Currently on my gow 5 replay.



Gears 1 - This was probably one of the few reasons why I got a 360 in the og era. Played through the remaster and it was a blast playing through it again. Loved the atmosphere, especially the grimy, destroyed, clean grey and brown sci fi feel to it. It's probably the most atmospheric gears in terms of tone. Every location just felt very grand. The writing though lmao, straight outta 2007.


Gears 2 - An absolute gem and goes batchit crazy. If Uncharted 2 was PS3's creme de la creme and a blueprint on how to do a sequel. Gears 2 was 360's answer. Gears 2 campaign was absolutely mindblowing and I was legit astounded at how improved everything was across the board. The only downside is that Gears 2 turned was the turning point where the game turned into a full on action game and kinda left the horror vibes of the first game behind. Still, this was an improvement all across the board in terms of gameplay, locations, set pieces, story/writing ... Especially by 2009 standards lol. Maria's death caught my feels when I first played it back in the day, but playing it now, this chit is cringe as fuk and gayer than Jay at 3.00am at a gay bar.

Gears 3 - I remember playing Gears 3 back in the day and feeling a bit unimpressed. It just felt like I was retreading everything in 2. However playing it now, I think I've gotten a lot softer on my criticism. In terms of tone, this game is probably the biggest departure and where we can see some of the more "dei" elements coming into play here. Female cogs are given prominence, the entire cast is kinda very marvel-esque, making quips, jokes and one-liners. However playing it again, I actually really dig it. The lambent/locust did some cool stuff and the set pieces were fun. I especially low how the locusts do the rey mysterio jump from the E-holes lmao. Dom's death still hits the feels. This is also the first game where we start noticing the color palette has gotten brighter and the entire game starts featuring way more color - Which is kinda nice after 2 games of grey/brown.

Gears 4 - I wasn't impressed at all playing this the first time around, but I think I've still softened my stance on it. It still retains the same problems of how the main characters of JD, Del and Kait aren't really that great but the game is a bit of a love letter to the older games with the older characters, who are all far more interesting regardless lol. However everything else is so much better, the atmosphere is more akin to the first gears with some great setpieces and cool moments to break up those moments like with the bigass robots at the end which was fun as fuk. I hated the new swarm at first because I thought Coailition scammed us by saying we got new enemies, but just instead reskinned the locust ... I mean it's still kinda true, but the story implications of it make sense. I like the smaller scale story to it - Nothing is world-ending, or anything, it's literally just a mission to find kaits mom and Marcus .... The only drawback I can say is that I wish they just expanded on the story more, revealed things a bit more and had a better overarching villain, because the story just ends on a weird ass annoying cliff-hanger. Knowing that I'm moving onto gears 5 probably makes me softer on the game, because the first time around I had to wait until Gears 5 before they answered all their questions.

I just started Gears 5 ... I'm really not looking forward to the open-ended section. It might have been novel first time around, but thinking about having to go through it again just makes me groan as it wasn't implemented all that great and really took away from the gears feel. However from a first playthrough, I definitely enjoyed Gears 5 way more than 4. Kait is a better character than JD any day of the week.



The only game I havn't played before and need to play is GOW Judgement.