How excited was I to pick up this game? Very! I love Gears of War. I do, but I love it for the single player campaign. I have played very little multiplayer. I have nothing against it, but it’s just not why I play games.

I had been looking forward to a new Gears game for a while and when I brought it home I set it on the shelf and looked at it like a kid waiting on Christmas. I had to finish the current game I was playing first as I hate having two unfinished games going on at the same time. So I finished up Wolfenstein on my PS4 and happily threw the new Gears into the 360.

After an update, as is the norm, I was in. I played through the first few areas and immediately felt the difference between this one and the others. I get it, it’s a spin-off done by a different developer. It is going to be different, but sometimes that can still be just as good. Call of Duty World at War comes to mind. Other than raining grenades it’s just as good as any Infinity Ward Call of Duty. Black OPs is also as good or better in my opinion.

A few minutes pass and I just put the controller down, think about what I just played and feel a rush of disappointment. I pick up the controller again and try to get back into it because of how much I really want to like the game.  But it becomes very apparent why I don’t like it.

I don’t play multiplayer. I just don’t. I don’t like being confined into preset maps, running around shooting. And that’s exactly what Judgment is. It feels like the developer just loosely stitched together a bunch of multiplayer maps and slapped a storyline together to try and make sense of it. And to top it off, they added Tower Defense elements. Gears of War is NOT a tower defense game. It’s an adult version of Wac-a-Mole done as a corridor style shooter if anything.

So I’m about an hour and a half in and I don’t know if I will continue it. I probably will but once I have nothing else to play. How can I not recommend a game after only an hour and a half? Because that’s more than enough time to have a game grab me and pull me in, but Judgment pushed me away without giving me a reason to push back and see what else it has to offer.

Sorry Gears, Not Recommended.