Is Gears written well? No.
Does it need to be? No.
Did some of the jokes in Gears age well? No.
Is Marcus a good character? Yes!
Is the game still fun? Yes.
Gears is at its heart just an action flick as a third-person shooter, and it sets out what it tries to do perfectly. It's a good time, and respects your time as well. It's a damn good third-person shooter, and the third entry in the series has refined the gameplay enough that it firmly sets itself as the best one I've played in the series thus far. Marcus has his characterization hit a level that is really enjoyable, although the overall plot isn't that complex or intuitive. Some of the jokes involving Sam and Anya, along with some of Baird's one-liners, don't really age well though and just come across as weird at best or borderline cringy at worst.
But Gears isn't supposed to be a pinnacle of writing. It's a pinnacle of gameplay and fun times, and it does that well, so it deserves to be praised for doing that well.
I do want to expand on the Action flick point because it feels very deliberate and that's what I love about Gears. The way the mission structure is and the way it flows feels very intentionally like an action film. Like the way things flow into the next, the way boss fights happen, the places where boss fights happen, the spots where spectacle shots and cinematic shots are added, etc. In that way, I have to give them a lot of credit for that in the way it was designed.
I'll review RAAM's Shadow as well here since I don't like that it'd take up a separate entry on my Backlogged. RAAM's Shadow was also a fun DLC, but it was marred for me by bugs, namely in Chapter 4. There's a section where Zeta exits a parking garage into the next segment, and the game automatically failed as soon as this happened for me, saying that "Drone has died". Who the hell is Drone?! And then upon taking the rooftops, both Kim and Valera straight-up disappeared from the game. Barrick was speaking to them both but they both were silent and were nowhere to be seen. So when me and Tai inevitably died during an ambush encounter in front of City Hall, I got another bug where I couldn't reload from a checkpoint. And I had to redo the entirety of Chapter 4. Not fun. But the rest of the DLC was fun, though. It had a lot of Gears 1 vibes (which likely was intentional because of when its set) and reminded me of how much I dislike E-holes as a mechanic, but if you want more Gears, it's hard to argue with what it offers.
Score: 89
Does it need to be? No.
Did some of the jokes in Gears age well? No.
Is Marcus a good character? Yes!
Is the game still fun? Yes.
Gears is at its heart just an action flick as a third-person shooter, and it sets out what it tries to do perfectly. It's a good time, and respects your time as well. It's a damn good third-person shooter, and the third entry in the series has refined the gameplay enough that it firmly sets itself as the best one I've played in the series thus far. Marcus has his characterization hit a level that is really enjoyable, although the overall plot isn't that complex or intuitive. Some of the jokes involving Sam and Anya, along with some of Baird's one-liners, don't really age well though and just come across as weird at best or borderline cringy at worst.
But Gears isn't supposed to be a pinnacle of writing. It's a pinnacle of gameplay and fun times, and it does that well, so it deserves to be praised for doing that well.
I do want to expand on the Action flick point because it feels very deliberate and that's what I love about Gears. The way the mission structure is and the way it flows feels very intentionally like an action film. Like the way things flow into the next, the way boss fights happen, the places where boss fights happen, the spots where spectacle shots and cinematic shots are added, etc. In that way, I have to give them a lot of credit for that in the way it was designed.
I'll review RAAM's Shadow as well here since I don't like that it'd take up a separate entry on my Backlogged. RAAM's Shadow was also a fun DLC, but it was marred for me by bugs, namely in Chapter 4. There's a section where Zeta exits a parking garage into the next segment, and the game automatically failed as soon as this happened for me, saying that "Drone has died". Who the hell is Drone?! And then upon taking the rooftops, both Kim and Valera straight-up disappeared from the game. Barrick was speaking to them both but they both were silent and were nowhere to be seen. So when me and Tai inevitably died during an ambush encounter in front of City Hall, I got another bug where I couldn't reload from a checkpoint. And I had to redo the entirety of Chapter 4. Not fun. But the rest of the DLC was fun, though. It had a lot of Gears 1 vibes (which likely was intentional because of when its set) and reminded me of how much I dislike E-holes as a mechanic, but if you want more Gears, it's hard to argue with what it offers.
Score: 89