being shinning star and the feature that gave every other franchise replay-ability.

Gears 3 - Improving on everything that came before with more of everything. Previously mentioned MP issues were addressed by the promise of dedicated servers, but this promise fell flat once it was revealed gamers could only play on the servers if they bought the current DLCs. Weapons were more balanced and Horde mode was improved.

Gears 4 - So far seems like huge disappointment. John Carpenter to JJ Abrams comes to mind when thinking about the changes.

More like ******* of war, series died after 3.
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pretty sure the ads get for pretentious with each game.
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Fazeo13 posted...

More like ******* of war, series died after 3.

asterisks of war?

stars of war?

what does this mean
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Bulbasaur posted...

Fazeo13 posted...

More like ******* of war, series died after 3.

asterisks of war?

stars of war?

what does this mean

penises
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Stopped playing after the third so I've no idea.
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I'm glad to hear that they improved the level design with the games. Maybe I will give GeoW2 and up a try eventually. I know you all are saying GeoW 4 sucked but again, in my case maybe I'll like it if the level and enemy design are less grey and game is less linear? Those were my main griped with the first game. It felt like Halo but fighting the Flood in a hallway the entire game. That's what I remember my opinion of the first GeoW was and I even finished the game on the highest difficulty and played MP too.



I don't think this photo is as relevant anymore. That's partially why I'm willing to give Gears another shot.
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I'll sing the praises of Gears 2 and 3 all day, but if you expect them to be significantly less linear you're gonna be disappointed, you're still gonna be mostly moving from room to room killing things the whole way through.

2, 3, and 4 were given the 4K treatment. 1 wasn't given the 4K option, but the Xbox One exclusive remaster of 1 which has the PC missions has 4K. Multiplayer is still the same.

Cruddy_horse posted...

I'll sing the praises of Gears 2 and 3 all day, but if you expect them to be significantly less linear you're gonna be disappointed, you're still gonna be mostly moving from room to room killing things the whole way through.

I don't actually think linear is ALWAYS bad. It's just, if you combine it with all the other stuff I mentioned it makes for a very mediocre game.
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I dunno if you played it later, but considering it was like the game that popularized the 3rd person cover shooter, it seems weird to say it was a generic shooter that played like every other one.

DeathMagnetic80 posted...

I dunno if you played it later, but considering it was like the game that popularized the 3rd person cover shooter, it seems weird to say it was a generic shooter that played like every other one.

I played it on launch day because all my XBL friends were playing it at the time.
I just looked at my achievement list and all these single player achievements and multiplayer achievements were unlocked mid-late 2006. I have around 800 gamerscore for the game.
I clearly remember Halo, Timesplitters 3, and even Perfect Dark Zero being more fun to play. Timesplitters had map editor which was pretty amazing for an original Xbox game. Perfect Dark Zero had unique game modes for multiplayer and very customizable too. I was used to having all these cool ideas implemented in games at the time and Gears still felt very barebones with a lack of creativity.
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Oh man I remember getting all the achievements in Gears 1.
I got most of them on my own but 10000 kills in only ranked matches was no easy feat.

We were a group of people who were essentially killing ourselves on twelve hour shifts.
And somehow we were so organised that when one person had to leave there was always another person who was ready to take the spot.
So the grinding was going on 24/7 nonstop.

To this day I'm still amazed how we, a group of strangers, could even pull off something this complex.

Despite all that, I think this might be still be one of my best gaming experiences in my life.
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TC, to each their own with what they consider fun, but you are legit the first person I've ever seen say they preferred PDZ to Gears.

I was a HUGE fan of the original Perfect Dark and PDZ was one of the three games I bought the day I got my 360 (the other two were Gears and Prey). I don't think I could have been any more disappointed in PDZ, it was just so meh.
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3 is the pinnacle so far.

1 had an interesting campaign and amusing multiplayer that was rather broken, but fun.

2 had decent continuation of the story, multiplayer that was better in some ways and worse than others. Matchmaking was broken for the first couple weeks.

3 easily has the most in depth, fun and diverse story mode. The best balanced and most nuanced multiplayer (through most of its life anyways)

Judgment was super mediocre. The new overrun mode where one side could play as a variety of locust monsters to destroy cog bases was very cool though.

4 had decent campaign, decent horde mode, and decent multiplayer but it was fairly underwhelming.
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I just bought Gears of War Ultimate Edition (Along with Killer Instinct) because it was on sale.
I played through a bit of the campaign. I seem to be having more fun with it than I did back then, probably because my TV/audio setup is much better than it was in 2006. Still all the grey in the level design and lack of enemy variety from what I remember though.
I have Gears 2 with all DLC as well.
@LeetCheet that achievement is back with Gears Ultimate. Maybe I'll go for it once I get XBL Gold. :P

DiScOrD tHe LuNaTiC posted...

TC, to each their own with what they consider fun, but you are legit the first person I've ever seen say they preferred PDZ to Gears.

I was a HUGE fan of the original Perfect Dark and PDZ was one of the three games I bought the day I got my 360 (the other two were Gears and Prey). I don't think I could have been any more disappointed in PDZ, it was just so meh.

I totally understand the disappointment for fans of the original Perfect Dark. At least Rare was still trying to be creative with it though. I want something that isn't just fighting in corridors all the time, game modes other than deathmatch, big maps. Perfect Dark Zero still had all of that. Back then people would say Timesplitters Future Perfect was better than PDZ (and it was) because it had even more of that stuff along with map editor on console. Gears wasn't even close to that level of variety and creativity though.

ultra magnus13 posted...

Judgment was super mediocre. The new overrun mode where one side could play as a variety of locust monsters to destroy cog bases was very cool though.

I'm starting to think based on the posts about Judgment, and my opinions, that I may actually like this one the best, lol.
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Ferarri619 posted...

that achievement is back with Gears Ultimate. Maybe I'll go for it once I get XBL Gold. :P

It is actually easier to get it in this game.
In the original it only counted in ranked game modes where you can't respawn in.
Also it was glitchy because sometimes some kills didn't count towards the achievement.

In Ultimate Edition, you can get the kills in any competitive game mode and I think the kills didn't get glitched anymore either.

I couldn't be arsed to do it again though, and I have lost contact with the people I did it the first time since 2011.
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The gameplay in GoW stays solid throughout. The series is famously glitchy though, all of them have serious issues. The story is easily one of the worst in video game history though. The first one isn't bad because it seems like they're setting something big up. By the end of the 3rd one, they have introduced a bunch of new plot points that they just ignore and end the game, leaving the player with a TON of unanswered questions.

Ferarri619 posted...

DeathMagnetic80 posted...

I dunno if you played it later, but considering it was like the game that popularized the 3rd person cover shooter, it seems weird to say it was a generic shooter that played like every other one.

I played it on launch day because all my XBL friends were playing it at the time.
I just looked at my achievement list and all these single player achievements and multiplayer achievements were unlocked mid-late 2006. I have around 800 gamerscore for the game.
I clearly remember Halo, Timesplitters 3, and even Perfect Dark Zero being more fun to play. Timesplitters had map editor which was pretty amazing for an original Xbox game. Perfect Dark Zero had unique game modes for multiplayer and very customizable too. I was used to having all these cool ideas implemented in games at the time and Gears still felt very barebones with a lack of creativity.

I used to be obsessed with perfect dark zero. Played the hell out of it. Loved the campaign. And the music from the 1st mission(the one playing in the club) was great dance music. I remember purposely standing outside of the club just to listen to it
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Behaviorism posted...

I used to be obsessed with perfect dark zero. Played the hell out of it. Loved the campaign. And the music from the 1st mission(the one playing in the club) was great dance music. I remember purposely standing outside of the club just to listen to it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-H0J-D7lOY" data-time="

YES, I like the song too. The nightclub in PDZ is probably my favorite level in any shooter of the 360/ps3 era, period. Screwing with the guards was fun and the whole atmosphere felt really cool.
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Rare has always had good soundtrack in their games.

I haven't really played any Perfect Dark games but that song was pretty neat.
I think I'm gonna save it on my music playlist on YouTube.
Thanks for sharing.
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LeetCheet posted...

Rare has always had good soundtrack in their games.

So true. Just recently got hooked on this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4EOwbV2KlM" data-time="
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Ferarri619 posted...

DeathMagnetic80 posted...

I dunno if you played it later, but considering it was like the game that popularized the 3rd person cover shooter, it seems weird to say it was a generic shooter that played like every other one.

I played it on launch day because all my XBL friends were playing it at the time.
I just looked at my achievement list and all these single player achievements and multiplayer achievements were unlocked mid-late 2006. I have around 800 gamerscore for the game.
I clearly remember Halo, Timesplitters 3, and even Perfect Dark Zero being more fun to play. Timesplitters had map editor which was pretty amazing for an original Xbox game. Perfect Dark Zero had unique game modes for multiplayer and very customizable too. I was used to having all these cool ideas implemented in games at the time and Gears still felt very barebones with a lack of creativity.

and all but one of those games failed

i wonder why

they sucked, is why. pdz was terrible.
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