Gears of War Judgment

While much of the attention has been given to the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft, we shouldn’t forget about the current batch. The PS3 and Xbox 360 still have plenty of good games on the way, and one of those highly-anticipated titles arrives tomorrow on the Xbox 360.

Gears of War: Judgment, the latest game in one of the Xbox 360’s major franchises, will be released tomorrow, Tuesday, March 19.

Set shortly after the Locust first emerge, Judgment is a prequel to the previous Gears games and represents a significant shift for the franchise. The leading protagonist from the previous three games, Marcus Fenix, is not the main focus of the story. Instead, Judgment follows Damon Baird and Augustus “Cole Train” Cole as they and the other members of Kilo Squad vainly try to stem the onslaught of the Locust horde.

Gears fans will get to see a different side of Baird and Cole. Since Judgment takes place 15 years prior to the other Gears games, Baird and Cole have yet to become the badass, combat-tested Gears fans are used to seeing.

On the multiplayer front, the brand-new OverRun mode takes Gears of War 3’s Horde and Beast modes to a whole new level. COG Gears try to prevent the attacking Locust horde from breaching their defenses and opening up a spawn point. Play continues until either time runs out or the Locust have destroyed the final COG base. Think Beast versus Horde from Gears 3 with a setup similar to Halo: Reach’s Invasion gametype.

The next Xbox may be on the way, but as Gears of War: Judgment shows, the 360 still has plenty of fight left in her.