Ranking the Gears Of War Games from best to worst.
Gaming

The Best Gears Of War Games – From Best To Worst

We’ve taken a look at the best gears of war games in an attempt to rank them from best to worst. It was really difficult as there are so many great games in the franchise. We think we’ve got it pretty much spot on.

Gears 5 is still fairly fresh (having been out less than a year at the time of writing). It’s one of XBOX’s most played games but will it come out on top?

Let’s get into it and rank the Gears of War Games from best to worst.

The Best Gears Of War Games – The List

Starting on the list we have a game in the franchise that’ll probably come as no surprise to you. It’s Gears of War 4. Arguably the best gears of war game in the series. Le’ts take a look at why we think it’s the best.

Gears of War 4 – The Best Gears Game!

Gears 4 is probably the best gears of war games.
Gears 4 is probably the best gears of war games.

Released: October 11, 2016

Gears of War 4 is set a quarter of a century (25 years) after the events that took place in Gears of War 3. Gears 4 starts with a commemoration of humanity’s victory over the Locust Horde. The story is great and it’s a brilliantly done continuation of the series.

Microsoft tasked new Gears of War game developers, The Coalition (The franchises new devs) to create this epic entry into the franchise.

The Coalition gave themselves two goals and they nailed them both:

  1. To create a visually stunning Gears Game.
  2. To create a game the ‘felt’ like a true Gears of War game.

It didn’t quite have the hype of Gears of War 3 and the main story mode felt like it ended a little prematurely, we’d have liked to have seen another hour or two of gameplay. But let’s not take anything away from the game, it’s utterly fantastic.

The characters are all great and it’s the first time in the series we see female characters get a fair amount of screen time. And it ultimately sets up Gears 5 which is the first game in the series to get a female lead character.

The gameplay mechanics haven’t been messed with, which is great, it gives a sense of familiarity. New enemies have been introduced, namely the Swarm which are meant to be like a bigger, badder version of the Locust.

Then theres a robot army that serves First Minister Jinn, they started out being a security force for the COG. But before long they’ll want to take you out!

Fighting the robot army that was once there to protect the people is a nice touch and gives our characters something else to contend with. So expect the game to be anything but easy!

The graphics and sounds are amazing. You’ll get even more enjoyment out of the game if you use headphones! It’s easily the best Gears of War game in our opinion.

Should you buy it?

If you haven’t already played it and love some competitive multiplayer modes then by all means pick up a copy!

However, if you’ve played Gears 1,2 and 3 don’t expect any fresh faces and revolutionary ideas in Gears of War 4. For that, you may just have to look elsewhere.

Gears of War 5 – The latest but not quite the greatest

Released: September 6, 2019

Gears of War 5 follows on from the previous game. Recently re-instated into the COG Army, JD, Del, Marcus and Kait travel to the ruins of Azura. This is to launch a satellite in an effort to restore the Hammer of Dawn network.

Jinn (the first minister) finds out about the launch and orders them not to restore the network since it would go against the wishes of the late Anya Stroud.

As one of the most highly anticipated games of 2019, Gears of War 5 had a hugely successful launch. According to XBOX “more than three million players played in its opening week.”

It’s easy to see why it’s number 2 on our list of the best Gears Of War Games. The campaign is amazing and slightly more refined than it’s pre-predecessor.

It’ll take you around 12 hours to play through the game, the inclusion of some ‘open world’ elements and RPG style ability upgrades make it unique among the other games in the franchise.

Gears of War 5 is also the first game in the franchise that has a female lead character. A bold move by the team behind the game that was met with praise and some criticism.

Having a female lead allowed Gears 5 to explore themes not touched upon before. The violence and gore didn’t exactly take a back seat but it was less pronounced and replaced with exploring the characters heritage and family ties.

Gears 5 felt a lot more progressive and grown up than the previous games. We also included it in our Best PC Games of 2019 article a while back.

It’s also amazingly detailed and the GPU’s in PC’s and XBOX’s are pushed almost to their limits by the Unreal Engine. We wonder how much better the graphics will get in the next installment? Although, the next installment of Gears will probably be a few years away yet.

Gears of War 2 – Joint 2nd

Released: November 7, 2008

It would have been 2nd on the list but Gears 5 just edged it with the inclusion of some open-world elements and the sheer beauty of the game.

Gears of War 2 was released all the way back in 2008! That’s such a long time ago but, revisit the game and we promise, you’ll enjoy it today just as much as you did back then.

The game was highly polished and the inclusion of new gameplay and multiplayer modes allowed Gears 2 to stand alone amongst other games in the genre. Critics call the new game modes ‘outstanding additions ‘ to the game.

Hype for Gears 2 was off the charts. So much so that it sold over 2 million copies in it’s first week and went onto be one of the best selling games in 2009. This can be attributed to the new Horde mode.

Eurogamer said “Horde is a weighty slab of fun that can turn almost any of them into a time-sink, and the leaderboards are likely to be as compelling a reason to stick with Gears of War 2 as the leveling system has been for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.”

There were some criticisms of the campaign modes rather abrupt ending, but that just allowed the development team to be more creative with the opening act of Gears 3, so in hindsight it isn’t too much of a big deal.

Should you buy it?

If you still have an XBOX 360 around then get the original! Or if you already own the Gears of War Ultimate Edition you’ll have it already. So get it downloaded and have a play. It’s a real blast from the past.

Gears of War – The original

The original Gears of War game but is it the best gears of war game?
The original Gears of War game but is it the best gears of war game? Not quite!

Released: November 7, 2006

When we first decided to write a list of the best gears of war games our first thoughts were that the original is easily the most loved, But not quite the best out of the bunch. Let’s not let emotion get in the way! And let’s rank it properly.

It isn’t the best but it is a game the would go onto be the Xbox 360’s Game of The Moment. Everyone wanted to play it!

Just ask yourself, how many times have you been in a gun fight against vicious aliens and thought I wish my heavy machine gun had a massive petrol chain saw attachment! I don’t think (and certainly hope) that any of the CodeWithMike content team have ever been in a gunfight, but it wouldn’t be Gears of War without the Sawblade.

You play the game as lead character Marcus Fenix. His job is to slay the Locust Horde. Marcus and his squad of heroic soldiers must expel the horrendous alien infestation from the planet Sera.

The game was met with an amazing reception from both critics and gaming fan alike. The atmosphere the game creates is great, the darker tone feels almost like a horror shooter and gives a real sense of dread and despair.

Gears of War 3 – 3rd game comes in 4th

Released: September 20, 2011

The end of a trilogy and the difficult 3rd act. No difficulties here though, as the game is brilliant. When it was released Gears of War 3 received critical acclaim across the board, it’s currently sitting at 91% on Metacritic.

To close out the trilogy after the huge success of Gears 2 is no mean feat. Gears 3 had to do something special to keep fans onboard and engaged. They did this with the inclusion of a new 4 player co-op mode, new enemies and even greater depth to the storyline.

The vast majority of the core gameplay elements (that we’ve come to know and love) in the Gears of War series have remained. Gears 3 has had some of the controls and game mechanics refined, they seem to flow better and allow you to feel more immersed into the game.

One of the new inclusions into Gears 3 is the The Silverback. It’s a badass controllable mechanised exoskeleton suit. The Silverback gives you two modes, assault and stationary.

Assault mode gives you a really powerful machine gun that deals large amounts of damage to enemy combatants. Whilst stationary mode deploys bonus armor to aide in defense for the Silverback as well as a rocket launcher.

It’s an awesome end to the trilogy and for the most part is fantastically well put together. The only gripe we had with the game was the weapon skins (almost all of them) you could only unlock by spending real cash!

Gears of War: Judgement

Released: March 22, 2013

Even though numerous gaming blogs and news outlets have endeavoured to warn us to stay away from Gears of War: Judgement, We’ve included it in the list. It wouldn’t be a complete list without it.

The reason they’ve tried to warn people away from playing it is due to the fact they consider it to be a bad game.

But, if you just treat it for what it is, a spin off to try new concepts and ideas for the main Gears Franchise, you’ll enjoy it.

Let’s be honest (as we always are with our reviews and articles) the gunplay feels really good but overall the game feels a little rough around the edges.

The co-op mode works really well and the actual campaign is highly enjoyable. The shorter mission length and arcade style elements make it really fun.

We also really liked the sound design and graphics that developers, People Can Fly came up with.

Upon release it was met with (in our opinion) overly harsh criticsm from a few review sites but overall was met with a decent reception.

If you want a more casual Gears experience or if you want a tough challenge, Gears of War Judgement has something for everyone.

Should you buy it?

If you want to own them all and have the original copies in your collection, then for sure you should buy it! However, you don’t need to play it to keep up with the main story.

Disclosure:

If you use any of the Amazon links in this article they are affiliate links. This means that if you go onto buy something from Amazon I may get a small commission. It won’t cost you anything extra but it helps me to pay for the running costs of the blog and allows me to bring you great content! Thank you so much for your support.

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