Talk about fan service.

Anyone else enjoy Gears 4 ore than they thought they would?  I had very low expectations.

Yeah, the Halo 5 wasn't much chop and unless your'e into Forza there is not much else.  It's a capable platform for multi-platform games though.

Rare Replay was a good compilation.

Such disrespect to Tom Fucking Brady the greatest quarterback of all time.

On topic: Didn't care for it in single player. While the Marcus Fenix stuff was fun, the rest of the story is tonally a marvel movie. In the sense that they just make so many fucking jokes, and never take anything seriously which takes away from the swarm or anything having stakes or being a threat. Like yes Gears of War took itself too seriously, but their solution is an over correction. It's playing it too cheesy unserious now. Without the spectacle camp that makes Japanese games in the genre stand out. And even in those cases Binary Domain has moments where it takes itself seriously, and it fucking earns some of its punchier scenes. Not because they are well acted, but because the game had some heart.

Gears 4 is cynical in contrast. A rote ass game, with all the lame ass short comings of being a turd person cover shooter. The mechanics are bare bones, the new robots don't offer any new element to the combat that adds for more meaningful movement. Its paced poorly since the Gears formula has been refined to "what works" so its a lot of boxy arenas where you find a slab, call it a day. Gears 1 is criticized for "aging" poorly, because it's got some rough patches. But it does more with those simple ass mechanics, than any of its sequels ever do. The whole shooting cannisters to light up the way ahead of you, krylls, emergent holes, mine cart levels, and a host of others had you doing just enough micro-challenges around your base mechanics, that it made up for the fact that there is no depth to Gears of War's gameplay. 4 does none of that shit. If anything its replaced it with some on rails set pieces. Which are the uninteresting kind of set pieces, as your involvement in them feels inconsequnetial.

The multiplayer luckily saves it, because Gears of War's core mechanics were always going to stand out in a proper MP environment. The maps are some of the weakest in the series. But dedi servers, no sawed-off or host advantage, wall bouncing is better than ever, stopping power isn't a thing. On a pure feature set standpoint its the best the series has been on that front. But.............if I could get a LAN environment for proper Gears 1 action, I'd take Gear 1 in the grand scheme of things because of its superior map rotation.

This Gears 4 thread is overrated.

Gagan said:

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On topic: Didn't care for it in single player. While the Marcus Fenix stuff was fun, the rest of the story is tonally a marvel movie. In the sense that they just make so many fucking jokes, and never take anything seriously which takes away from the swarm or anything having stakes or being a threat. Like yes Gears of War took itself too seriously, but their solution is an over correction. It's playing it too cheesy unserious now. Without the spectacle camp that makes Japanese games in the genre stand out. And even in those cases Binary Domain has moments where it takes itself seriously, and it fucking earns some of its punchier scenes. Not because they are well acted, but because the game had some heart.

Gears 4 is cynical in contrast. A rote ass game, ...

I agree, but didn;t affect my enjoyment of it. It's been probably 6 or 7 years since I played a Gears game, so when I came back to it, it was just what I wanted and remembered.