Gears 5 | Review | Xbox One

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Gears 5 continues the story thread that was started in Gears of War 4, dropping Kait into the role of main protagonist supported by Del and an upgraded Jack bot – the latter being playable for the first time in Gears' history – in both the co-op campaign (for up to three players locally or online) and returning Horde mode.

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 by Chris
​ Brand

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@SuperCrisco

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Developer: The Coalition
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Platforms: Xbox One, PC
Players: 1-5

Boot Camp is your entry point, with series veteran Damon Baird taking you through the basics one step at a time. The short tutorial is a welcome refresher for veterans and a necessary jaunt for newcomers, explaining the game's cover and movement systems, shooting, melee abilities and active reloads (which reload the entire magazine with higher damage "active" rounds).

Once that's out of the way, the opening Act serves as an extended introduction and there's very little to differentiate it from GoW 4, visually or mechanically. However, as you push forward the game opens up, quite literally, allowing you to explore open world sections. The desolate world of Sera is at times strikingly beautiful and the skiff used for traversal, particularly in the snowy section you'll have seen in the trailer, handles like a dream, effortlessly gliding across the huge, sweeping vistas. 

Throughout the middle Acts, optional side missions allow you to acquire upgrades for Jack to further augment the abilities that are unlocked via progression. Whilst the upgrades themselves aren't mandatory, they can be handy in a pinch, offering up significant boosts to the very useful invisibility and flash abilities, for example. Bear in mind though, your upgrades won't be bestowed on Jack when he's controlled by a human player.

The short firefights to get them not only serve as a welcome, action-filled break from the quieter exploring of the aforementioned open sections, but also serve as a great opportunity to stock up on ammo, change your loadout or grab a heavy weapon to take back to the skiff.

​During our initial playthrough, we did happen to fall victim to an unfortunate bug that forced us to restart Act 2 (a hangover from the game’s rocky launch, perhaps) losing around an hour of progression, but we claimed it back in half of that time and the setback was less of an annoyance than Del's stubborn reluctance to revive us when playing solo, which resulted in many avoidable deaths throughout the campaign.

Jumping into Versus mode, the game’s multiplayer offering, for the first time can be daunting. Arcade is casual, class-based fun with loadouts unique to each character, which in no way prepares you for the competitive scene. At the other end of the scale, there's the Ranked playlist. Even with cross-play disabled, and those pesky mouse and keyboarders kept at bay, you'll occasionally run into God-like players who are capable of carrying their (and hopefully your) team single-handedly, especially in King of the Hill and Escalation. The non-ranked versus is more accessible and co-op against AI is a good way of learning map layouts and weapon spawns, while providing a safe environment in which to practice with the Gnasher, though the difficulty can be ramped up to suit all skill levels.

Horde and Escape, though very different, complement each other. The former, a mainstay of the franchise, tasks five players with surviving 50 waves of increasingly difficult enemies, whilst the latter offers a more bite-sized co-op experience. Your three-person team, having infiltrated a Swarm hive and planted a Venom bomb to destroy it from within, must escape before the deadly gas kills you, too. Beginning only with a sidearm and limited rounds, you'll want to be conservative with ammo until your party has tooled up.

In both modes, duplicate characters are forbidden, which can cause problems when matchmaking. Levelling up and completing matches will award Skill Cards to further raise your damage dealing and survivability. These Skill Cards will allow you to hold your own on higher difficulties but if someone has already bagsied your main, you're left with the choice of using an under-levelled character or re-queuing. Regardless, there's no barrier of entry and all of our encounters through matchmaking have been positive, though not always successful. 

Despite a few minor issues, the new Gears recipe is the best yet. The story has enough presence without overstaying its welcome, open world areas are a nice addition and there's adequate co-op activities outside of the campaign to complete the package for anyone averse to PvP.

Pros

• A thoroughly satisfying campaign
• New enemy types and weapons are designed so well that they feel familiar
• That same Gears brand of fast-paced multiplayer

Cons

• Horde and Escape are a little too restricted
• The Snub pistol is more effective as a melee weapon than a firearm

9/10