2.5/5 ★ – RoseFNV's review of Gears of War 4.

Pretty fucking underwhelming next gen (at the time) entry to the gears franchise. I was really hoping I would grasp onto the characters more than I did with the first 3, where I found the cast largely entertaining but also fairly underwhelming, but instead in gears of war 4 I got 3 characters that feel practically identical in personality as they spit out the same style of whedon-esque quips as each other without anything to differentiate themselves besides their looks and their backgrounds (oh and also Marcus again I guess). The gameplay is practically the same as the previous 4, there're a couple new guns that are fun enough but are practically abandoned in the latter half and some new enemy types but they're mostly just kinda annoying or more of the same. Looks pretty and I appreciate the lack of the muted color palette but that comes at the cost of some pretty lame music. Every attempt at a new addition just feels like a gimmick like the "destructible environments that alter gameplay" that shows up every 2 hours to just act as different looking exploding barrels basically and the new wave mode missions that pop up every act that just reuses mechanics from the horde mode lazily. The story itself might be the worst story in a mainline gears game, there's almost nothing to latch onto and no sense of scale or stakes or connection to anything and for most of it barely even a plot. Feels like it's missing half of its worldbuilding, there's so much that should've been explored with the New COG faction and whatnot but no we can't have the characters discuss anything of interest we must have QUIPS and nothing else. It's fine. Ish. Worst gears game. The gunplay is still decently fun but a lot of this is too underwhelming or annoying for me to justify giving it the same rating as all the other games. I hope I like gears 5 more I hear that one is a lot better.