

Missions can easily take 20-30 minutes to battle through and are consistently entertaining. There are straight-up bug hunts to just kill enemies, rescue missions, escape chases, missions to stand and defend ground and other things, and even gigantic boss battles. Over the course of a few acts (each divided into about 10 chapters), Tactics throws the player into a wide range of scenarios. Since it’s using the assets of the main Gears games, Tactics offers the chance to get a bird’s eye view of landscapes players have been shooting through for years. It presents a gorgeously polished view of the Locust apocalypse, with fantastic use of multi-level battlegrounds that greatly enhance potential tactical choices.

Gears Tactics, being part of a AAA franchise, doesn’t skimp on the presentation. Weapons and armor are divided into parts, which can each be upgraded with better gear. Some skills apply passive perks like damage or health bonuses, while others are active skills requiring action points to use. There’s a surprisingly robust skills tree for every character, offering a wealth of variation. Surviving characters gain experience and skill points, and better equipment and supplies. The random joiners flip in and out quickly, enabling players to constantly have an influx of new bodies to try out, along with the main characters. There are heavies with chain guns, snipers, medics, scouts, and all-rounders to choose from. As you progress, you’ll earn potential new recruits by either rescuing or encountering them through a mission, or just randomly generated between missions.Ĭharacters run the gamut of classes. The characters are interesting if cliched, the plot effective, and very little of it gets in the way of the actual gameplay. If you’re into the lore of Gears of War, Tactics is definitely an essential play. His goal is to recruit more soldiers and take the fight back to the horde and their mysterious new leader. Gabe Diaz is one of the surviving super soldiers. The Locust Horde is decimating the human population of the planet Sera and in a last-ditch attempt to kill their enemies, the humans fire the devastating Hammer of Dawn super-weapon on their own cities. Gears Tactics takes place 12 years before the original Gears of War. The only real problem I encountered with controls was when the mouse pointer was near the edge of the screen, resulting in the map camera flying in that direction. Without a doubt, the game simply feels best using the mix of keyboard and mouse, right down to hitting the space bar to initiate an attack command. The game can be controlled almost entirely with the mouse if desired, or even with a control pad (suggesting it could easily be ported to console, which Microsoft seems to have plans for).

Using the "WASD" and "QE" keys for camera controls and the mouse to click on the map and command troops, the user interface is excellent. You can look over the battlefield from nearly any angle, zooming in, rotating, or just sliding the view around the map.
WHEN DOES GEARS TACTICS TAKE PLACE FULL
Full camera controls are a vital part of the control scheme for one thing. Gears Tactics even has overwatch mode like XCOM, where a soldier stands ready to fire on any enemies entering their line of sight.Īdmittedly, XCOM is far from the only game to use these mechanics and there’s a fair bit of streamlining in Tactics to keep the action fluid. Every action costs a specific amount of points and special attacks take several turns to recharge after use. You command each squad member in turn to move, attack, or interact with something, using a limited number of action points. Gears Tactics Review: Brutal, Thrilling, Tactical, Lonely

On the highest level, both are sci-fi-themed, four-member squad, turn-based combat games played out mostly on burned-out urban maps. The two games are in many ways remarkably similar.
WHEN DOES GEARS TACTICS TAKE PLACE SERIES
It is definitively a tactical combat game and the parallels to the modern XCOM series are unavoidable. Microsoft did an excellent job giving Halo its strategic bent with Halo Wars, but Gears Tactics is another sort of animal entirely. The result is Gears Tactics and unlike their real-time strategy (RTS) Halo off-shoot, Halo Wars, these Gears play only on PC, for now.
