Seldom has a title been better suited to make the leap to turn-based strategy than Gears of War. Microsoft's exclusive series has always been about tactics, about positioning, looking for cover, providing fire protection, reloading at the right time. The studios The Coalition and Splash Damage didn't have to change much of the basic recipe to get Gears Tactics a ticket to the Olympus of strategy. But as is so often the case with Microsoft's exclusive titles, not everything that glitters is gold.
Why is it that Microsoft's studios all create handcrafted games that often lack the last pinch of ingenuity or attention to detail? See, for example, Forza Motorsport 7 from Turn 10. A great semi-racing simulation with beautiful tracks, lots of beautifully modeled cars and a usable physics model. And yet the final touches of design are missing to perfect the basic mood and gameplay – such as fine menus, fairness regulations in multiplayer mode and such things. Not to mention eliminating several bugs in the PC version.
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Gears 5 felt the same way. Graphically bombastic, beautifully staged, but ultimately a little generic in the multiplayer part and full of bugs, which have still not all been removed. It is certainly commendable that the new strategy spin-off Gears Tactics does not have any notable technical weaknesses, but the same feeling remains: craftsmanship, but not detailed enough.
Unfortunately, because Gears Tactics has everything a real mega seller needs in this genre. Starting with an excellent graphic presentation that is in no way inferior to the last shooting game episode, to subwoofer ripping sound and well-staged story cutscenes, to an understandable user interface in combat and cleverly acting opponents. Damn, what more could you ask for?
Now how about a streamlined story arc and less filler? A less nested upgrade menu with more understandable armor options? Last but not least, it would have been nice to be able to assign new weapons to your soldiers. No, these are not major criticisms, no fun-carving blunders or stumbling blocks that you can cling to. It's the last mile steps that would have made a very good game an excellent one.
Growing desires
Yes, it is undoubtedly a round of complaining at a high level. Gears Tactics is so well developed in all other respects, even addictive, that most of the time you don't get the idea that something could be missing. The desires mentioned grow in a gradual process.
No wonder. The gentle start, which packs the player in cotton wool so that each individual rule can be visually dissected intravenously, leads from one little fun element to the next. How do you shoot, how do you cover a character, how do you grant fire protection? All in a matter of minutes. For veterans of the Gears series, the gameplay feels blissfully nostalgic most of the time, as if you were coming back to your old children's room. You know what it's about, but you see (literally) what's going on from a new perspective, namely a shortened isometric bird's eye view. The rest is learned quickly.
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Up to four Gears testosterone chunks (or women) want to be directed through the fight against the evil Locust, with the battle plan running in rounds. A soldier is allowed to take three actions in each round, unless special rules give him more leeway. Such actions can involve anything – running a few meters, firing a volley, reloading, throwing a grenade, sawing an enemy in two. Everything you know from Gears, including the important position game, which can bring tension to boiling in both parties. For example, if a sniper targets a soldier and thereby virtually immobilizes him.
Taking cover and granting fire protection are such essential maneuvers that even the AI misses no opportunity. For fire protection, you have to burn one action in one round, but the investment is worth it because you look forward to your comrades in the back or prevent unexpected opponents from crossing certain limits. How useful this is is particularly apparent when you want to cordon off certain objects on the battlefield. For example, an access point for supply replenishment.
The AI is really not stupid, even in the beginner level of difficulty. In the higher levels, only the efficiency of the moves and the armor of the opponents increases, so that you have to resort more and more to bonuses that you get for special promotions. For example, for sawing off an enemy or a finisher that is carried out on an enemy that crawls on the ground shortly before it is nipped off.
Anyone who thinks that the Gears-of-War series would be too simple for strategically generated clouds of smoke above the player's brain is mistaken. Gears Tactics is ball chess with the chainsaw bayonet. Never particularly complicated in battle, but demanding enough and almost never unfair. Exceptions prove the rule. It is striking that the chances of being hit in later missions are thrown out more and more often. It is not surprising that a sniper misses an opponent who is four meters in front of him.
Intricately nested
In the first chapter you get all the details in chunks. In this early phase of the game, which takes around 40 hours, you are happy about everything that the game designers serve up. Special destinations that make you feel like you're a particularly savvy strategist, or boxes that lie around on the battlefield and can be picked up as a bonus, which has the side effect of not having new parts for armor, weapons and clothing that you don't simply entrenched somewhere.
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All nasal long awaits a new condition such as "complete the following mission in less than X moves" or "do not include snipers in your team". In one mission you have to capitalize on teamwork because thick armored boomers swallow a lot of lead, in another you can never stay longer in one place because an enemy bomb carpet moves a few meters every turn. And only the thrill when a towering Brumak monster invites you to a quarter-hour boss fight. No, Gears Tactics is certainly not lacking in highlights.
But with tight planning, because the longer the game lasts, the more the ballast that all these game elements bring with it crystallizes out. Bonus boxes and special destinations stand out with this criticism, because those extras gained should be divided among the existing soldiers. You can take four fighters into a battle, but only three are real regulars with relevance to the storyline, and you can't use them in every mission. All other fighters are recruits who are also fed experience points so that their skill tree spits out new, class-specific perks.
Useful special skills may be welcome talents that you have to laboriously earn and lose in one fell swoop if you hire a recruit – which basically doesn't sound bad as a game system. This only requires a sufficient number of side missions that spit out enough experience points.
This has two consequences. First, the storyline pulls like chewing gum because key storylines are interrupted by a number of unimportant grind missions. Second, not every mission is lossless. The fact that building a character in the case was for the cat only annoyed superficially. The lack of overview in the upgrade menu, in which there is too much of everything, is much worse. There are too many recruits with too many properties, armor parts and special actions, summarized in a nested menu with far too large icons.
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Imagine a J-RPG in which each piece of armor is represented with an icon that fills a fifth of the screen height. Well, in a turn strategy game that doesn't make sense if there are so many options available. Not just because the click is annoying, but because you lose track. Who has which piece of armor? Newly available parts are indicated by red triangles on the icon, but who is most likely to use which? This is difficult to understand in the present menu.
Mouse pusher
The enthusiasm for team management goes away quickly when you feel like you are giving away weapon upgrades and armor parts at random, and it doesn't get better when a number of cosmetic items squeeze into the same menu. Less is more, they say, and when it comes to the Gears Tactics equipment menu, that's 100% true. Especially since you rarely have the feeling of improving something earth-shattering about your team. Weapon changes are out of the question, unless you pick up rare pickups during the battle – for example, if you temporarily pick up a boom shot with two rounds of ammunition.
To make it short: the breaks between the battles are not relaxing, but rather annoying. So be it. The menu frustration is quickly forgotten in the heated battle, and here Gears Tactics flexes the muscles. At least if you don't get the idea to play with a joypad, the functions of which slow down the flow of the game.
The reason for this is simply that there is no grid on the playing field that can be used to estimate where a character could run within its three actions. The relevant information is only available if you direct the cursor over the battlefield and aim for possible target points. With a mouse and keyboard, this is twice as fast and, last but not least, more precise. It should at least be commended that you can even use a controller if necessary. However, if controller control remains unchanged for the Xbox port, consoleros will be left behind when it comes to gaming fun.