Gears of War 4 has finally been released. I love it, it seems the internet loves it, and our own Jeremy Duff loved it as well, which you can read about in his review.
The one thing I DO NOT love about Gears of War 4 is the absolutely ridiculous loot box system the game has for obtaining new characters and weapon skins. Unlike the previous Gears where you would earn new multiplayer content by leveling up or completing the campaign, in Gears 4, everything is locked behind RNG loot boxes.
In order to buy those boxes you need in game credits. Credits can be earned by winning or losing matches. Seems simple enough, but then you see that those elite crates, which contain all of the rare characters and weapon skins, are 4000 credits a piece. Again, perfectly fine, all the best stuff should cost more to buy. So far so good. Then you finish a multiplayer match and you see that you earn something ridiculous like 60 credits for winning a match. Granted, you do earn 500 credits every 5th level you gain in multiplayer, but really guys, come on. But of course if you really really want those crates, you can buy them with real money.... *sigh* Also, you can't just straight buy said items you want, you are essentially gambling for them. You could buy an elite back and end up with all crappy duplicates of stuff you already own.
I'm sorry but if I pay $60 for a videogame ($100 for this one since it was the Ultimate Edition), I should not have to deal with grindy, free to play nonsense when it comes to unlocking in game content. Content that you also have to gamble for. Other games have these kinds of systems in place for unlocking content as well, the difference is that those games actually do those systems much better than this.
Now that my rant is over, it should be noted that there was a small update today for Gears of War 4 that made some changes to the loot boxes and the credits system. First off, Elite Packs are now 3500 credits instead of 4000. The amount of credits earned after each match has also been increased, however they didn't say by how much. Another change was that Dodgeball now takes four matches to win instead of three. So, at the very least, it seems like they have heard the cries from the community and did change things for the better. Now, even though I went on a mega rant there, Gears of War 4 is still an absolutely fantastic game and it's multiplayer is probably something I will be playing for many months to come.
