Gears of War: Judgment is a spin-off game set in the Gears of War world. Set less than a year after E-Day and around 15 years before the original Gears of War; it revolves around Lt. Damon Baird (of the main trilogy’s Delta Squad and Kilo Squad), who is on trial for defying orders and taking COG technology without permission. The story is told in flashbacks as Kilo Squad reflects on their activities throughout their practice.
The single-player elements of the game are the same third-person cover-based gameplay found in prior Gears of War games. However, depending on the player’s performance during the various campaign parts, players can gain up to three stars per section. In addition to grading the player’s performance, these stars unlock extras that can be used in multiplayer games. In addition to the main game, there is a second unlockable campaign called Aftermath, which takes place during the events of Gears of War 3 and occurs when Baird and Cole seek assistance for the attack on Azura.
The multiplayer in Judgment is similar to previous Gears of War games, albeit specific modes have been removed. There are only three game modes: Free-For-All, Team Deathmatch, and OverRun (two teams vying to out-defend each other). Horde mode has been replaced with a new cooperative way called survival, an objective-based variant of Horde in which a group of five players must defend an object, such as a generator, from increasingly difficult waves of Locust.
