This is my reaction to completing the game on a higher difficulty setting, co-op with a friend. It might not be as thought out as you might expect from other reviews, but offers the first impressions, most apparent drawbacks and massive takeaways from a game long-awaited with high expectations. If you haven't played the previous games, please do. If not then at the very least play Gears 4 so you can enjoy the best parts of a Gears campaign - the story.
The biggest negative about this game is, if you have played the original trilogy, it bears a lot of resemblances to the great Gears of War 2. Both games start off in the middle of a war that has started in the previous game. You are immediately put into the shoes of a soldier you are well acquainted with, and face a stiff task uncovering secrets of your identity, or your enemies (and sometimes, both are one and the same as you will eventually find out here) by travelling to icy lands for the first time in the trilogy, visit grotesque labs ran by Dr Niles Samson who was experimenting on Locusts before the COG found out about his measures and cut him off, but couldn't stop him from developing a new breed of locust which will pain you even more than the regular ones. Furthermore, it does not introduce too much new mythos into the Gears franchise but merely fills the gaps left behind by its predecessors to make the overall experience more wholesome, but doesn't add too much on its own. This strengthens the need to play the previous titles to experience the story in its entirety. But what is different this time around, is that now you will see things through the eyes of one Kait Diaz, introduced in the previous game, who is torn within herself with questions she must find the answers to, even if it means braving storms in the alpine territories of Mt Kedar or the hail of New Hope Research Facility. But luckily you will not be alone as your friend Del Walker will volunteer himself to accompany you through thick and thin (and a lot worse).
This makes up for the greatest aspect of the game - the camaraderie that spans through the story between characters who know each other as friends more than soldiers in the army. Kait is not a member of the COG, her story is deeply personal and her drive is individual. Del Walker has no duty to her but that of a friends', and the game is also built around playing co-op with a friend. Multiple mechanics, as I will discuss, are meant to be played with a partner to get the best experience. But the story is what will keep you in the game, and it succeeds with flying colours. I did not expect a gung-ho game like Gears to tug at the strings of my heart over the decisions a character will take and the outcomes he/she will have to face, the struggle to uncover your past and in turn, discover who you truly are, and the toll it takes on friendship you hold so dear, the stories of war heard in the voices of those who are well too versed in its art and how it has changed them, and the task you have to accomplish no matter how impossible it might seem, this is a game running on the back of your characters and their personalities. Without that, it is but a mere cover shooter which has refined and probably perfected its art, 5 titles into the franchise.
The shooting in this game is at its peak. Cover shooters were born with this title and its still carried by it. The animations are smooth, the camera work is fantastic and on higher difficulties, the enemy AI is improved enough to give you a tough time later on in the game without crossing the limits of patience where you totally surrender to the programming. You are encouraged to develop different tactics for different situations, carry different weapons, swap out weapons suitable to the present situation and become better with the fast nature of gameplay as you progress with the game. Along with your partner, who might be AI or preferably a human, you have the newest iteration of friendly bot Jack who has a ton of new powers which can be switched mid-fight to give you an advantage as per your needs for a brief period of time. These powers can be levelled up optionally by completing secret areas of the map you will come across only by willingly searching for them in the map of an area, introducing an RPG element in a shooter for the first time in Gears history. The maps are much much larger than ever before as now you literally require a vehicle to traverse the snowy mountains and reach your objectives.
As an experience this game is very tight when it comes to the single player, offering a dozen hour of entertaining game play and competently written story furthering the story of outcasts who suddenlly are more important for the survival of Sera than they had set out to be. Multiplayer returns with the familiar Horde mode, except this time each character has a special power which will give you an advantage over everyone else on the battlefield. And oh boy are there new characters! Deathmatch, team deathmatch return with a few more match types if you are into those, including a 3 player mode where you have to outrun a clock and clear out an area before the "infection" gets to you and kills you off. All the multiplayer maps are frequently updated, and you'll find further details on the web, because online multiplayer is not why I was here. That takes away everything that sets this game apart from its peers and leaves us with ony game mechanics to play with, which is fine, but doesn't feel like coming back to time and time again, as is the case with the story.
Definitely a step forward for the franchise, which looks to cap out its second trilogy in the next game, by setting up an adrenaline-pumping finale which will leave you wanting for more.