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Gears Tactics is a turn-based tactical shooter set in the Gears of War universe. It was released for PC and Xbox in April and November of 2020, respectively. What follows is my fair and unbiased review of the game after playing it for the past few years.
Overview
Gears Tactics is the first game in the Gears universe that is not a first person shooter. It’s a crunchy squad based tactical game in the XCOM style. Build up a roster of hero units and regular gears, tinker with their abilities and equipment, send them out in small teams to complete missions.
Story
Set during the early days of the Human/Locust conflict, one year after Emergence Day, the game unfolds in the aftermath of the Hammer of Dawn strikes.
You are tasked with hunting down a Locust geneticist named Ukkon who is reportedly responsible for the creation of every big monster in the Locust arsenal, from Brumaks to Corpsers. To do this you rescue and enlist the help of various squads of gears as well as a group of Stranded occupying a Mammoth which becomes your mobile base of operation.
Your squad consists of random Gears you recruit in the field, Stranded you train into Gears, and a few hero units. Gears Gabriel Diaz and Sid Redburn and civilian Mikayla Dorn.
Most of the story revolves around these three characters tracking down Ukkon, figuring out what his deal is and defeating his forces. Along the way secrets are revealed related to the origins of the Locust and their connection to the COG.
Overall it’s a pretty standard Gears plot. Lots of familiar elements. War weary heroes, menacing Locust BBEG, conflicts between military and civilian forces, deeply classified secrets coming to light etc. Largely it expands on revelations made in previous Gears titles with some familiar faces along the way.
This is a prequel and as seems inevitable there are a few retcons/plotholes introduced. The game seems to introduce Imulsion laden drones to the battlefront much earlier than their original first appearance in Gears 1. Gears characters might not be the brightest bunch but you’d think someone cough Baird cough might have made the connection a lot earlier if that was the case. Also why is Ukkon the only one to have figured out this miraculous healing ability and why was it never implemented en masse?
For the most part though Gears Tactics is a solid addition to the lore of the Gears universe. The writing for Gears tactics is serviceable in that it effectively gets you from point A to point B. Beyond that it’s not much to write home about.
The characters are generally one dimensional, your main protagonist Diaz has a tendency to attempt speech checks he’s not cut out for and the villain is just another Locust scumbag. Sid is vaguely interesting as a character but also commits the cardinal sins of being detrimentally uncommunicative and making truly stupid choices for the sake of the plot thickening.
Chairman Prescott of all people manages to be the most interesting character in the game despite being relegated to a terminal screen the entire time. He seems genuinely conflicted about the atrocities he’s committing which elevates him beyond his cartoonish past appearances.
Gameplay
Gears Tactics is essentially an XCOM game in that gameplay is split between squad management and tactical firefights.
There is no base management element though, for better or worse. Worse in my opinion as I feel it leaves a hole in the game. But some may prefer the more boiled down approach. All you have to do is level up and reequip your soldiers and then deploy them as you see fit.
You are limited to squads of four throughout the game, plus one Jack unit if you’re playing in the new Jacked mode (I recommend it). This can be somewhat frustrating since you’re not able to take one of each class on missions as is my personal preference in such games.
You’re going to want to focus on building up your hero units as much as possible. They are often required for story missions so by default they’re going to see the most play time.
The gears and ability upgrades are relatively limited but can have substantial impacts on survivability. You’re never going to be overpowered to the extent that a fully kitted out XCOM soldier is and will often be dealing with almost overwhelming odds so it’s important to try and stay ahead of the curve.
The missions get a little grindy around the midpoint of the game but the variety of mission types helps to assuage that feeling. I recommend not spending too much time building up your secondary characters, it’s not really worth it.
Your hero units though will be on every key mission and their survival is always a primary objective so it’s well worth putting in the effort to make them as effective and durable as possible.
Combat
This is the area where Gears Tactics really shines. Combat is extremely crunchy and always balanced in a way that keeps you on your toes.
You will always be outnumbered, usually by a wide margin. Even on the easier difficulties you have to employ a fair amount of tactical know-how if you want to keep your entire squad alive.
Setting up killzones, funneling enemies through tight spaces, using explosives effectively (because they pack quite a punch) and positioning your squad to maximize enemy hitboxes while minimizing your own. All of these are tactics you will regularly be employing or you won’t last long.
The combat in particular is very similar to XCOM. Each character has a certain amount of action points (AP) to spend each turn on moving, shooting, reloading and using abilities.
When you take aim at an enemy you will be provided with the percentage chance you have to hit. You can increase that chance by getting closer to the enemy and/or flanking their cover. The better the angle you have the more likely you are to score a hit. If you’re using automatic weapons sometimes you can score a partial hit rather than missing completely.
Explosives are different. You can precisely position your explosives and the game will tell you how much damage you will do to enemies within the radius of the explosion. The closer to the center the more damage. Enemies standing at the epicenter will often die in one hit while those nearer the edge might only lose half their hit points.
Each class comes with its own weapon type and set of abilities. There are five total, plus Jack. Support, Vanguard, Sniper, Heavy and Scout.
Support are your front line medics and carry a standard Lancer assault rifle with its iconic chainsaw bayonet. Vanguards are your even further front line troops and use Retro Lancers with more standard big knife bayonets.
Snipers have sniper rifles, Heavies carry Mulcher heavy machine guns, and Scouts use gnasher shotguns. They all have various abilities that suit their titles and positions on the battlefield.
The majority of combat comes down to positioning. You have to decide where best to deploy your squad according to their abilities. You also need to weigh the pros and cons of spending AP to move that could be spent shooting or using an ability. When in doubt, setting a character to overwatch is always a solid choice.
Mission System
For the first few hours of Gears Tactics you’ll be running through a series of predetermined missions. You won’t have a lot of customization options either so all playthroughs will look pretty much the same to start off.
As you progress though and start to build up a decent roster you’ll have more freedom to choose which types of missions you’d prefer and who to send. Personally I try to avoid anything with a timed element. Even on the easiest difficulty timers add a level of stress I don’t need from my gaming.
Mission types vary and you can often choose which you’d like to do next. There are standard kill all enemies missions, rescue missions, sabotage missions, and missions that have you running across a map as fast as possible just ahead of a bombing run.
Each mission will have its own mutation like more accurate or agile enemies or limitations on what classes you can deploy. They also have different rewards like gear, mods, or recruits after completion.
Additionally some missions have optional objectives you can attempt for bonus rewards. Secondary objectives can be a real pain though especially in any kind of timed mission so it’s worth checking out the potential gain and weighing that against the hassle it will require.
Graphics
Gears Tactics looks great. As with all recent Gears games the color palette has been significantly expanded beyond mottled grays and browns and the world really pops.
I’ve played through the full game twice and never noticed any glaring graphical issues. These days most games look pretty good. To the point that we more or less expect flawlessness. Well, Gears Tactics holds up alongside any game I’ve seen to date in this regard.
Development
Gears Tactics was jointly developed by the Coalition and Splash Damage. It was released in 2020 and received pretty regular updates up through March 2021.
There aren’t many bugs and those that I have encountered aren’t game breaking. Fields of fire don’t always seem to be consistent. When plotting an overwatch move you manipulate a cone of fire to cover the area you want watched. Any objects above waist height will obscure part of that cone. That makes sense but it doesn’t always seem to line up with what you’re seeing.
Objects that seem like they should be easily overlooked will sometimes block entire shots. Occasionally enemies will stop doing things on their turn, sometimes as the result of an overwatch messing up their trajectory, effectively freezing the game but checkpoints are plentiful so it’s never been that big of a deal. The game has never flat out crashed on me.
Unfortunately it does seem unlikely that these bugs will be addressed at this point since the last update was three years ago but I wouldn’t say they were deal breakers by any stretch of the imagination. Save early, save often and you should be fine.
Final Verdict 8/10
I really enjoy playing Gears Tactics, if not nearly as much as I enjoy playing XCOM 2 (which it is very clearly emulating). It’s an interesting addition to the canon of the Gears universe and a fun ride.
The campaign is decently paced apart from a little bit of slog in the middle and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Combat is genuinely challenging most of the time and forces you to use all the tools at your disposal especially on the higher difficulties.
I do feel like the homebase portion of the game could use expanding. It kind of feels like the game is just missing a third of the content it was meant to have. But I could see how some players might prefer this more streamlined approach. Solid 8 out of 10.
