The sound effects are good with the usual raucous sounds and music you’d expect from the Gears universe. That said, the new Jacked mode will add Jack as a member of your squad as well as new enemy types, which may be enough to bring you back for another runthrough of the game. Gears Tactics delivers a fairly long campaign but there are no major decisions to make to change the fairly generic Gears plot, which may limit replayability. Some of the boss fights are epic and rather tough, though the sheer number of HP involved makes some of the fights a bit grindy at times. You’ll need to use all of this equipment, skill and your tactical expertise to overcome the Locust as the missions get tougher and tougher as more enemies of various types stack up against you. For example, Sid’s bayonet charge can be made far more powerful, as well as gaining back an action after killing an enemy in close quarters. There are two distinct directions for each character class, ala XCOM, giving you plenty of ways to create nice synergies in your team. The characters also get upgraded as they take part in battles, level up and become more experienced. Weapons and armour can be upgraded in a myriad of ways, giving you plenty of option in customizing and specializing your squad. You can also use “Cole-Train” in your squad, though he’s not really referenced by any of the other characters.Īs you proceed through missions, you pick up loot drops as rewards for completing missions and side-quests, as well as finding loot-crates which can be opened by your team and then added to your equipment post-mission. Tough-bitten veteran Sid is a bit more interesting and his banter exchanges with sniper Mikaela are kind of compelling. The cast of characters aren’t especially exciting, with square-jawed hero Gabe Diaz offering a bland renegade hero in the mould of Marcus Fenix. The Locust can also give you an execution if they get close enough! However, if they get put down a second time, then they are dead. Tactics does use perma-death, with a small twist: characters when reduced to 0 HP can be revived or get a second wind, coming back into the fight with reduced HP. These poor supporting characters can be killed and the game goes on. You have a handful of named characters whose death means the mission needs to start again, and then randomly created generic troops who you can, XCOM-style, customize with haircuts, gear and paint-schemes. You command a convoy of Gears, up against the odds and trying to defeat generic evil Locust general Ukkon. Luckily Gears Tactics equips you with several tools for this, ranging from the “disabling shot” option of the standard issue sidearm the Gears carry to lobbing a nice grenade into the enemy ranks. You’ll always be outnumbered, sometimes heavily so, and picking apart these collages of gunfire is tough work. They’ll prioritise this over taking low percentage shots and set up overlapping lines of fire. Mind you, overwatch is a function of the game and boy do the Locust like to overwatch. Melee attacks are particularly powerful and the bayonet charge and gun-mounted chainsaw attacks are usually one-shot kills. This means that the game rewards you for closing in with the enemy, for being aggressive, and the game has a much more dynamic feel than the overwatch-heavy games of XCOM. When you execute a bad guy, all the other members of the squad get an extra action. These executions aren’t just gory eye-candy they serve a key tactical function. If a target is reduced to a low number of HP, then they will be “down” and can be finished off, Gears-style, with a brutally graphic execution animation. Hits from weapons will reduce the hit points of the target, though most out-of-the-box weapons will need a few shots to put down even the average Locust grunt thankfully the melee-centric Wretches can be cut down by just one good shot. Shooting is fairly simple too: you can cycle through targets with the shoulder buttons and the chance to hit shows up over each target, though once again you’re at the mercy of the RNG gods and will miss the occasional high percentage shot.
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