Gears of War 4 Review – A Soft Reboot

Gears of War 4 Review

Today FunkyVideoGames brings another game to our review table. In these review we discuss first impressions, gameplay, graphics and other similar things for newly released games. Today Gears of War 4 is finally out now on PC and Xbox One, so we are going to talk about this action packed third person shooter. Gears of War 4 is one of the most awaited video game of 2016 and it is definitely one of the Top 10 amazing games that are releasing in the month of October, 2016.

Gears of War 4 is a game that has some big shoes to fill, it left behind Epic Games. Now Microsoft completely own the game. Gears of War 4 is the 5th game in the series, I personally like the 1, 2 and 3 with Gears of War: Judgment kind of meh… So there’s a lot to be desired and a lot going on with Gears of War 4. I had plenty of questions before going in and thankfully most of them have been answered from different perspectives.

See Also: Mafia 3 Review

Gears of War 4 Review – Story:

First thing first let’s talk about the story of the game. The story takes place many years after the Gears of War 3. The war with the Locusts is over but the human population was almost decimated. So the society almost had to kind of reformed in a way.

This feels like you are coming into a whole new world and I think that’s for a good reason because overall the whole new adventure feels very familiar from a gameplay perspective. But very different from a story perspective for a Gears of War game.

See Also: Gears of War 4 Easter Egg Guide

The story here is very small scale and personal. You are not fighting a grand war, it’s not an epic scaled conflict. It’s very much personal story about father & son, mother & daughter and stuff like family. I know that sounds really stupid but you will understand once you play the game.

Gears of War 4 Review – Campaign:

The story is packed in a campaign that you can easily play through in 9-10 hours on normal difficulty. The game definitely gives you some time to breath. There’s a lot of shooting sections but there’s also a lot of time to walk around and smell the roses. There’s plenty of time to learn about this new world and character of Gears of War, it’s almost like a soft reboot.

For me, the pace of the game is really good and I really appreciated some big action set piece moments that are very much like Uncharted and Tomb Raider. These moments are playable in different ways similar like a vehicle section or bromance section like previous games.

Gears of War 4 Review – Characters:

What we have in Gears of War 4 is a very personal story, starring JD Fenix. JD is the new character you will get to play who is Marcus Fenix’s son, we all know him. And I’d say honestly, with the story he might actually be the biggest problem, at least for me. He’s just fine but I think he’s like, when you put Nathan Drake in Gears of War armor and tone him down to make him more generic. Because JD Fenix, at least to me, is really generic and really did not bring a lot to the table. His comments are fine, his equips and story arc is fine but JD personally, I just could not find any reason to get too amped about him.

See Also: Every Collectible Location in Gears of War 4

But the other characters that surround JD are pretty great. These characters, Del in particular, doesn’t get too much to work with, but you find them likable. You care about these character in the game and you want to see what’s going to happen to them. Of course, the game also introduce you to some fan favorites and some old characters from the previous games.

These character reveals are always pretty awesome, it’s always good to see them show up. But overall, the campaign, for me at least, was a lot of fun but not at all what I was expecting.

May be the one downside of the campaign is that it does play it safe a little bit from the story perspective. It does kind of feel like a set up for next big Gear of War franchise that is going to be a little different. Like I said earlier, may be a little soft reboot thing is going on with this Gears of War game.

So Gears of War does play it safe and it does kick the can down the road a little bit. There’s a lot of variety and overall I really enjoyed this campaign. I think it is really great, a lot of fun. But not, ultimately, what I wanted going into the game. But when I finished the game, I was satisfied.

Gears of War 4 Review – Controls, Shooting and Combat:

Playing the Gears of War 4 feels pretty much the same, I guess they went with the “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” type of thing. For me, it feels like coming home, it’s like the old gears of war game. The memory was there but with the fine tuned controls. The controls feels little faster, the shooting is so refined that I think it’s more fun this way.

But I think some people will have some problems with the new controls. What they did added is the ability to pull enemies out of the cover and stab them with your combat knife. The Combat knife is only usable in certain situations but it makes for some cool kill animations.

Gears of War 4 Review – New Weapons:

There’s also some new weapons, but my favorite is the Dropshot, which is an underground grenade that you can control how far of a distance it goes off. As much as I like using the Dropshot, I really kike the gameplay scenarios created when enemy character have the weapon because that made it a lot of fun like dodging their shots.

Gears of War 4 Review – New Enemies:

The new enemy types are pretty surprisingly fun because they are all different. Most notably the robots, they called DeeBees and they have a very different AI as compared to other enemies. It’s really fun to shot robots and shake things up after awhile.

See Also: Gears of War 4 Achievements Guide

Another enemy that is basically equivalent to the Locust is explained as it doesn’t feel like a just locust 2.0. But basically from the gameplay perspective, that is what it feels like. But thankfully, this new Swarm does also have a bunch of new type of creatures that are kind of mini boss battles. They really changed up the battlefield with these new enemies.

Gears of War 4 Review – Graphics:

I’m going to be real and honest with you guys, visually this game is one of the better looking games at least on PC. The game looks great, there’s a lot of motion, water, graphics, texture and particle effects going on. And there’s also a lot of wind that affects the trees and leaves but it also affect the gameplay in certain instances when wind storm flares up. You can use these wind storms to you advantage on the battlefields.

When the things are breaking, wind is blowing and debris is flying everywhere and the game just take it like a champ and keeps it together, I think that’s pretty awesome. Like the previous Gears of War games the whole thing is just plain beauty here and I like it a lot.

Gears of War 4 Review – Multiplayer:

The first multiplayer mode that you’ll get is Verses which is a regular straight up Gears of War. You have all the different modes, my personal favorite is just Team Death Match. This time all multiplayer modes, even on Xbox One, runs at 60 FPS which is great for Gears of War gameplay.

So far, at least to me, the map designs are good. The sight lines are pretty amazing and fun too. There are different modes to enjoy in multiplayer. It’s just straight up Gears of War Multiplayer that you always wanted and played. It’s worth noting too that on Xbox One and PC, I haven’t had trouble finding a match. I haven’t really experienced too much lag other than the norm.

You need to know that this Gears of War in terms of balancing, nothing have changed in the sense that the priority here is Shotguns. Everybody is using shotguns whether you like it or not that’s what usually Gears of War Multiplayer boils down to. Some of you still going to hate that but then on the other hand some of you still gonna love it. I personally really like it.

Gears of War 4 Review – Horde Mode:

One of my favorite aspects of Gears of War games is Horde Mode. It’s back with Horde Mode 3.0 version and it’s good. It’s probably what you wanted with little bits here and there. There’s a class based system now where you can choose different class to play in Horde Mode. Ultimately, it doesn’t seem to have any too much of an effect on the gameplay. Personally I wasn’t crazy about that but the choices do matter a little bit.

But once again the focus here is on building on your encampment and defenses, and basically, protecting yourself. But all this is pretty cool because when the match starts, you have this fabricator which is a mobile base building unit that you can drag around and setup your point where you want to start defending.

If you have a good round of playing Horde Mode with your friends online, it is really so much fun. And the best part is that it can last of hours and hours. So, that to me right there is just a lot of gameplay because Gears of War shooting and killing is so fun.

Gears of War 4 Review – Card System:

One thing that I do want to point out that the Gears of War Multiplayer and Horde Mode does have a card based system. This card based system is very similar to what Halo 5 had. In this card system you can earn card packs that you can open and unlock new things like boosters. These are fun to earn but I do want to point out that there’s an option to buy them which may hurt some people.

Gears of War 4 Review – Should You Buy?

So guys that’s Gears of War 4, I have to say, honestly I wasn’t expecting this much fun. But I’m genuinely surprised how much fun I’m having with it. If you’re on Xbox One and you like shooting and killing things, I can absolutely and definitely recommend this.

You know about these reviews on FunkyVideoGames, we give you some pros and cons and some personal opinion. And now I wan to hear yours down in the comments.  Did you guys play Gears of War 4 yet? How you feel about it? Do you like the addition of new weapons and enemy types? Do you think the story is good enough to justify actually making another Gears of War game?

I think it does justify but I can see some people coming off a little mixed with it because it is very different in certain instances. So please feel free to talk about all the Gears of War 4 stuff down in the comments.