But Gears 4's campaign is essentially just a newer, much prettier version of a game I've played a dozen times before. I was still clinging to that hope when the credits rolled. To deliver bombastic set-pieces that aren’t predictable for anyone who's played similar games, or watched any Hollywood action movies made in the past 20 years. To give me an objective more interesting or nuanced than 'pull this lever.' To create combat arenas open enough to approach with multiple strategies or angles of attack. I kept waiting, hoping for Gears 4 to surprise me. This is Gears almost exactly as we know it, following the 2006 template of big-budget shooter design slavishly. It hasn’t entered a cocoon as a grizzled, old school third-person cover shooter and emerged as something radically, or even subtly, changed. Gears 4 is no grand rebirth for the series in the vein that Resident Evil 4 was.
In hindsight, the chainsaw gun might've been the first tip-off.
