History YMMV / GearsOfWar

** Kait gets hit with this particularly hard, partially due to culture wars. Some like her for being a competent ActionGirl, having good banter with the rest of the team, and provider an outsider's point of view to the series. Detractors complain about her angst and her abrasiveness.

** Further adding to 4's increased difficulty is the huge improvement over the enemy AI. Scions and Dr-1 Protectors will actively duck shots from your power weapons and standard Swarm troops KNOW that a melee strike will OneHitKill you on Insane and will constantly try to flank you by running straight at you and around your cover for an easy kill. There are also no Mutators to help you out and there are a few set piece encounters that are ridiculously difficult, like the chase of Jinn's gunship on Marcus' motorcycles, leaving you to dodge all sorts of hell at high speeds with only an Enforcer to fight back and the dreadful Fabricator segments which spawn huge amounts of enemies with only minimal fortifications to assist you. There is also no 4 player co-op, so you'll either have to tackle Insane alone, or with a really experienced friend.

** The original game's "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ojz7Jd_MKY Mad World]]" trailer was widely praised upon release as one of the greatest marketing stunts for a video game ever, something that's a little hard to understand today. At the time, a trailer for a video game that emphasised EmotionalTorque and was presented in a traditionally "[[TrueArtIsAngsty artistic]]" way was something new and interesting, keeping in mind that most trailers until then were mostly just gameplay and cutscene showcases. Today, now that video games are more widely accepted as an art form and trailers have gone ''much'' further in their ability to invent an emotional hook for viewers, the appeal of "Mad World" is a bit lost.

** While the ''[=DeeBees=]'' are otherwise a [[BaseBreakingCharacter Base Breaking Race]], the ''DR-1'' is often regarded as the coolest of the ''[=DeeBee=]'' models for having a BadassBaritone voice filter, having the most combat abilities amongst them and for being legitimately threatening with their weapons.

* EvilIsCool: Pretty much every named Locust character, but especially Queen Myrrah for being Marcus's archenemy, her accurate, if too cynical, speeches about humanity,and being voiced by Carolyn Seymour.

** Several characters from the comics would prove popular enough to eventually appear in the games. But perhaps the biggest example would have to be Michael Barrick as His debut in the games had him as the face of ''Gears of War 3's'' Season Pass as well as the protagonist of the ''RAAM's Shadow'' DLC.

** Judgement may not have been the [[FanonDiscontinuity most beloved]] entree in the series. The other two members of Kilo Squad (aside from Cole and Barid), Sofia and Paduk proved to be very popular characters. The Former due to being a [[ActionGirl female gear]] that is also a member of the Onyx Guard. The Latter primarily for being the first [[TokenEnemyMinority represenative]] of the Gorsani/Uir to appear in the games. Paduk’s popularity in particular was a likely factor as to why he appeared in Gears 5.

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** The widely praised story of ''Gears of War 3'' seems to have lessened some of the vitriol thrown at [[Literature/RepublicCommandoSeries Karen]] [[Literature/LegacyOfTheForce Traviss]].
** Due to complaints about the limited availability and RNG nature of purchasable cosmetic items in ''Gears 5'' as well as the previous game, an later update overhauled the shop and allowed players to purchase most non-promotional items from the get-go.
** Another common complaint about ''Gears 5'' is that certain class abilities are tied with certain skins, creating situations where the preferred skin is tied with disliked abilities, and vice versa. An late update allowed any class to use any skin.

** The class system in Horde for ''Gears of War 4''. In previous iterations of Horde, players could use any weapon and any strategy they wanted to get to the end. Now, every player is forced to choose a class that they are stuck with for the entire match. You can choose between a Soldier (a JackOfAllStats that is focused on core mechanics and protecting the team), an Engineer (builds fortifications), a Heavy (focuses on heavy weapons and explosives to deal huge damage to enemies), a Scout (focuses on picking up power during waves) and a Sniper (gets headshots from afar to thin out the Horde). If just one person isn't doing their job well, the entire team suffers. Got a lazy Engineer? No fortifications for you. Scout not bothering to pick up power? Your fabricator's gonna run out of power real fast. You can also find classes not playing to their strengths, such as a Heavy using ''sniper rifles'' and Engineers and Snipers thinking they are Soldiers and Scouts. Not to mention that there are far too many players that [[WhatAnIdiot will do everything they can to snatch the power before a Scout can grab it]]. And if you yell at them to stop, [[{{Griefer}} they will only continue to grab more power just to piss the team off]]. It's no wonder a large percentage of players consider this to be the weakest iteration of Horde yet.

* WhatAnIdiot:
** It's revealed in ''Gears 5'' that Anya permanently decomissioned the Hammer of Dawn with the intention of if never being used as a weapon again. While this may have made sense at the time, the events of ''Gears 4'' and ''5'' pretty much show how shortsighted this decision was in hindsight, as the COG find themselves on the back foot against the Swarm without the Hammer.
** ''Gears 4'' and ''5'' also handily demonstrate that whatever was left of the COG high command, if not Anya herself in taking over, were firmly holding the IdiotBall when they decided post-''Gears 3'' to simply dump the alleged Locust corpses en mass with no oversight or anything, solely because the crystals in their bodies made them impossible to break down normally. This despite the fact that the Locust survived multiple past attempts and super weapons designed to eliminate them, and the fact that the Locust nearly made humanity extinct. This complete and utter lack of precaution results in the Swarm being reborn from the bodies of the NotQuiteDead Locust, which ends up pushing the COG right back to the brink in the following conflict.

** By the end of the trilogy, Marcus.

!!The Books provide examples of:
* MoralEventHorizon: Many of the Stranded consider anyone associated with the COG to have crossed it with the Hammer of Dawn counterattack, but considering how badly the COG was losing the war and the fact many Stranded gleefully cross the horizon themselves to survive or for fun, the accusation rings a little hollow.

!!The Comics provide examples of:
* NightmareFuel: The Heart Leeches

* WhatAnIdiot:
** Yeah, '''Chairman Richard Prescott''', hide the fact that information on the Locust capital is at a secret base, and the location of vital fuel supplies. Oh, and the fact that an island the population of Jacinto could have evacuated to is not contaminated like everybody else thought. [[SarcasmMode That will be real helpful to the war effort.]]
** '''First Minister Mina Jinn''' is quick to grow confrontational with anyone that gets on her bad side, and while folks like JD do get reckless in handling things without her consent or knowledge, her violent assumption that the Outsiders were somehow kidnapping people from her Settlements leads her to attack and threaten innocent lives in some sort of proclamation of rescue tinged with vengeance. She changes her tune once Marcus reports about the Swarm, but by that point the heroes being on the run from her while fighting the Swarm has already caused tremendous damage.

*** The Sawed Off was eventually proven to have a longer gib range than the Gnasher, as well as a spread that doesn't even require the user to be looking at an enemy to kill with it, the backlash towards the gun got even worse. Cliff Bleszinski's reaction to this essentially being "deal with it" didn't help matters, either. The gib range was eventually patched to be shorter than that of the Gnasher.

* GrowingTheBeard: Cliff Bleszinski of Creator/EpicGames had an interview where he described the company has been slowly expanding their comfort level with the games, due in part to bringing in people with more experience in non-programming things like framing cut scenes and story writing/dialogue.

* EightPointEight: There was some backlash when the {{Trope Namer|s}}, [[Website/GiantBomb Jeff Gerstmann]], gave the first game's ultimate edition 2/5 stars.

** To put it in perspective, Anthony has two lines ''in the whole game'': one where he asks if Marcus is ''the'' Marcus Fenix and the second is explaining to Marcus how his gun keeps jamming. [[spoiler: [[WeHardlyKnewYe He then gets his head shot off]]]].

** By ''Gears of War 4'', the Enforcer seems to be the most hated weapon in the series. Why, you ask? [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome Take a wild guess]]. The Enforcer is essentially the Retro Lancer (absolutely fantastic at plastering Gnasher users) with its rate of fire turned UpToEleven. And the best part? It's a starting weapon, meaning you can spawn with it anytime. It actually has a very narrow space where the bullets come from, but if your aiming is decent, you can drop players in 2 or 3 seconds. The StopHavingFunGuys will be livid every time. It's for this reason that it's described as being horribly overpowered, but if you get outside of point-blank range, it's actually much, ''much'' harder to do significant damage with it, let alone kill with it. Objectively, it just has a case of CripplingOverspecialization in range.

** ''Gears 4'' and ''5'' also handily demonstrate that whatever was left of the COG high command, if not Anya herself in taking over, were firmly holding the IdiotBall when they decided post-''3'' to simply dump the alleged Locust corpses en mass with no oversight or anything, solely because the crystals in their bodies made them impossible to break down normally. This despite the fact that the Locust survived multiple past attempts and super weapons designed to eliminate them, and the fact that the Locust nearly made humanity extinct. This complete and utter lack of precaution results in the Swarm being reborn from the bodies of the NotQuiteDead Locust, which ends up pushing the COG right back to the brink in the following conflict.

** Due to complaints about the limited availability and RNG nature of purchasable cosmetic items in Gears 5 as well as the previous game, an later update overhauled the shop and allowed players to purchase most non-promotional items from the get-go.

** Due to complaints about the limited availability of purchasable cosmetic items in Gears 5, an later update overhauled the shop and allowed players to purchase most non-promotional items from the get-go.

** Music/{{Ice-T}}'s band Music/BodyCount and their single [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHcfxW-4zQI "The Gears of War"]] used to promote the release of ''Gears of War 3''.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: The widely praised story of ''Gears of War 3'' seems to have lessened some of the vitriol thrown at [[Literature/RepublicCommandoSeries Karen]] [[Literature/LegacyOfTheForce Traviss]].

** ''Gears 5'' is seen as this for Creator/TheCoalition, whose previous entries (Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and Gears of War 4) were seen as BrokenBases.

** [[AbridgedArenaArray Maps]] are not exempt from this trope. Gridlock swamped the results screen whenever you searched for a match in the first game. Its popularity led it to be included in both sequels (but not in ''Judgment''). The second game introduced map voting, which lessened this somewhat, but River or Jacinto would always be picked if they were one of the choices (Jacinto would later come back in ''3''). Blood Drive was also very popular, especially in Horde, due to how easy it is to camp at one of the spawn points and kill the Locust as they funnel into the narrow stairs to get to you (this map came back in ''3'' as part of a Horde-themed DLC pack and a redesigned version came back in ''Judgment''). The third game had Checkout, which is an incredibly Gnasher-friendly map, so of course it was the most popular map (and came back in ''Judgment'' unchanged).

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: The series is very popular in Mexico, to the point that at least half the people angrily swearing at you online will be doing so in Spanish. Most official esports events are held in Mexico, and Gears 5, which allows you to purchase your country's flag as a banner to display behind your character, conspicuously lacks the real-life Mexican flag and instead has about 4 or 5 different "Mexico" options, all with Gears-inspired designs. So yeah, it's safe to say that Mexicans really like this series.

*** Kait in particular gets hit with this the hardest of the new cast. Some like her for being a competent ActionGirl and having good banter with the rest of the team while detractors point out how there have been far more interesting female characters in the series before, decry her hipster look as being incredibly out of place with the setting and accuse her entire inclusion as a case of SpotlightStealingSquad and PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad, especially since she's the PlayerCharacter for most of ''Gears 5''.

** And then ''Gears 5'' has even more mixed reception because of the same reasons above (as the story continues on) and also [[PortingDisaster myriad of technical issues on the PC version]], in which generally if one is unlucky, one can suffer from disconnections, crashes, to underperforming.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: A more recent video game example with this. There were third person shooters beforehand like ''VideoGame/EverythingOrNothing'' that had a primitive cover based system, but the first ''Gears of War'' was the game that help perfect the cover based system we see in modern third and even some first person shooters. Back in 2006, this was a big deal: but for players who never played a game in the series and played other modern third person shooters, when they get around to playing this, they will be baffled at why the first game is considered "revolutionary".

%%** Early on in ''Gears of War 4'', an argument between [=JD=] and Oscar has the latter bring up an incident known as "Settlement 2" which visibly makes [=JD=] and Del uncomfortable. Kait