Gears 5

Gear 4 wasn´t the shot in the arm Halo 4 was but is still a perfectly fine soft-reboot. Gears 5 is the same mess that Halo 5 is. It equally features bizarro characters and writing that fails even the low standards of the series. Whoever came up with Fahz needs to be stopped! Meandering levels with tons of empty space (the "open world" and the collect-a-thons can go to hell), a bewildering difficulty curve that isn´t balanced for single player and the game again fails to go anywhere or evolve the 13-year-old formula in any way. And then we have the abysmally executed new skill system via the Jack bot that leads to endless menu management in a shooter. Gears needs to either end very soon or move on to a full-blown GoW 2018 style reboot after a half-decade+ hiatus. The multiplayer is the same as usual. It works fine but you don´t need to buy a new game to play the same old stuff. Gears 1 was a generation-defining game. Gears 5 reduced the series to a hollow zombie that is only saved by production values. 6/10

PS: Whoever came up with the idea that you should either grind like mad or pay actual money to unlock the Pride flags and skins that advertise a failed Terminator reboot, I like the film btw, deserves a special place in hell.