Alright everyone. This is going to be a long one, as I’m about to take you down memory lane of my short existence. (All in paragraph form, I assure you.)
When I was 10 years old, in 2010, I got my hands on the original Gears of War for the first time. (Yes, I know, millennial very bad, I don’t care what he has to say, he’s not a gears vet!) But just bear with me here. I was drawn to it originally from the cover art: A large man holding an assault rifle. Ah, seen it. But a large man holding an assault rifle with a ■■■■■■■ CHAINSAW ON IT! Buy me this one mom!
So as soon as I arrived home with my new prize, I popped it in my Xbox 360 and played it all night. Then all night the next night. And then I came to the final boss fight with Raam. And for a week I was stuck there. At that age, I was very bad at video games, but I was determined. I loved this game so much, and I wanted nothing more than finish the game. So I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and finally, I beat it. I was ecstatic. I went and told my older sister what I’d done, my little brother. And that was the night I truly fell in love with Gears of War.
My young ■■■ went though and played the other installments in the game religiously, of course, but never played online. (The last sentence is very important to where I’m going with this story, so don’t forget it 
.) I loved nothing more than to come home from school and play through one of the Gears campaigns again, as they were always breathtaking, and never got old in my eyes. I even put over a week of playtime into Judgement, if that explains how much I loved these campaigns. When 4 came around, I finally did the unthinkable: played online… and it is as meh to me. So I went back to only playing the campaign, which after about a year, that got old, surprisingly enough, although I’d completed it about a dozen times. But that changed when Gears 5 rolled around.
At the launch of Gears 5, I popped it in, downloaded, and played through the campaign 2 times. Loved the story, the visuals, everything. It was missing the grittiness of the original games, but I got over it. Something weird happened though. I got tired of playing the campaign over and over. I went back to play other campaigns, but they’d all gone stale. So I stopped, and starting playing Call of Duty. And when CoD got stale, I made what I think was a great decision: I came back to Gears 5 to give the PvE/PvP a chance. And I was blown away.
PvP sucked, and still does no doubt, but PvE. Oh, I’ve become a horde/escape addict. I love all of the depth to the modes, having characters with skill cards that can be upgraded, ultimates that can at times be the difference between your team winning or losing. Everything about it just took my breath away.
But no matter how much I enjoy it, I constantly see players bashing Gears 5 PvE mode because they “Can’t play any character they want”, or “It’s just not the same as Gears of War 2 and 3”. And that right there, is the problem. People don’t hate Gears 5 because the gameplay mechanics are inherently awful. They hate it because it isn’t their Gears of War. Not the Gears they grew up with. I may not understand the Gears of online play of old, but I understood the campaigns very well, and that’s why I was turned off by 4 and 5’s campaigns was because they weren’t the Gears I know. And while old school PvE and PvP players despise the new PvE and PvP mechanics, I love them, as I never did get to experience old school online Gears of War!
I do hope this has helped to clearly shed a light on what some of you will call this games “flaws”. As has been said many times before, TC is looking to bring a new audience into the Gears franchise. I’m an example, as they brought me in with a very fun, exciting PvE mode, and now that I play online, I spend money in the store, just like they want. It’s just the order of things. To you ‘06 vets. TC is a company, and they’re going to do what they have to to ensure they make money from their games. And part of that is acquiring a new audience for their games. So you may hate it, but odds are it’s never going to go back to exactly how you all remember it, because times are changing. They’ll obviously still try to somewhat please you. (For example, lancer and gnasher tuning. Holy ■■■■■■■ ■■■■!) But if you’re unwilling to adjust at all to the way the game plays now, and will only accept old school gears of war, I hate to tell you this, but odds are you’ll never get that same feeling gameplay again.
Now I did say only half of why people hate the game, so here’s the half that I think is more than deserved anger towards TC: Lag. LAG LAG LAG LAG LAG. This game has terrible servers, connections are awful. This is something that cannot happen in a potential Gears 6. It just can’t, or the franchise will almost certainly be put on ice. For those of you who play PvP almost exclusively, like I play PvE almost exclusively, I feel for you. I know it must be awful. This part of the game is more than enough reason for people to show disdain towards Gears 5, no doubt, and I understand that.
I know this was long, but it’s just something that’d been running through my head at work. I’m sure a lot of you will eat me alive whether because of what I said, or because I made you read for 5 minutes on a topic you may not like. But I hope you’ll give it a chance from someone who’s point of view is in contrast to the majority on this forums community. Thank you!
PS: I typed this very quickly, so I apologize for any grammatical errors.
