Gears of War 4
The direction clearly has a different target audience. For starters, an all new cast of younger characters. I didn't like the jokes, the dialogues, the plot, the progression. The soundtrack lost the grandiosity of the previous games.
They captured the essence of Gears of War and tried to bring in the new. New characters, new dynamics, new enemies, new locations. It has better graphics to take advantage of the better hardware, but why drop the desaturated aspect of it? Maybe it was related to the war and with the end of the war, a shift to a more colorful presentation was due. The red vines and red pods remind me of War of The Worlds. The better physics are a nice touch. However, I felt that they pushed too hard on visually stunning destruction in detriment to real combat. For ex: to get back to the surface after the mission that takes you deep down underground they went Hollywood style with "Die Hard" vibes. With no elevator to go back up to the surface they resort to cables and then there is a lot of destruction and a very "Die Hard" moment with the players and their team narrowly escaping falling debris. (In other words, this is what people would call "cringe")
I didn't like that in Anvil Gate in Gears of War 3 you go out, just to be forced to retreat back. In Gears of War 4 they did the same multiple times. Who was writing the plot? You go to a place and there is no energy to ride the elevator. Then you go on a sub mission to turn on some power generator. Still not enough. Another run to turn on another power generator. You try to escape a tornado just to be knocked out. Then you have to run to the next tower. It has a weird cycle of climax and anti-climax moments. Games that do this cycle are down putting.
I strongly disliked the jokes. Marcus shouting "It'll hold!" amidst a violent storm. Then comes an airplane crashing down destroying the whole building. The character tells the other "You are bad at rock scissors paper". The answer "Really?" and the character loses. If they were trying to create some impactful character under the same veins of Cole from the previous games. They've failed.
They tried to make a more passionate storyline, but they've failed miserably. There is no father and son relationship anywhere. The direction of the cutscenes and cinematics is clearly worse than in the previous games. That prime minister Jinn was so annoying. Every time she would show up by means of an android, just to have the plug pulled off.
Androids, really? I very much think that they just couldn't think on a better plot. With the previous alien race being gone, what new enemy are they going to put in? The androids lack personalities, lack charisma and their design is pretty uninteresting and tasteless. Much later in the game they made a callback to Gears of War 2, trying to replicate the civil war between the Lambent and the Locust. This time around with androids and the Swarm. Nope, it didn't work.
In the end of the game they tried to recreate the same emotional moment from Dom finding Maria in Gears of War 2, albeit with the new cast of characters. Again, it didn't work. The ending itself doesn't finish the story. It ends leaving more questions requiring answers.
The level design department was one of the major weak aspects of this game. To give a very clear example: when you have that whole mission to steal a fabricator you traverse the environment and then you do it again, backtracking. They abused backtracking throughout the game. I felt that they were either overextending the game or just couldn't build more environments. Maybe both?
If you are a fan of the previous games you are certainly going to notice easter eggs. The Siege catapult from Gears of War 3 for instance. But if you think about it, they don't add much value to the game. The catapult was placed out of nowhere and for the sole purpose of showing off the new physics. The level inside the dam with big chains and gears mimicked the dynamic cover seen with the worms in Gears of War 2. However, it felt really artificial and unnatural because the chains crushing characters were there just to provide some cool visual effect and some obstacle to have to traverse.
The Tower Defense minigame was completely off putting. Nonsense. Other games may have this but without credits to earn and to spend. For online MP it makes sense, but to insert it in the middle of a SP campaign was really off. If you want to make that type of combat inside a single player game, then plan your game to take advantage of it.
