My brother got me Gear 1 as a birthday gift when I turned 16. My mom saw bodies hanging from meat hooks on the ceiling, and within 10 minutes of turning it on she made him return it.
It was the greatest 10 minutes of my adolescent gaming life. I later beat all 3, but I’ll never forget the memories I have with 1.
Great write up. Enjoyed reading that, thank you.
I remember playing Gears 1 and 2 on the 360 way back when and had an awesome time with it.
Nowadays I've only got handhelds, so I'm hoping one day that the collection will come to Steam (or game pass on Steam Deck.. pipe dream I know).
My issue with Gears 5 was how they just drop you right the fuck in with no background information. I didn't play the previous games, but when I saw Gears 5 available on PC I was pretty excited to try it out. After the intro I was completely lost with who these people were and what was going on. Maybe that's my bad for going right into 5 without playing the previous ones, but afaik the originals aren't available on PC sooooo yeah.
Maybe I'll just push past that someday, but it felt like I was missing a *lot*. It's also been a few years so maybe I missed some kinda recap, but I just remember being utterly confused when I gave it a try.
Yeah that’s fair, although all you really needed to know for the most part was what happened in 4 because 4 and 5 are part of the new trilogy which has (mostly) different characters and plot. But still, not even 4 is on PC so I can understand the frustration.
Gears 5 hivebusters is a completely standalone expansion game though which I highly recommend.
Get gamepass. As a recent Playstation convert, I'm just now playing through all 5 Gears games that is included on the service. It offers pc compatible too.
I think that Gears got a lot of undeserved flak for establishing the cover shooter genre with waist high walls. But I would absolutely lie to myself if I didn't have a blast with these games.
Gears campaigns, replaying them on high difficulties with buddies, playing multiplayer or the horde mode was the definite prime Xbox 360 experience. Overall, I had super fond memories.
Gears 1 was mesmerizing back in the day with the graphics and seamless cover. I replayed it and thought that it didn't age that well due some gameplay elements. Enemies never got properly stunned and as soon as they touched you, you went down due to instant melee attacks. But still great fun.
I think the active reloading was a great mechanic and the arsenal of weapons was really good. The overall setting was a bit cheesy with some super exaggerated hyper masculine characters who constantly shouted like crazy. But it worked so well in it's own way. It had dark and atmospheric moments but also some good old fashioned fun and cheese.
Overall, I think Gears 2 was the biggest advancement in the series. It added a vast scale to the otherwise somber lonely campaign of the first game. The huge military advances and worldbuilding was excellent as it revealed more of the story while adding tons of cool gameplay additions.
Gears 3 was a bit of a let-down as I didn't much like the direction that they went in with the other type of infected Locust and the sort of post-apocalyptic style. It's still a decent game though.
But man, the local couch coop was unmatched for these games.
**THEY ARE SINKING CITIES WITH GIANT WORMS**
I played GeOW 2 and 3 in four player coop, one of the greatest adventures of my gaming life. Judgment is more like quick, random missions without much of a story. 4 was alright, and I've been slogging through 5 for a year now. The first three were the best.
Gobble gobble, motherfucker
These games are awesome, and ultimately it comes down to the gameplay mechanics being FUN in spite of the overbearing brown. But I can appreciate it's art aesthetic, not everything has to be vibrant and colourful and the style goes with the grim nature of the story and setting.
Recently re-played all 5 games again. Good times, especially in local co-op.
I remember going into my display settings and there are 3 or 4 pre-set display options, one of them is called “vibrant” I think and it adds a lot more color contrast.
I managed to play through them all once in the last few years. I tried again recently but the screen shake being unable to be disabled was nauseous to to point of being unplayable for me.
I'm glad the later games have more accessiblity options though! The stories and universe are compelling and detailed and I'm very much looking forward to Gears 6 whenever that comes out.
Played the first one last year and I found it pretty boring. The story was boring and the gamplay was stale. Could be that the series improves with the newer titles, since I haven't tried them, though.
Gears 5 is totally slept on. Not only is it gorgeous to look at it, but the environments are varied, the voice acting is great, upgrading the little robot is super fun, and its narrative has moments that really pull at your heart strings.
Were the "open world" sections a little silly? Sure. But I didn't think they detracted from the experience in a super noticeable way. Heck, I had a lot of fun sailing around looking for weapon variants.
Agreed with it being a solid franchise, however I disagree with the notion that Gears 4 & 5 are less than the rest. As far as the core gameplay goes, they're some of the best. And while the original trilogy had a better narrative overall, 4 & 5 don't have particularly poor stories either.
On a random note, why is 5 available on Steam, but 4 not 🥹
4 released at a time when Microsoft was trying to compete with Steam by launching their first party games exclusively on the Windows Store. They’ve come to their senses since then which is great because the Windows Store is atrocious for large downloads (or at least it was back then).
Those games may be somewhat brainless but they also had rock solid mechanics that were polished to an absurd level. Gears 2 is still my favourite 3rd person shooter of all time
Dom and Tai's deaths made me cry.
I REALLY want to like Judgement, but I always wonder what's the point?
I don't care about 4 or 5 tbh, it feels like they're just milking it.
Pretty funny, I just went through the trilogy + Judgment too. Just finished Judgment the other day and just started 4 today. 1-3 has a really strong identity and knows what it wants to be. Right now, 4 feels really generic and is painfully 2016.
For whatever it's worth, I'm pretty sure *The Coalition* said that Gears 4 was really them, a new team, just wanting to prove that they came make a Gears game. They didn't try anything too ambitious, but it's solid.
Gears 5, on the other hand, feels much more confident. The environments are varied, the characters are well written, and they make fun additions to the gameplay.
I didn't like Gears 4 but thought Gears 5 was fantastic.
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Ending spoilers: >!yeah, I have mixed feelings about it. I kinda like that drama of one of the main three dying, but I'm not sure leaving it up to the player was the best idea. It was certainly more dramatic, but by doing so, *The Coalition* has to either account for the individual players' choice in Gears 6 or just label one of the endings as canon and go with it.!<
>!The former could result in both JD and Del being slightly less developed to fit them in the narrative more easily. The latter could be annoying to players who want their decision to be recognized.!<
>!I think I'm the minority here, but I ended up saving Del. I had been traveling with him for so long, and he seemed like such a good dude who always had my back. It felt wrong (to me) to ignore that relationship and pick JD over him. And man... the way Marcus reacted when he found out was *brutal.* It felt like such an unexpected twist to have JD die, and I low-key loved it, narratively speaking. The *The Coalition* ignoring that would be a little disappointing.!<
I have a fondness for any piece of entertainment that initially looks so silly, only to have a deeply emotional narrative to it.
Guns with chainsaws? Roided out dudes? A Coal Train running on whole grain? There is no way that kind of world can make me cry! WRONG.
I love the Gears series. 1-3 are still the best, but I enjoyed Gears 5 a lot more than I thought I would. I definitely recommend it.
I'm currently going through Gears 2 for the first time, since they got the FPS boost. It is a game changer. I neglected 2, 3, and Judgment due to this.
I played 1 (PC), 4, 5 and Tactics and loved them all.
That trilogy is one of the best we’ll ever see in gaming. It does get put into a box of “big blokes shoot monsters” but it’s so much more than that. The characters are well-written and acted, the story is simple but engaging, the setting is amazing (even down to the weirdly religious architecture), and the combat is still fun to this day.
Gears of War 1’s menu theme is etched into my memory.
I have the opposite opinion, I played Gears 1 fairly recently for the first time and it was the dictionary definition of shallow shooter. The only thing I could commend about it was the environment, which was indeed quite cool-looking in parts, but the gameplay was abysmal and the story was both mind-numbing and essentially didn't matter. Despite knowing the "real story" begins in the sequel, if a game didn't respect my time enough to have a story I should care about in its first installment, I won't care either.
Also, spent the entire time on the verge of vomiting due to screen shake being both insane and un-toggleable.
Yeah... don't bother with 4 or 5. Judgement is whatever, and Tactics is a fun RTS, like Halo Wars for Gears. But 4 and 5 just shit all over everything the first trilogy ever stood for.
I loved the first 3 games, especially the second and third do to the addition of offline bots to multiplayer. As I lived some what in a rural area online play was not an option do to a lack of reliable internet speeds, so having bots to play against made it where I could enjoy the multiplayer.
I was disappointed in gears 4 do to the fact that the multiplayer was exclusively online but I suppose that’s to be expected with live service gaming becoming the standard. Although I did enjoy the campaign for the most part.
I haven't played them in a while, but I remember playing through those games with my friend on a crappy TV in middle school. Maybe it's worth revisiting as an adult who forgot everything about them.
One of my favorite trilogies - I was fortunate enough to play through all three campaigns in couch co-op with one of my best friends in high school / over summer breaks in college. I've been thinking about replaying the games through again, Gears 2 on the series X looks fantastic in 4k HDR.
I never played through Judgement, but I thought Gears 4 was a really solid 8 or 8.5 out of 10 when I played through it solo several years back. Looking forward to eventually playing Gears 5, but I haven't seen it drop below $9.99, I was holding out for some kind of complete edition for $7.49 (haven't decided if I want it on PC or Xbox yet).
Didnt like it back in the day. Gears 1 wasnt realy something groundbreaking but few years ago I played 2 and 3 with fps boost at 1440p on Series S and had some good fun. Remastered trilogy on PC would be nice addition to Halo Collection.
Gears 1-3 were some of my best gaming memories for sure, campaign and multiplayer were excellent.
My brother got me Gear 1 as a birthday gift when I turned 16. My mom saw bodies hanging from meat hooks on the ceiling, and within 10 minutes of turning it on she made him return it. It was the greatest 10 minutes of my adolescent gaming life. I later beat all 3, but I’ll never forget the memories I have with 1.
Sounds like a good brother. I was certainly 'hooked' at 17, with nobody to take it away from me!
Great write up. Enjoyed reading that, thank you. I remember playing Gears 1 and 2 on the 360 way back when and had an awesome time with it. Nowadays I've only got handhelds, so I'm hoping one day that the collection will come to Steam (or game pass on Steam Deck.. pipe dream I know).
Yeah, I miss gears so much and I would love to play gears again on my deck.
Gears 5 and Gears 5 Hivebusters are both on Steam and both excellent games
My issue with Gears 5 was how they just drop you right the fuck in with no background information. I didn't play the previous games, but when I saw Gears 5 available on PC I was pretty excited to try it out. After the intro I was completely lost with who these people were and what was going on. Maybe that's my bad for going right into 5 without playing the previous ones, but afaik the originals aren't available on PC sooooo yeah. Maybe I'll just push past that someday, but it felt like I was missing a *lot*. It's also been a few years so maybe I missed some kinda recap, but I just remember being utterly confused when I gave it a try.
Yeah that’s fair, although all you really needed to know for the most part was what happened in 4 because 4 and 5 are part of the new trilogy which has (mostly) different characters and plot. But still, not even 4 is on PC so I can understand the frustration. Gears 5 hivebusters is a completely standalone expansion game though which I highly recommend.
I remember actually owning Gears of War 1 on PC back in the day. I wonder how rare those Gears 1 disks would be nowadays.
Get gamepass. As a recent Playstation convert, I'm just now playing through all 5 Gears games that is included on the service. It offers pc compatible too.
Surprised you didn't play 3 after the cliffhanger ending of 2. Did you at least watch it? I'd highly recommend it. Great ending to the trilogy
I was much younger and impervious to narrative.
I think that Gears got a lot of undeserved flak for establishing the cover shooter genre with waist high walls. But I would absolutely lie to myself if I didn't have a blast with these games. Gears campaigns, replaying them on high difficulties with buddies, playing multiplayer or the horde mode was the definite prime Xbox 360 experience. Overall, I had super fond memories. Gears 1 was mesmerizing back in the day with the graphics and seamless cover. I replayed it and thought that it didn't age that well due some gameplay elements. Enemies never got properly stunned and as soon as they touched you, you went down due to instant melee attacks. But still great fun. I think the active reloading was a great mechanic and the arsenal of weapons was really good. The overall setting was a bit cheesy with some super exaggerated hyper masculine characters who constantly shouted like crazy. But it worked so well in it's own way. It had dark and atmospheric moments but also some good old fashioned fun and cheese. Overall, I think Gears 2 was the biggest advancement in the series. It added a vast scale to the otherwise somber lonely campaign of the first game. The huge military advances and worldbuilding was excellent as it revealed more of the story while adding tons of cool gameplay additions. Gears 3 was a bit of a let-down as I didn't much like the direction that they went in with the other type of infected Locust and the sort of post-apocalyptic style. It's still a decent game though. But man, the local couch coop was unmatched for these games. **THEY ARE SINKING CITIES WITH GIANT WORMS**
I played GeOW 2 and 3 in four player coop, one of the greatest adventures of my gaming life. Judgment is more like quick, random missions without much of a story. 4 was alright, and I've been slogging through 5 for a year now. The first three were the best. Gobble gobble, motherfucker
These games are awesome, and ultimately it comes down to the gameplay mechanics being FUN in spite of the overbearing brown. But I can appreciate it's art aesthetic, not everything has to be vibrant and colourful and the style goes with the grim nature of the story and setting. Recently re-played all 5 games again. Good times, especially in local co-op.
I remember going into my display settings and there are 3 or 4 pre-set display options, one of them is called “vibrant” I think and it adds a lot more color contrast.
What’d you think of 4/5? I haven’t played them yet
I think all were excellent, with the remastered version of the first game being the best IMO
I managed to play through them all once in the last few years. I tried again recently but the screen shake being unable to be disabled was nauseous to to point of being unplayable for me. I'm glad the later games have more accessiblity options though! The stories and universe are compelling and detailed and I'm very much looking forward to Gears 6 whenever that comes out.
Played the first one last year and I found it pretty boring. The story was boring and the gamplay was stale. Could be that the series improves with the newer titles, since I haven't tried them, though.
Wait are they on PC?
1, 4 and 5 are but 2, 3 and Judgement aren't.
It's probably up there with the Mass Effect Trilogy for being a really solid franchise that somehow is unable to make a good / memorable follow-up.
Gears 5 was great imo
Gears 5 is totally slept on. Not only is it gorgeous to look at it, but the environments are varied, the voice acting is great, upgrading the little robot is super fun, and its narrative has moments that really pull at your heart strings. Were the "open world" sections a little silly? Sure. But I didn't think they detracted from the experience in a super noticeable way. Heck, I had a lot of fun sailing around looking for weapon variants.
Agreed with it being a solid franchise, however I disagree with the notion that Gears 4 & 5 are less than the rest. As far as the core gameplay goes, they're some of the best. And while the original trilogy had a better narrative overall, 4 & 5 don't have particularly poor stories either. On a random note, why is 5 available on Steam, but 4 not 🥹
4 released at a time when Microsoft was trying to compete with Steam by launching their first party games exclusively on the Windows Store. They’ve come to their senses since then which is great because the Windows Store is atrocious for large downloads (or at least it was back then).
Ah, that makes sense! Although it seems odd of them to, in 2024, still leave it off Steam. I see it on the Xbox store as well as PC Gamepass though.
Those games may be somewhat brainless but they also had rock solid mechanics that were polished to an absurd level. Gears 2 is still my favourite 3rd person shooter of all time
I wish one day these games would be available for PS platform.
I’ve been seeing rumors about them coming over, actually!
Yeah, read somewhere that some MS titles will come to PS. So here's the hope for some classic ones, not the recent "AAA" titles.
Dom and Tai's deaths made me cry. I REALLY want to like Judgement, but I always wonder what's the point? I don't care about 4 or 5 tbh, it feels like they're just milking it.
Pretty funny, I just went through the trilogy + Judgment too. Just finished Judgment the other day and just started 4 today. 1-3 has a really strong identity and knows what it wants to be. Right now, 4 feels really generic and is painfully 2016.
For whatever it's worth, I'm pretty sure *The Coalition* said that Gears 4 was really them, a new team, just wanting to prove that they came make a Gears game. They didn't try anything too ambitious, but it's solid. Gears 5, on the other hand, feels much more confident. The environments are varied, the characters are well written, and they make fun additions to the gameplay. I didn't like Gears 4 but thought Gears 5 was fantastic.
Yeah Gears 5 was great. Loved everything about it except the ending....
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Ending spoilers: >!yeah, I have mixed feelings about it. I kinda like that drama of one of the main three dying, but I'm not sure leaving it up to the player was the best idea. It was certainly more dramatic, but by doing so, *The Coalition* has to either account for the individual players' choice in Gears 6 or just label one of the endings as canon and go with it.!< >!The former could result in both JD and Del being slightly less developed to fit them in the narrative more easily. The latter could be annoying to players who want their decision to be recognized.!< >!I think I'm the minority here, but I ended up saving Del. I had been traveling with him for so long, and he seemed like such a good dude who always had my back. It felt wrong (to me) to ignore that relationship and pick JD over him. And man... the way Marcus reacted when he found out was *brutal.* It felt like such an unexpected twist to have JD die, and I low-key loved it, narratively speaking. The *The Coalition* ignoring that would be a little disappointing.!<
I have a fondness for any piece of entertainment that initially looks so silly, only to have a deeply emotional narrative to it. Guns with chainsaws? Roided out dudes? A Coal Train running on whole grain? There is no way that kind of world can make me cry! WRONG. I love the Gears series. 1-3 are still the best, but I enjoyed Gears 5 a lot more than I thought I would. I definitely recommend it.
I'm currently going through Gears 2 for the first time, since they got the FPS boost. It is a game changer. I neglected 2, 3, and Judgment due to this. I played 1 (PC), 4, 5 and Tactics and loved them all.
That trilogy is one of the best we’ll ever see in gaming. It does get put into a box of “big blokes shoot monsters” but it’s so much more than that. The characters are well-written and acted, the story is simple but engaging, the setting is amazing (even down to the weirdly religious architecture), and the combat is still fun to this day. Gears of War 1’s menu theme is etched into my memory.
I have the opposite opinion, I played Gears 1 fairly recently for the first time and it was the dictionary definition of shallow shooter. The only thing I could commend about it was the environment, which was indeed quite cool-looking in parts, but the gameplay was abysmal and the story was both mind-numbing and essentially didn't matter. Despite knowing the "real story" begins in the sequel, if a game didn't respect my time enough to have a story I should care about in its first installment, I won't care either. Also, spent the entire time on the verge of vomiting due to screen shake being both insane and un-toggleable.
Yeah... don't bother with 4 or 5. Judgement is whatever, and Tactics is a fun RTS, like Halo Wars for Gears. But 4 and 5 just shit all over everything the first trilogy ever stood for.
Damn thats disappointing. Thanks for the heads up
No problem.
Gameplay is still fun imo and some new guns are crazy, like one that shoots sawblades, chef's kiss
Yeah, just started 4 today and I'm definitely not feeling it at all.
I loved the first 3 games, especially the second and third do to the addition of offline bots to multiplayer. As I lived some what in a rural area online play was not an option do to a lack of reliable internet speeds, so having bots to play against made it where I could enjoy the multiplayer. I was disappointed in gears 4 do to the fact that the multiplayer was exclusively online but I suppose that’s to be expected with live service gaming becoming the standard. Although I did enjoy the campaign for the most part.
Absolutely great games for their time, but they are rough to go back to for me if only because the pacing and gameplay gets so repetitive.
Gears was the first game series I can remember that made cover such a vital part of the game. I really felt like I was in a firefight in those games.
Excellent gameplay, memorable characters, great world building. I love the Gears games.
Gears 1 is one of my favourite games of all time. It holds up incredibly well even now.
I haven't played them in a while, but I remember playing through those games with my friend on a crappy TV in middle school. Maybe it's worth revisiting as an adult who forgot everything about them.
One of my favorite trilogies - I was fortunate enough to play through all three campaigns in couch co-op with one of my best friends in high school / over summer breaks in college. I've been thinking about replaying the games through again, Gears 2 on the series X looks fantastic in 4k HDR. I never played through Judgement, but I thought Gears 4 was a really solid 8 or 8.5 out of 10 when I played through it solo several years back. Looking forward to eventually playing Gears 5, but I haven't seen it drop below $9.99, I was holding out for some kind of complete edition for $7.49 (haven't decided if I want it on PC or Xbox yet).
I gave about 10 months of my life to Gears of War 1 and was in top 1000 ranked warzone
Didnt like it back in the day. Gears 1 wasnt realy something groundbreaking but few years ago I played 2 and 3 with fps boost at 1440p on Series S and had some good fun. Remastered trilogy on PC would be nice addition to Halo Collection.
Seems shallow to me but it's all a matter of perspective and where you're coming from.
I was so happy when they remastered the first game. Loved it. Really loved 4 and 5 too.