Customer Ratings & Reviews

Gears of War is a fun and entertaining series. Judgment is a nice addition to the series. Very similar to the others -- weapons and enemies. Even with the add-on the campaign is very, very short.

Gears of War: Judgment is a prequel to the original Gears of War that also features additional content that takes place during the story of Gears of War 3. For these two story pieces, the gameplay is what you would expect from a Gears of War title. Its violent, over-the-top, adrenaline-filled and sometimes goofy. Where the new developers, People Can Fly (Bulletstorm), deviate from the formula is in the multiplayer features. Instead of recreating what was done in previous Gears games, People Can Fly added a few faster-paced offerings similar to a Call of Duty or Halo game. The Down But Not Out feature is gone in almost all of the match types as well as the pool of lives teams have to share between their players. Now, when a player dies, they simply wait out a timer and respawn somewhere near their teammates. Ultimately, if you liked previous Gears of War games, you'll feel right at home playing the story mode. The changes to multiplayer do take a bit of getting used to but the game options and character customization make the competitive modes a lot of fun and very rewarding.

Gears of War Judgement provides bold new ideas to the series in both campaign and multiplayer that completely pay off in the end. The beautiful campaign immerses you in a story as the characters observe and comment on their environment in the moment. Enemy AI even attempts to provide a new experience to the gamer as semi-random spawning is implemented so a somewhat different experience can occur each time (such as different enemies faced and directions they come from). The story and gameplay really shines with the new Declassify system. These are optional objectives that challenge your gameplay through stronger enemies and other handicaps such as shortage of time, ammo, and more. These sections also increase another new addition, the scoring system. Scoring is based on similar ideas from things normally done in multiplayer to earn points in the form of ribbons such as executions, head shots, using specific weapons, etc. The score rating can be fast tracked by taking on the Declassified sections to obtain the possible max score for each level. Although Judgment's multiplayer may not live up to that of Gears of War 3 in the long run, its faster and more violent gameplay along with character customizations and new modes such as Domination and Overrun (human vs. locust mode) can provide a substantial amount of gameplay and experiences to last for some time.

After beating Gears 3 I thought to myself "the next Gears game will be about E-day, that might be a pretty cool game!". I was half right. If your buying this game for the campaign only you might like it (for about 6 hours) but don't expect anything revolutionary its just plain ol' Gears of War with a weak story line. If your buying it for Coop, it has plenty of modes to choose from survival, overrun, and campaign coop will keep you busy. If your like me and buying it for game modes like Team Deathmatch then I'd think twice. I'm usually just a campaign and Deathmatch type of guy and I can't believe that this game only shipped with 4 maps. Its actually insulting to think about. They are pretty much forcing you to buy the season pass and wait for a descent multiplayer experience whenever they feel like adding more maps and thats not right. Not only that but they tampered with the gameplay and it all just falls flat on its face. 70% of the TD games I joined everyone was just running around with the Gnasher shotgun. You see, your only allowed to pick one gun and a grenade type and you have a p-shooter pistol to start with. The maps are another problem. They are huge (and very bland if I say so myself)! Usually this isn't a bad thing, but when your character is as slow as this its a real pain to get anywhere. There is no mini-map either so you could be wandering around forever looking for an enemy for a couple minutes just to find yourself looking down a barrel of a Gnasher shotgun by someone sitting in a corner camping. This is probably the biggest disappointment I've had in gaming this year and it won't be soon forgotten. I spent 80 dollars today (Yes, I was a sucker and got the season pass and no, I didn't buy it from Amazon) for this and after the bitter taste in my mouth got so bad I just put in Halo 4 and tried to forget the fact that I just wasted my money. I'm pretty sure I'm done investing time into this franchise until they actually figure out a way to make this game better. Which is funny cause this game is not broken at all. Everything I have a problem with they could fix with this game. They pretty much have said "This is how Gears is now and you better like it!". I'm sorry Epic and People Can Fly, I don't like it. I don't like it at all. I want my money back or change the game back to what it used to be. This is a typical case of fixing something til its broken. Very sad to see this franchise end up this way.

Gears of War: Judgment is a fantastic entry in the Gears series. As a longtime Gears fan I can tell you that this game is deserving of the title. The story is interesting and the gameplay is as tight as ever. The multiplayer is so good I have lost countless hours already! They really pushed the limits of the Xbox hardware with this one too. The graphics are truly something to behold.

Multiplayer and graphics steal the show for the latest entry in the Gears of War franchise. The refined multiplayer, with it's new class-based mode and the ability to play as the Locust, is very well-done. Graphics are, surprisingly much-improved. Even though previous games have also helped set the bar for console graphics. This game is easy to recommend to fans of the series, or to newcomers. The campaign structure is a bit different than previous entries, but is still very entertaining.

playing mostly offline singleplayer, I found the game a bit different from previous iterations, and not all for the best. The game is not split into small bite-size chunks, in place of previously long levels. The experiment worked on some levels, but also cut up the story into discontinuous pieces. Graphics and gun play are still Gears of wars-level solid.

This was a very fun game to play. It will keep you into the game for hours. The graphics are great on this game and the storyline is amazing. However, the campaign isn't very long. You will still enjoy this game especially playing with friends.

I was worried this game wouldn't be as good as Gears 3, but it holds up just fine. The single player campaign is close to the best of all of them. It took me around 8 hours to get through it, but it was so much fun I'm playing through it again on harder difficulty which is something I don't do too often once I beat a game. Each Section you can add difficulty modifiers if you like to make it more challenging. I didn't think anything could compete with Horde Mode from Gears 3, but Survival Mode is a lot of fun to play. The good thing about it is that you don't have to play for 2-3 hours straight to finish it. A typical Survival Mode match to Wave 10 might last you about 30 minutes or so. The maps are pretty tough to beat unless you have good players with you. Overall get this game!! It is worth it!!

This should have been a $20 DLC add-on for Gears 3 but because companies are greedy, they instead opted to make it as a full-priced release. The graphics are exactly like Gears 3 and they reuse many of the same assets. The main campaign is nothing more than an extended Horde mode. Every area in the game is a small hub and when you clear it of enemies, you're given a score as to how you performed. This continues all the way through to the end. If this had been a $15-20 add-on for Gears 3, it would've been a nice, albeit unspectacular, addition, but as a $65 game, it's not worth your money. I say if you're a Gears fan that has to play it, wait for it to go on sale.

The best gears of war yet! Combat system revamped and made more enjoyable. Great game to play with friends over Xbox Live in either story mode or multiplayer deathmatches. With that said I find it kind of boring to play it solo but I guess I'm spoiled after the fun I had with it over Xbox Live

Understanding the story of Gears, it would be wrong to say the story line of this new Gears game was off. I was hoping to see more of both the main characters from the previous games but that never really happened. All in all I would give this game a better than average rating.

I knew things were different when you didnt have to pick up weapons on your own anymore. Judgment seems to take things from Call of Duty and try to implement their ideas in an effort to make the game easier to play. Fans of Gears will not appreciate these arcade style changes, and likely skip this title.

Fell in love with the series since Call of Duty 4, and have been hooked ever since. This years title is a upgrade over MW3 but will never achieved the great achievement that is Modern Warfare. Great title for newcomers though.

I can go on and on with the things wrong with this game but I will just note a few. The campaign is short, though they add declassified missions which add a littler flavor and difficulty to the campaign. The story and everything about the campaign feels rushed. They only include 8 maps for multiplayer and 4 of those you can only use in one multiplayer mode. I would recommend sticking with Gears of War 3.

The game is a blast when playing with other people, but it is not the type of game that is fun to play by yourself.

This game is fun and totally competent, but it lacks the spirit the previous games in the series had. The story feels unnecessary and the characters are bland. It is also strange seeing enemies that are introduced later on appear in this installment along with a new enemy entirely. The multiplayer is much the same, with OverRun as a standout. The only drawback is a severe lack of maps.

Judgement's only strength is it's campaign. the campaign is fun and offers a little something different than what we have all become used to. Yes you are still fighting locust in the same point A to point B linear fashion, yes you are still using Lancers and Shotguns, but it still feels fresh and fun. The Declassify option is the shining feature, making play in a certain way to attempt to attain a 3-star rating on your missions, like using only pistols, or adding more and varied enemy types. It really adds a bit of replayability trying to rack up high scores with your friends. It's not all roses in the campaign though, Difficulty is nerfed to hell, if you used to feel challanged on Hardcore or Insane, a 3 year old could literally survive on these difficulties. I started straight off on hardcore and at no point felt challanged, even declassifying never added difficulty. Enemies that were never present in GoW1 are magically here, then gone for the next 2 games, then come back in 3, and the introduction of new and mainly useless weapons make for a less than inspired twist on gameplay. But, once the campaign and the weirdly out of place and timeline Aftermath is over, the multiplayer is all you have left. Well, then you officially have nothing. Multiplayer has to be the worst in Gears history. Overrun is about the only gametype that even feels like it should be there. Execution takes forever to finish just one match, Team Deathmatch has been taken from 15 cumalitive kills then last chance to being 50 kills, Free-For-All is absolutely abysmall, Domination is a sad attempt to be CoD, and not fighting locust, no Down But Not Out, just make Multiplayer all around a frustrating experience. As you level you unlock prize boxes (much like in Mass Effect 3) but they offer nothing more than comestic changes for your guns and character. The biggest frustration is the lack of the 4 weapon series staple, Where as you could have an Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Pistol, and Non-Lethal Grenade you may now only have one Non-Lethal Grenade, One pistol, and Either an Assault Rifle or Shotgun. This completely removes the ability to take people on based on where they are. You won't make it very far if you have a Sawed-Off and the other team has nothing but Lancers. What they should have left alone they retooled the most and made it the series worst Multiplayer experience to date. To wrap this up this game is the definition of rent not buy, play the campaign enjoy it and then chuck it out the window. Hopefully this is the official end of the franchise.

This 4 instalment of the Gears of war series is a great and like the previous titles delivers great and fun multiplayer experience. I think the storyline could have been better but still fun to play.

The lack of Horde Mode greatly reduces its playability while the story seems to lack continuity and flow. A great choice for those Gears die-hards but newcomers may find the game to be lacking.