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Gears of War 4 Review

 

Gears of War 4 came out last month, and naturally it’s taken Graev and I a little bit of time to finish up the campaign. I’m going to review the story campaign of GoW 4, but not the competitive versus modes on the multiplayer side.

Overall Story

If you haven’t played the original Gears trilogy, stop and go pick it up on Amazon for $30. It’s the original game with remastered graphics + backwards compatible versions of GoW 1, 2, 3, and judgement. You can play on PC or Xbox One depending on the version you buy.

Gears 4 is the first in what will become a new Gears trilogy. GoW4 picks up 25 years after the events of the third game when the characters are all much older and mostly grey.

You play as Marcus’ son, J.D., who abandoned the controlling and martial law enforcing COG to join the Outsiders who refuse to live under COG rule inside walled-off cities. Teh game starts off with J.D. and crew fighting back against the oppressive COG by stealing their power systems and supplies.

While trying to be a rebel and mess with the COG’s plans, J.D. and his friends make a discovery: The Locust are back!

The Locust have evolved and are now looking to capture humans to evolve. Along the way we meet up with a few familiar faces to help take down the baddies.

I’ll leave the story spoilers there.

There’s an interesting revelation at the end that I think is a little bit of a reach, but overall the story is at least more interesting than the confusing story from the first trilogy.

Gameplay

For the most part, we’re looking at a continuation of the same gameplay from previous gears games. There’s lots of cover mechanics, grenades into emergence holes, and shooting.

The game takes place mostly above-ground in the wilds and ruins of Sera, with only a few missions taking place in warehouses or mine tunnels.

A few new guns introduce a few extra things to watch for, but this is still 100% GoW at heart.

Play Anywhere

I purchased the digital copy of Gears of War 4, so that means I can play it on Xbox One AND/OR PC! In fact, I can play on PC and Graev on Xbox One, and we can play TOGETHER. We played the entire campaign with Graev hosting our game on Xbox One. Windows 10’s Xbox experience is phenomenal.

Since it works so well, I wish Microsoft would expand this beyond just first-party titles.

Conclusion

Gears of War 4 is great. Graev and I both enjoyed the campaign, and enjoyed playing it co-op together cross-platform.

I’m excited to see where the trilogy goes.

  • Good review, thanks. I’m currently playing the first three before purchasing this one. I don’t believe the Gears of War Ultimate Edition is all three games though. I have it, but I haven’t finished it yet, so can’t be 100% sure. But when I picked it up, it seemed to suggest it was the Gears of War 1 campaign and I think it’s the MP component of all three, or has the maps of the original trilogy. I don’t believe it is the campaign mode of all three games, just the first one. If I’m mistaken, then woohoo! I remember when I activated it on my Xbox One however, it did give me downloads for the backwards compatibility versions of Gears 1,2,3 and Judgement. So I had originally planned to play this Ultimate Edition, then 2 and 3 and onwards to 4 sometime early next year.

    With regards to the Xbox/Windows editions – I like that although the Windows Store versions are slightly more expensive than other PC games, it’s great that there is extra mileage to be had between my PC and Xbox. The fact that I can get a mate over and play the campaign co-op without needing to purchase the game twice, is quite refreshing.

  • @Leigh: You are absolutely correct. My GoW Ultimate came with the original game fully remastered, and download codes for the backwards compatible versions of 1-judgement.

    I think the trick to getting past the higher cost Windows store versions is to buy the digital copy of the Xbox game (on sale) and activate the code. I believe that’s what I did to save 20% or so.

  • I took a plunge as the game is on sale, so I just purchased the cross play version for £25 on the Windows Store. It downloaded to my Xbox whilst I was at work and I’ve just installed it on the PC…80gb! Gulp!

    I’m going to test coop with my wife in a moment.