Gears Tactics - Review

The Gears series is now a massive 14 years old and, in that time, we have had six main shooter entries, and one bizarre mobile spin-off, but now we get the most accurate and distinctly different Gears experience yet. But did Tactics come together from a well-made plan, or was it to much for it to handle?

It has now been 14 years since we first took our steps in the ruined world of Sera and in that time we have defeated the Locust and started to fight them all over, but we have never really had the chance to see how it all began and that is a small portion of the story that Gears Tactics attempts to tell. Your main character is Gabe Diaz, father of Cait, a character who I really don’t like, but there is neither the here nor there, whilst events in the game are drastic before it begins, within the first few minutes of the game, we learn that the war has gone horribly for the COG and they have decided to use the Hammer of Dawn to destroy the Locust threat, but before that happens, Gabe is given a new mission, one that is of vital importance, document retrieval.

More specifically it is a file on the monster that makes the monsters, Ukon, a Locust scientist, who even after the hammer falls, has been terrorising the world and killing any COG soldiers he comes across. Given the mission to chase down and kill the monster, Diaz and his limited crew hit the road, collecting addition soldiers on the way and while how the story plays out is worth discovering for yourself, there is still a number of predictable twists along the way. The only thing I can really call out as amazing about the story, is that at no point did they mention stopping the war as the primary mission, given that we know how it plays out, it would have set the team up for failure from the outset, something I can never get behind.

Something else you will not get behind though is your character, as a tactical game, the action takes place with you looking down and that is about the major change to the game. The tactics that you need to use are remarkably similar to those you would use if you were playing one of the mainline entries, the only difference is now you plan out more, before you execute. There are a number of character classes that you can pad out your squad with, some of them are useful in some situations, like the sniper or the heavy, but you won’t know which one to take until after the mission starts, so planning for a solid squad is your best option, once you are in the mission, be it a main one or a side mission, you will need to constantly readjust your plans, to ensure your squads survival. One of things that you are told before you start the hunt is that supplies, both of the ammo kind and the personal kind, are very limited so it is up to you, to find what you need, which is how you build up your team, something that also plays into the tactics you need to employ.

Taking action in a mission is pretty straight forward, each member of your squad has a few action points that they can use, however they want and once they are gone, it is time for the enemy to take their turn. The enemy turns can be something pretty straight forward, or dangerous, depending on how you spent your points, your best option will be to ensure your squad is in cover, but even if you are, if you don’t feel like moving elsewhere, you can use your remaining points to enter overwatch. This allows each character you activate it with, lay down a cone of coverage and any enemy that walks within that range is fired upon, but there is a catch, if you have two points when you activate it, you can only shoot two enemies, so it is a decision you need to ensure you are safe to use.

Of course, moving around and killing enemies is standard for most tactical games, but there are host of Gears flourishes thrown in here as well, while enemies are usually dropped in from above, something that I would be keen to see why they stopped doing in between Tactics and 1, but they will also use Emergence Holes, or E-Holes as they call them here, which you need to lob a grenade in to close. Another gameplay part that carries across from the main game is that when you kill an enemy, they will occasionally stagger, giving the enemy a chance to recover them, but also giving you a shot to run in and take them down with an execution, doing that will use up AP, but the satisfaction is highly rewarding.

What is not rewarding, is the randomness of the entire tactics genre, which is something that brings down the experience in a massive way, being across a map, taking a shot with a pistol and missing I get, however when you have a sniper and that same shot misses, that is not on. I understand that there is a massive amount of variables that go into a shot making it or not and you can use the games Tac-Com system, to see what percentages are in your favour or not, but there is still a big level of random to it, which takes away the fun. The E-Holes require a grenade to close and if you do not close them, enemies will spawn a lot, but using a grenade has a massive 6 turn cool down, making it a big decision in its use. The other issue I have with the game is how enemies can spawn so frequently, I get some missions starting with a lot, it fits the context of the story, but there were missions when the objective would be reached, but then having to leave the area, more enemies would spawn, than I had faced up until that point, it just left the balance feeling out of whack.

Perhaps one area that looks most assuredly in whack, is the presentation, each and every part of the game that plays out before you, is 100% Gears, from the character and world design, to the sounds it is a real authentic experience. When you are watching cutscenes, if you only ever saw those, you could be convinced it is another shooter entry, given how each detail matches up with the games. The new character are again, really well suited for the world, while the generic personalities are a bit stiff, they do a serviceable job of being likeable, well most do, there is one character that sticks out like a sore thumb. The audio side of the presentation is again just a great match, the games score is solid, though honestly nothing to write home about, but when you blend it in with the rest of the audio, it builds a layered experience that feels right. The character voices, are again a little stiff, but for the most part, that is easy to ignore, the only downside for them is that they often repeat the same few phrases when in the midst of a mission, which is fine for a few missions, but by the second act, it becomes a paint. Of course, the sounds are the same, so when you rush in with the Lancer, you get that satisfying rev sound, before the gore explodes everywhere and then there is the rewarding sound you get when you clear out all the enemies.

If I had to pick on the presentation, it would be in two parts, the first would be the characters, they have defined personalities architypes and tend not to stray from them, Gabe is a man who does not want to be involved, but will, from the start until the end, he carries that with him. The other is that the world is far to destroyed, for it to be the early days of the war, and yes, I get that they let loose and destroyed most of the surface with the Hammer of Dawn, but as we have seen in all the other games, the Hammers are not that powerful. We have been viewing the world of Sera for almost 15 years and apart from a few random shots of it in flashbacks, we are left to wonder what the world might have looked like, if it were hole and sadly, this is a missed chance to give us that.

Gears Tactics is going to be a hard sell to those who don’t like the genre, because the story, world and characters are wonderful. While the game is Gears in every way, outside of the gameplay, the disconnect from the events here, to the original games, making it feel like more of something that should have been taking place between 3 and 4, when Epic stopped making it. Fans of the series will be able to enjoy the game, even if the random shot issues that come with almost every Tactics game pop their head up a lot and when you realise where the story is heading, this might just be too much to deal with. If you can accept either of those issues, the game will reward you with a fun experience, I just wish it was not in such a rush to connect to the recent Gears games and tried to tell a story on its own merits.