Soapbox: Gears Of War Should Return To Its Horror-Themed 'Mad World' Roots

I Hope so I love gears of war

I have enjoyed every Gears of War, including Tactics, but I'm getting pretty desperate for my next Gears fix.

That said, whilst I love this particular version of Mad World, the best one is the original by Tears For Fears, as it takes me back to my youth because when it released in 1982 I was a mere 18 year old lad... 😊

Gears of war is very special I’ve just played through the first campaign again and it’s still amazing! I just love it’s no messing around all action gameplay. ALL KILLER NO FILLER! Some modern games have way too much filler content.

I loved Gears of War 1, 2, 3 and 4. The other two disappointed me, but Hivebusters DLC was excellent. Kait is the most annoying character I can remember, along with Amicia from A Plague Tale.

Only Gears I didn't care much for, was Judgement and 4, and both still had decent stuff in them. I miss the series a lot, and have been recently playing 5s hive mode, as its a blast (plus it's a decent Halloween game). So yes, a return of any kind (but pls more horror) would be welcome.

That commercial, along with the Halo diorama commercial, was such perfect marketing and tone-setting. I wish Xbox would continue to do such advertising.

This was probably one of the most fitting trailers that I’ve seen for games. Creating the perfect atmosphere for the game.
I’ve noticed my interest declining with the last gears chapters. The first three ? Top notch !!! Great story , solid gameplay , well chosen characters and it was new , you did not know what you could expect and man .. did we get a lot of huge set pieces and a massive tense and action packed campaign but it never went over the top. Judgment was not more than ok. 4 didn’t grab me at all and 5 was all lost on me. Cannot remember a single thing of it. I just remember i didn’t like it at all even though a lot of people called it a refreshment and a good change by going semi open world. I loved the action packed closed worlds. A little bit of freedom to wander around but not too much. I hope they go back to the roots and give us a no nonsense gears experience without all the extra bells and whistles.

The overall amount of passion and love i have for this series is insane. But lately it’s gotten a little woke and not near the level of what made the first 3 so great. Anyone that knows me well on this site know my top 3 gaming franchises are Diablo, Red Dead and Gears of war. Those 3 make me the most happy and I play them for 100’s of hours, leaving many other games behind. Currently i haven’t even gotten to Starfield cause i have 528 hours into Diablo 4. Gears 5 story wise was my least favorite but the multiplayer was outstanding and I logged 100’s of hours into it. If they can build upon that and make a good story , Gears 6 should be great cause we know it will be in Unreal 5 and look fantastic. Most would agree coalition is the best with unreal engine. But i really wanted the rumors to be true for a gears collection. Give me 1-3 with great updates and it would really please us old gear heads. Plus it would bring them all to the PC. But i suppose that was all rumor and not happening. We might get a teaser for Gears 6 at this upcoming June showcase. But that would mean 25 or 26 for release. Stinks but i think thats where Gears is at the moment.

1 and 2 are classics, I adore those games. 3 was good too and I enjoyed 4.

5 was just okay, I thought the open world stuff hurt it more than added to it, they jumped on the unoriginal open world bandwagon like everyone else. Apart from Fenix junior, who at least has kind of an interesting arc, the cast is forgettable and I don’t care about them. That’s a massive failure, the originals were character driven, Marcus, Dom, Baird, Cole are all iconic characters but I fear those days are in the past, we ain’t allowed strong bro characters in games kicking the sh*t out of things for the most part now. I don’t hold much hope for the future of the franchise tbh.

So not only would I like to see it return to its horror roots, I’d like to play as great characters again that I can care about.

Mad World is the most iconic, but all 3 of the original games had incredible trailers. Mad World, The Last Day, and Ashes to Ashes were all works of art.

We’ll duh maybe start over from gears 3

@Fenbops but what’s the rush why do those days have to
Be over with ? You don’t see god of war or Mario changing the main character

after gears of war 3 the story became awful.

This article is timely. I've been replaying the entire Gears franchise myself. I just finished off 4 two nights ago. I never thought of the game as a horror game but it would be cool if they went that way. Five was good in its own way but it's starting to add a bunch of unnecessary "upgrades" that just end up being annoying. I too want them to get back to their roots. I hear rumors they have 1 more in the works before moving on to a new game.

People complained, "it's not colorful enough." The game is still violent, all the while losing much of the horror aspect.

I feel like I see "Make Gears Horror Again" get recycled every few months in the game media.

For what it's worth, Gears 4 was supposed to be this very thing; a return to the more suspenseful and atmospheric tones of the first game (sans all the brown). Gears 4 was also outsold by Gears 5 (according to Phil) despite G5 being VERY actiony and the poster child for early Gamepass.

@Fenbops Cole train baby!!! Nothing in Gears 5 was even close to that. Haha

I cut my teeth on GOW2 and it remains my favourite of the series. I did go back and complete the campaign on GOW (which is great too). 3 was good but not as good as 2. 4 was meh. 5 is better than 4....I really should get back to competing the campaign on that.

@HonestHick Cole Train! WOOOOOOO!

The great thing about Gears of War was the brotherhood. It's been that way since Gears of War 4. Yeah, it's something that no big American company today can make.

So just as mentioned on Gears of War Ultimate edition was one of the first game I Downloaded when first I got my Series X. Have been playing it from time to since then. But to be honest the game have nerver really clicked with me . Maybe it will at some point in time. It seems at least cool that Microsoft seems to be interested to bring back the franchise to life.

Hopefully they go back to what made the games great in the first place gears 5 was such a disappointment no open world it doesn't work for gears nor halo for that matter both games should go back to what made their campaigns great in the first place n stop all the micro transactions in the multiplayer parts aswell

Yes please. I have a rendezvous with death.

I enjoyed the first one on a coop playthrough. Two was okay but had a tonal shift which has not aged well for me at all.

I've recently come to the realization that Gears of War is my all-time favorite video game franchise. A big part of that is how it shattered my non-existent expectations. I thought nothing more of it at first than "it's a bunch of steroid dudes with guns" and only rented it from Blockbuster, where I was working at the time, because my younger brother wanted to play it.

As we played co-op, I gradually realized "This is actually pretty cool" and absolutely fell in love with Gears 2, where my reaction went from "pretty cool" to "this is AWESOME!"

One of the biggest reasons I'm glad I chose Series X over PS5 was it helped reconnect me with Gears, as I sat out the XB1. I'd forgotten how much I genuinely loved the franchise until it was absent from my life for a while.

In regards to the content of this article, I would argue that Gears never truly lost its horror roots, at least not from a story perspective. There's a valid argument to be made that the gameplay of the first had elements of survival horror the sequels have lacked, but looking at the story as a whole? You have the Lambent, a parasitic organism capable of infecting anything and anyone, the origins of the Locust in general, and the fact that from a certain point of view, they can never truly die. They just metamorphose into something else.

As far as the future of Gears, I'm both hopeful and fearful. Fearful because it's been so long with no news on Gears 6 or the oft-rumored Marcus Fenix Collection. Hopeful because I can't help but think that with all the time that has passed, The Coaltion has been cooking up something AMAZING that will totally blow away all expectations once it's finally revealed/released.

In conclusion, I'm a skeptic turned true believe. Long live Gears!

@NoblePanda78 I think a lot of people wrote it off as a dudebro shooter but it has incredible heart. It’s easily one of my favourite series of all time.

I do think The Coalition is working on an “Unreal Engine 5” Gears 6 which is why it’s had an extended development time.

@K1LLEGAL Yeah, I can understand that attitude of writing it off as "just another dudebro shooter" cuz that's how I was until I played it. Makes me sad that so many people aren't willing to look beneath the surface to see what's truly there.