>introduces the brown filter to the video game industry
>also introduces cover-based shooting
>normalized extreme gore in AAA games
This game fucked up video games for at least 10 years. Fuck this game.

I'm playing this for the first time on gamepass and is it me or is it actually hard as fuck?
I'm playing on Hardcore difficulty and it's the hardest TPS i've played hands down. I expected some piss easy popamole combat considering how popular it is but I got the opposite.
Enemies are absolute bullet sponges, you die in seconds and they constantly charge you, flank you, throw grenades and the claustrophobic environments don't help. Some can even just one shot you and the checkpoints are put in annoying places so you're forced to do a 30 second scripted cutscene everytime you die which just adds to my frustration.

Does it still hold up?

How would you rank the Gears of War games from best to worst?