Taking a long-standing series and doing something truly different is a difficult endeavour. What sold your games originally may be lost in the transition or your core fans may be unable to love the new game style. Gears Tactics is the latter with a tickle of the former.
The Gears series has been circling the drain for a few years now. Gears still sells and still gathers positive critical attention but their attempts at rebooting the franchise have been mostly rejected by the public. And not because GoW changed, but because it hadn’t. Introducing new characters in a new decade with only minor or superficial differences wasn’t enough to replace the fans who drifted away.
Reincarnated as a TBT
“Taking the camera and swinging it upwards” was an oft-seen quote in marketing for the game and the game absolutely looks and feels like it’s true. The visuals are stunning, animations are smooth and the characters interact well with the environments.
The variety of enemy and the scope of the arenas in which the game takes place are all here along with some surprisingly exciting GoW set-pieces. There is much to love if you are still into the series.
Forcing the Plot
Despite the abundance of dialogue and exposition in a Gears title, the story and plot aren’t the focus of the titles. The narratives are simple and based on worn-but-beloved tropes.
Gears Tactics is set a dozen or so years before the original game and things are kicking off on Sera. The Locust have just started tearing the place up and society is crumbling so a rag-tag group of grisly survivors who look like space marines are here to save the day.
A Sense of Foreboding
The tutorial is too long, even if it’s just 20 minutes. Gears Tactics forces players to do unnecessarily simple tasks to progress. Then it forces players to use the more complicated ones in the exact setup that will be used throughout the game.
Gears Tactics doesn’t want you to think, it just wants you to recognise a scenario and perform what the tutorial showed you. And this a criminal offence in any tactics or strategy game – a player should be forced to combine moves or improvise around situations that are unique. Gears Tactics has some nifty actions and with three action points per turn, there should be so much choice. But there just isn’t.
There is usually only one laughably easy ‘proper’ solution far too often in the game. Despite all the systems in place to do so much, Gears Tactics is smothered by its desire to appeal to not only newcomers to TBT but also people who want a very linear experience. This doesn’t work in a genre where lateral thinking, improvisation and wrecking the AI with the unexpected are to be expected.
They Really Did Try and I Respect That
Gears Tactics has a lot going for it. The visual quality is superb especially with each area fitting that grimy, foreboding look that Gears became known for. The battle system, while mostly a classic ‘turn-based tactic’ one, is married to the subject material beautifully. Anyone familiar with Gears of War trying to imagine a tactical version will basically dream of Gears Tactics. When a player gets the tactics just so, the game-flow is exciting and the pace, breathless.
What devs Splash Damage did to up the pace and add greater impact for each turn were undoubtedly good ideas. But these ideas are never utilised to near their full potential and the straitjacketed missions lack true tactical depth. Gears Tactics becomes a chore soon after it has forced you to use every trick it has.
