“Gears of War: Judgment,” which launched on March 19, is the first game in the series developed by an outside studio. It is quickly apparent, as the game lacks some of the major appeal of the previous titles.

“Gears of War” has been one of the few series that drew people in with not only a competitive online mode, but immersive campaigns which overlapped throughout the series.

The series as a whole is set on a planet called Sera in the distant future, and chronicles the war between the Coalition of Ordered Government soldiers and the alien race known as the Locust Horde.

This is the only game in the series to not be focused on the hero of the first three games, Marcus Fenix. Anyone who hated the character of Damon Baird, the cynical smartass of the COG soldiers, will immediately turn away from the game. The entire plot is shaped around his past, when he was put on trial for war crimes.

However, that’s where the plot not only grabs your attention, but loses it. The campaign starts with Baird coming off of a chopper in shackles before being taken into a courtroom with those under his command in Kilo Squad. A veteran of the series, Augustus Cole, is in shackles among two newcomers: Garron Paduk and Sofia Hendrik.

The game immediately drops the foursome into the action, with Baird as the playable character, as he recounts the tale that brought him into the courtroom. However, a lack of actual plot after that point makes the killing of Locust enemies more annoying than fun.

In previous games, the killing took you through objectives and advanced the plot through a cohesive mix of cutscenes, dialogue and playing. Now, however, each checkpoint is marked by a list of statistics that stops gameplay and recaps if the score was high enough to earn more stars. The stars are earned through killing enemies and completing objectives, and more “prestigious” stars are earned when playing at higher difficulties.

The stars unlock different things, and are later used to unlock “Aftermath,” which is an extension of the “Gears of War 3” storyline.
With a lot of time spent holding onto positions and defending rooms against waves of incoming Locusts, similar to Horde mode of Gears 3, interest in the campaign quickly wears down.

The lack of a gripping story, the intrusion of stat sheets and the repetitive missions all add up to why I did not play through the entire campaign.

The addition of “Declassified Missions” to Judgment does give the game some points back. At the start of each section of the game, the player has the ability to add an additional level of difficulty that is specific to that section. Some of the missions included playing with reduced ammo, reduced vision and added time limits.

The game also does a good job splitting the chapters between different characters, giving the chance to play as each member of Kilo Squad. However, the game leaves the player with the desire to learn more about the new characters.

A few things are immediately noticeable when playing campaign: the button layout has been changed to match up with most current shooters and the player no longer has a pistol in their
loadout. Rather than the D-pad being used to switch between weapons, the Y button switches between the two primary weapons and the Left Bumper is used to throw grenades.

The game’s multiplayer mode has also changed with everything else. While still allowing five-on-five battles, just browsing the menus shows that the playlists were watered down and
staples of the game were removed. Two game modes that have been in the game since the beginning, Execution and Warzone, are gone.

Though after the initial playthrough of the game, gamers discovered that Warzone could be accessed through a button command in private matches. Execution was eventually released as free DLC, but the fact remains that they should never have been removed.

Team Deathmatch, however, has been improved, changing from giving each team a limited amount of respawns to having the teams battle it out to 50 kills.

Domination will be the the mode of choice for anyone looking for an objective-based versus experience. It’s similar to Call of Duty in that two teams battle it out for control of three points on the map.
A new, long-awaited mode has finally made it into the Gears menu: Free-for-All. Ten players in all-out battle will quench anyone’s thirst for gruesome destruction in this game.

OverRun, another new mode, isn’t all that it was hyped up to be. The game mode pits Locusts against the COG in a specialized type of warfare. The COG have to keep an Emergence Hole (a hole where Locusts emerge from) from being opened, while the Locusts attempt to destroy barricades to get to it.

For the first time, COG soldiers are picked in different classes, with each class having different weapons.

The mode is promising, but the Locust team has two distinct advantages: a quicker respawn time and more powerful characters. In most matches I have played, Locusts almost always overwhelm the COGs.

COG and Locusts no longer face off in versus modes outside of OverRun, which takes away from the unique feel that Gears games have had. Instead, COGs face off against other COGs, differentiated by team colors of Red and Blue.

Being able to down an opponent and execute them with a curb-stomp or a weapon-specific bloody end has been taken out. And players must now choose one primary weapon, one type of grenade and they’ll start each spawn with them and a pistol. Gone are the days of a loadout filled with an assault rifle, a shotgun, a pistol and a smoke grenade.

A few new guns are also introduced. Anyone who is fond of sniping will take to the Markza, a new semi-automatic sniper rifle.

But once the novelty off using most of the new weapons wears off, the tried and true gun is still the best in the game: the Gnasher Shotgun.

While the game may lack in many places, it never gets old blowing someone’s body to bits with a well-timed shotgun blast to the chest. The “Gears of War” multiplayer is truly beautiful, gory
carnage at its finest that can’t be rivaled by the likes of Call of Duty.

Gears of War purists looking to just play through the campaign once would find it best to just rent the game, while perfectionists looking to earn every star through the missions should purchase it.

Anyone looking to get into the series should stay away from this “addition” to the storyline and play through the first three games.
Anyone looking for online play should not only buy the game, but also invest in the Season Pass, which grants access to future maps, game modes and gives double experience for life.

Multiplayer alone makes the game worth it, even without some of the original modes, but not having a well-rounded campaign really hurts what could have been the perfect game.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III is the newest game in the hit franchise. While only three years havepassed since the release of Black Ops II, 40 years have gone by in game.

Like the last Treyarch-developed games, there are three main aspects to the game on the XBox One, PlayStation 4 and PC: campaign, multiplayer and zombies. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 users had to settle for the game minus its campaign mode.

Without a current-gen console, I opted to preorder the PC version months ago, which gave me access to the futuristic remake of the popular Nuketown map.

Having played minimal amounts of Call of Duty: Ghosts and skipping over Advanced Warfare altogether, the time jump between games and the new features involved seem all the more innovative.

Offline Mode

The biggest thing of note is that campaign mode has been upgraded to be a multiplayer experience, however, I prefer to take the game at my own pace and I went into offline mode to experience the story while also learning about the new features of the series.

The game starts off with one of, if not the most brutal stories of the series. The main character is in Egypt, trying to rescue hostages. One of the first things you do is hack into camera systems where you see people being tortured in various ways. After playing through the rescue, the team is being evacuated, only for one of the enemy robots to get ahold of the main character.

You can only watch helplessly as your arms are torn from your body, but this is only the prequel to the main story.

Afterwards, you learn that your life was saved with artificial limbs and something called a Direct Neural Interface. The DNI allows you to control yourself, as well as hack into enemy robotics.

You’re then put through a series of simulations that show off all of the new game features, from your thrusters and the ability to run along walls, to the cybernetic enhancements such as hacking into enemy turrets.

One of the highlights is that you’re shown there are multiple paths to get to each of your objectives. Rather than following a strict path from point A to point B, there are multiple routes you can take, which opens the maps up nicely.

While playing through these, you get an idea for where the storyline will go, as the main character suffers flashbacks to being ripped apart, and is told that his meds can be adjusted to make that go away. You really get a feel that people are losing their humanity piece by piece, simply by thinking that technology is advancing and making things easier, when in reality they’re not learning to deal with what’s going on around them.

The simulations end with the main character having to make a choice that leads to him being told that machines can do a great many things, but they can’t make the choices people can.

The storyline itself is engaging, but the new features are implemented poorly.

After the simulations and a montage of five years passing, you are put into a lobby, where you can walk around, go into more simulations (where you fight off waves of enemies), enhance your abilities or go into the missions.

The biggest thing to note is that you lose all of your new abilities, and that you must earn points by completing missions to upgrade them.

A better way to have introduced these is to gradually earn each ability throughout the main missions, and be taught the skills in real combat, rather than utilizing multiple simulations.

The lobby itself is an awkward addition and would feel more natural as a set of menus. In addition to campaign, there is a mode called Free Run, in which you race through a series of obstacle courses using wall runs, thrusters, slides and weapons on a timer.

If you’re just looking to familiarize yourself with the game mechanics before jumping into multiplayer mode, Free Run is the best tutorial you could ask for.

Zombies mode

After a cartoony, noir-style story intro, zombies mode allows you to do what it always has: run around a large map, buy weapons and upgrades with earned points and shoot zombies.

There’s not a lot to innovate there; I’m not great at it, but it’s a fun way to pass the time whether by yourself or with a group of friends.

Multiplayer

The biggest draw for many gamers, myself included, is the multiplayer action. While not terribly different in basic mechanics from other Call of Duty games, some things should be noted.

I was pleased to find matches in various game modes almost immediately throughout different hours of the day and night. There seems to be no shortage of PC players active on the game.

The maps themselves are well crafted and balanced for the new game mechanics. There’s a variety of ways to get around, such as walls that run around the edges of the map that you can run along, water to swim in and elevated areas to access with thrusters.

However, it takes a bit of getting used to. I found myself falling off edges I didn’t realize were present, swimming and ending up going off a waterfall,or not realizing certain areas were accessible until a wall-running enemy came face-to-face with me guns-ablaze.

Despite the maps being designed well for gameplay, some are too saturated with bright, cartoony colors and look out of place aesthetically in a war game that isn’t found on Counter Strike’s custom servers.

PC Performance

While my graphics card may not be top-of-the-line, I have a fairly powerful computer. I stay at a near-constant 60 frames per second on my current settings.

Parts of the game can run on higher settings than my NVIDIA GeForce Experience optimization, but my frame rate drops rapidly once I hit some of the bigger, more open parts of the campaign.

Some players have had issues with i5 processors (but there was a patch released that should help), while others have had issues connecting to the servers, but I’ve encountered no real issues aside from a lack of skill compared to some opponents.

Overall

The gameplay and mechanics as a whole are more reminiscent of Titanfall than they are previous games in the series (with the possible exception of Advanced Warfare). Though Black Ops III movements seem clunkier than Titanfall. Black Ops III makes wall running and using thrusters feel more forced than a natural ability.

All in all, the game offers a compelling storyline and a multiplayer experience with well-structured maps suited to the new gameplay style. It’s a worthy successor in the trilogy of games.

But still, I can only hope future Call of Duty styles move away from the futuristic setting and return to something between the Modern Warfare series and the first two Black Ops games.

4 out of 5

The idea behind this new column, entitled Replay Review, is to go back and play older games that I have missed out on the first time around for various reasons. Most of the games that will be featured will be games that I’ve found on sale, used in different shops or sitting around in thrift stores.

There will be a few exceptions to this simply because there are some games that I just don’t want to pass up any longer.

The first game to be featured is PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, which I bought last holiday season for my PlayStation Vita on Amazon.com for around $5.

The current list price of the game is $13.69, which still puts it among the cheapest Vita games. PlayStation All-Stars is an obvious comparison to the Super Smash Bros. fighting games.

Having never owned those games, I found them fun when playing over at a friend’s house.

Being more on the side of Xbox 360 than PlayStation, I wasn’t overly familiar with many of the characters in the game, but it was nice to see some PlayStation classics such as Parappa the Rappa, Heihachi (Tekken) and Spike (Ape Escape).

Some of the other big-name PlayStation stars include Kratos (God of War), Sly Cooper and Nathan Drake (Uncharted) for a well-rounded PlayStation roster.
However, despite having never played LittleBigPlanet, I found myself drawn to playing through the game as Sackboy.

Arcade mode is just the same as any other fighting game: you pick your character and find through a number of stages of increasing difficulty. It starts off in 1v1, up through a four player battle royale.

The game is almost painfully easy on the two lower settings: Hero and Legend. All-Star (the highest difficulty) was hard my first play-through. However, after practicing a bit more it is a more level playing field, but still too easy.

The stages themselves vary in style; some are flat, while others have platforms and pits to jump into. There are a lot of vibrant colors that do well to make the game look fun and competitive with Smash Bros.

Online play at this point is nearly non-existent. I have not been able to find any games to join in a few tries throughout the day. Though there isn’t too large a difference between button-mashing against the AI and strangers across the globe.

One knock against the Vita is that when in a complete four player matchup, the characters can get spread out enough that it’s a bit harder to follow all of the action on the five-inch screen.

All-in-all, the game is fun to play and it is easy to pass the time playing through the arcade mode with one of the 20 players accessible at the start. (An additional four characters are shown locked and available for purchase.)

I especially recommend it to anyone looking to round out their Vita game collections, since the pool available isn’t overly large.

If Proposition 30 fails to pass, community colleges in California stand to lose approximately $550 million, California Community Colleges Vice Chancellor for College Finance & Facilities Planning Dan Troy said during a conference call for college newspapers.

Proposition 30 proposes a tax increase for those who earn over $250,000 annually for a duration of seven years, and an increase in sales tax by one quarter of a penny for four years, according to the official voter information guide.

“One of the strong parts of the measure is that it generates $6 billion in the near future for public education and safety in our local communities,” Cosumnes River College President of the Los Rios Colleges Federation of Teachers Jason Newman said.

According to the official voter’s guide, spending reductions which center primarily on education would not occur for 2012-2013 school year if Proposition 30 passes. Besides education, money from Proposition 30 would go to police departments, CalFire and other public safety institutions.

Political science professor Elizabeth Huffman said that Proposition 30 “significantly impacts our ability to provide high quality education at an affordable cost.”

The current state budget is written with the assumption of Proposition 30 passing, according to the official title and summary of Proposition 30.

If Proposition 30 fails, community colleges will face approximately $338 million in automatic reductions, known as trigger cuts, CCC Acting Chancellor Erik Skinner said.

However, if the proposition passes, then not only would these cuts be avoided, but community colleges would gain $210 million through the increased taxes.

“The impact to me seems really well written,” Mike Licciardello, a 30-year-old campus political organizer for the LRCFT and CRC alumnus said. “It would actually be used properly for schools.”

Newman outlined the different scenarios for the Los Rios Community College District regarding Proposition 30.

“If Prop 30 passes, we’re looking at an extra $2 million for our district that won’t be there if Prop 30 does not pass,” Newman said.

Newman explained that this would not be adding any additional courses or students to the college, but that “it will stop us from cutting more classes, that’s the absolute bottom line.”

“Overall in the district we’ll see 600 and perhaps as many as 800 classes cut between now and 2014 if Prop 30 doesn’t pass,” Newman said. “That will be a total of a 15 percent reduction since 2009 in Los Rios.”

Beyond that, Newman said that faculty would be facing a 6 percent decrease in pay starting “in January or February,” and that approximately 20 percent of the student body would be unable to attend school.

Proposition 38 is a competing tax initiative that looks to increase taxes to fund early childhood programs and K-12 schooling, according to the voter’s guide.

Civil rights attorney Molly Munger has opposed Proposition 30 in favor of backing 38 to guarantee money to education. Munger’s initiative would increase taxes incrementally for those filing taxes over $7,316.

Munger’s initiative would generate $10 billion annually and rather than be part of the state budget, the money would go directly to school districts, according to The Sacramento Bee.

Licciardello disagreed with Proposition 38 in favor of Proposition 30. He said that the sliding tax scale would affect everyone, which would only hurt those who need help the most.

Since Propositions 30 and 38 both affect personal income taxes, only one can take affect.

In the event of both propositions passing, whichever gets more “yes” votes will go into effect.

In the event that both pass and Proposition 38 gets more votes, then community colleges would still face trigger cuts.

“[Proposition 38] doesn’t do anything for higher education,” Licciardello said. “It’s only shooting people in the foot by not supporting their educational goals.”

The Cosumnes River College women’s soccer team squared off against the Foothill College Owls, both looking for a win to advance to the state championships.

The Hawks were up against fierce competition, as the Owls had not lost game since Oct. 1, and were  undefeated against Big 8 Conference.

With a controversial end, the Owls would continue their streak, defeating the Hawks in a narrow 2-1 win.

The Owls will go on to play in the state championships hosted at CRC.

“We’ll play one of the Southern California teams and we’re just excited to be there,” said Foothill interim head coach Alan Kute.

In the first half, possession went back and forth, but the Owls would dominate the Hawks in offensive chances, keeping the pressure on with multiple shots that would go wide, and a few off the crossbar.

“We gave them more of the play than we wanted, but first 15 to 20 minutes we hit the post three times, we were pressing, pressing,” Kute said.

It would be the Hawks who would close out the first half of the game with the lead, with sophomore midfielder Crystal Vega putting the ball into the top right corner of the Owls goal after a deflection.

The second half started much the same as the first did, with a lot of back and forth play.

In the 76th minute, CRC was called for a handball in the box, which brought the crowd to their feet as Owls’ sophomore midfielder Brittany Squacia stepped up for a penalty kick that went past Hawks’ freshman goalkeeper Anna Brown to tie the game.

“I thought I played well,” Squacia said. “But more importantly I thought our team played phenomenally.”

The game remained tied until freshman forward Milli Cosare put a deflected ball into the Hawks goal to give the Owls the lead in stoppage time.

“I was just focusing on the ball, just watching it and when it came to me I just gave it my all,” Cosare said. “I think I played pretty good, I played my heart out.”

With play time dwindling, the Hawks started to put intense offensive pressure on the Owls, forcing the ball up the field into the attacking third.

The Owls managed to take possession and cross midfield, but CRC’s freshman midfielder Brianna Ascencio broke away with the ball, forcing her way into the box before being tripped up by a Foothill defender and crashing into the opposing goalkeeper.

Almost the entire population of Hawks’ supporters in the stands stood up to boo the referees for not calling a penalty on Foothill. The Foothill goalkeeper kicked the ball across the field before Ascencio was off the ground, bringing not only another round of boos from the crowd, but both Hawks’ head coach Cesar Plasencia and assistant head coach Leo Rojas to the field.

Plasencia and Rojas both screamed at the referees for not calling the penalty which would have resulted in an attempt to tie the game for the Hawks. Rojas went face-to-face with the ref on the field and the incident resulted in both coaches being ejected from the game moments before the whistle blew, ending the matchup and sending Foothill to the championships.

“It was a bad call by the referee, that should have been a PK,” Brown said. “My coaches were fair to be upset but they shouldn’t have gone off the way they did.”

Brown thought the Hawks did not play to the best of their abilities.

“I don’t think the girls played as hard as they could,” Brown said. “It was a tough match, we were a little off our game and they just wanted it more than we did.”

Going into the current season, Cosumnes River College softball head coach Kristy Schroeder said that the pitching this season had improved upon last year’s team.

It was with this in mind that freshman Amanda Horbasch went into the first game of the season against Lassen Community College.

Sophomore pitcher and outfielder Jessica Venturelli described Horbasch as collected in the dugout before a game.

“She doesn’t look nervous, she’s usually just joking around with all of us and ready to go,” Venturelli said. “She’s not super serious, but you can tell she’s ready to get out there.”

Horbasch started off strong with the Hawks in the opener, striking out 13 batters in a complete game shutout. On top of that, she hit 2-3 and batted in the bottom of the fifth inning.

Horbasch finished Woodcreek High School in 2013 with three years of varsity softball under her belt. At 19 years old, she has played softball for 14 years.

Her dad played baseball when she was a child, which sparked her interest for the sport when he wanted to get her into athletics.

With an overall ERA of 1.34 and 311 strikeouts over 282 innings pitched on her high school varsity team, it’s no surprise that Schroeder wanted Horbasch on her team.

“We try to recruit good Sacramento talent … and we got lucky to snatch her up,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder said that Horbasch and her friend, freshman first baseman Briana Cherry, live in the area. Schroeder said she watched them both play.

Horbasch said that Schroeder was a big part of why she came to CRC.

“I love the school, I love the softball team,” Horbasch said. “I came to watch some games and really liked the way Schroeder coaches.”

“She gives 110 percent,” Cherry said; the two have played together since they were in eighth grade. “She’ll pick anybody up if they need to be picked up. She’s always positive.”

Freshman outfielder Jessika Wilkins described the focus Horbasch brings to the Hawks.

“She’s got a lot of energy when she’s pitching and she’s focused,” Wilkins said. “She does what needs to be done.”

Off the field, Wilkins and Venturelli both described Horbasch as friendly.

“She’s fun to be around and easy to get along with,” Venturelli. “She’s just all around a good person.”

While Horbasch said she plays softball “24/7,” Schroeder also said she is a good student. Horbasch is majoring in Kinesiology so that she can become a pediatric physical therapist.

“I just love working with kids and I love helping people, so I thought that was a good way to do that,” Horbasch said.

Wilkin’s said that she sees Horbasch as being able to achieve her goals.

“She’s very well rounded,” Wilkins said. “She knows what she wants in life, and she’s willing to go through and get what she wants no matter what’s at stake.”

Schroeder concluded with saying that Horbasch is “the type of student athlete any coach at any level would love to have.

“She epitomizes what we want our student athletes to be,” Schroeder said. “She takes care of business academically, she’s a great teammate, she’s a great athlete, she works hard, she takes pitching lessons on the side when she’s not with our team.

“She kind of covers all aspects and that’s what you have to do if you want to be able to continue on at the next level.”