I’m not quite sure why Microsoft is so intent on taking its shooty games and giving them strategy elements but I love it. The logic leap isn’t a big jump, these are games about war, and war is a balance of action and strategy. But when it comes to marketing a video game I have to believe those are hitting two different markets. There’s almost definitely going to be an overlap though and fortunately, I am part of that overlap. Gears Tactics is a surprisingly good tactical RPG, and actually a fun Gears of War experience in its own right.
Gears Tactics
Developer: Splash Damage
Price: $59.99 (Free with Xbox Game Pass)
Platforms: PC
Set twelve years before the first Gears of War, Gears Tactics starts out in a very Gears of War way by trying to invest the players in the world. You’re seeing Sera from the perspective of Gabriel Diaz and his small group of COGs living underground to whether the Hammer of Dawn strikes as they torch most of the planet. This all takes place before the events of the first Gears of War game. One of the rookies wonders aloud if he’ll ever see his family again. This kind of cheap exposition always sticks out like a sore thumb to me. It’s great to fill out characters and make them seem like there’s more going on in their lives than what’s on the screen. Background no-name characters don’t need their lives filled in, they’re there to die or move the story forward, this is not how you make players care about characters. There’s a knock on the door, it’s Major Sid and he’s got some secret plans from up top! We’ve got our orders, let’s go!
The gameplay is simple. You have a number of action points and can use them to run, shoot, use abilities, reload, execute, etc Action points can be regained or endowed upon members of your team based on skill upgrades or performing certain actions. Some abilities allow you to sprint to clear a larger area or perform multiple attacks for a single action point. You start with a base of 3 action points and that can swing wildly in different directions based on buffs and debuffs acquired throughout missions.
In-between missions you’ll spend time in camp. Depending on where you are in the story, camp might be an APC but either way, it functions the same. Here you’ll be able to spend skill points, upgrade and customize your COGs, as well as choose the next available mission to go on. Mission selection is a welcome design choice. Gears Tactics has you progress through the story in a linear fashion where every level is the chapter in an act. Occasionally throughout the act you’ll be given a chance to select from several ‘side missions.’ These ‘side missions’ weren’t skippable. However, you would be given a pool of side missions and only required to complete most of them. For example, if you were given four side missions, the chapter would end when you completed three. You were required to complete at least three though. You’d be given special rewards and sometimes new COGs for side-mission completion.
Side-missions come in several different flavors: Rescue, Control, Sabotage, Scavenge, Incursion. Another thing I feel like most Tactical games struggle with is mission variety, despite Gears Tactics throwing a few more vegetables in the basket, towards the end of the game, the variety couldn’t keep up with the game’s longevity. Where the variety was nice at first, when you’re required to complete most of the side-missions in a given chapter, the variety just isn’t enough to keep things fresh.
Control is a simple capture-and-hold mission type, having you hold salvage points for X number of turns until you reach the necessary number to progress and then the win condition pulls your troops out of the mission automatically, which is a departure from every other mission where you have to bring your troops to an escape point. Sabotage is just clearing enemies until you get to an imulsion tank and destroy it. Scavenge is one of those Mario levels where the lava rises. Bombs are dropping in the red zone and you need to keep moving your troops forward while picking up crates for gear and upgrades. Incursion, as far as I can tell, is just killing all of the enemies on a map. Finally, there’s Rescue, which should have been the mission I wanted to go on the most. Rescue has you bring just two members of your team into a map and rescue two trapped COGs to recruit to your army. Unfortunately, recruiting new members offers very little outside of your standard group. While the new recruits will be leveled appropriately for the missions you’re currently playing through, they’re still just blank slates and set to only take up gear from your other members.
Gears of War is very character-driven. The world around you is going to hell and you’re relying on the help, dedication, and experience of those around you to get you through to the end. The redshirts, as they were, in Gears Tactics were no exception but at some point, you just have too much and it makes no sense to waste time or energy fussing over them. Every new character means new weapons you need to upgrade, new skill points you need to apply, customization if you care about painting your army, and armor upgrades. After 12 teammates, kitting out each new character just becomes tedious and boring. Gears Tactics starts out by giving you people in your party that are important to the story and just fills in the back roster with nobodies. The roster needs to expand. During chapters where there are multiple missions, each character is only allowed to go on one mission. By Act 3 you’re given a total of 3 missions before the chapter ends, necessitating at least 12 characters. Beyond that and filling out enough character archetypes to have around, I can’t imagine why the roster would need to be, at the end of the game, 26 slots.
The classes are varied enough to want to have multiples of each. Especially considering you’ll get either optional objectives or modifiers that might either cripple a class or deny entry completely. There are five class types in total: Vanguard, Support, Heavy, Sniper, and Scout. Shooty tactics games just can’t help but make snipers overpowered and Gears Tactics is really no exception. The right sniper with the right upgrades could have two or three turns worth of actions before anyone else got to act. My snipers were definitely the heroes of each game. Support is a healer role, instead of frag grenades you’re given stim grenades. Skill points for Support are based around healing and, oddly enough, this is the only class that gets to use the iconic Lancer assault rifle with the chainsaw bayonet. Vanguard is a run and gun class, built around grenades, a knife bayonet at the end of their hammerburst rifle, and getting enemies out of overwatch. The Scout is built around getting in enemies’ faces with a shotgun and taking out as many as possible. Last, the Heavy is built around setting up shop and mowing down groups of enemies. Frankly, I used the Heavy the least of all five classes.
Given the nature of the genre, I found Heavy the least useful, benefitting mostly from sitting still in a game that had you moving around quite frequently. The Scout was a lot of fun to have cloak past enemy overwatch and knock them out so my other units could act. Vanguard had a bayonet charge and would also give your teammates extra actions for executions. Overall, the classes work really well together and the right pairing in the right mission can be absolutely devastating.
My biggest complaint about Gears Tactics is the absolute overuse of overwatch by enemies. Overwatch is an ability for a character to watch an area and shoot any enemies that enter that area. First, kudos to Splash Damage for allowing me to determine the cone area with which I could have a character overwatch. That alone allowed me to create a gauntlet for enemies to run through instead of having everyone unload on the first enemy to walk through and have no ammo for the rest of the baddies. However, overwatch is absolutely abused by the enemies. Especially when you’re running a smaller team than normal. Only being able to bring four people into battle is already a little rough, but when I’d run a Rescue mission with only two people, having three or four enemies overwatch your only two COGs would often result in either a gear going down or at least taking a little too much damage to make the mission sustainable.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only sin Gears Tactics commits. The difficulty varies wildly in Gears Tactics. I absolutely adore the attempt at boss battles in this game. Getting to fight iconic Gears of War baddies, like the Brumak and Corpser, in a tactics setting is what made Gears Tactics so enjoyable. But the boss fights were absolutely brutal. I found myself breezing through regular missions and just getting stomped during boss battles. Even going so far as to lower the difficulty for the final boss battle. Something that felt like a very simple design mistake allowed me to just get overwhelmed with enemies. I’m sure measuring out the difficulty in a Tactics style game is going to be tough but the difficulty should be increasing steadily, not rubberbanding wildly between too easy and too difficult in a matter of a single mission.
That said, Gears Tactics was memorable and fun. Post-game has you completing ‘veteran missions,’ which are the same side missions as before but with added difficulty, modifiers, and optional objectives. The customization allowed me to paint my army as if I was playing a tabletop game and, while the amount of upgrades/optional pieces of gear is overwhelming, it does allow for a precise level of customization. Complaints aside, Gears Tactics is a really fun Gears of War game and I’m really hoping for a sequel. If you’re a fan of turn-based Tactics games or are a Gears of War nut, Gears Tactics is going to scratch that itch.
The Final Word
Gears Tactics is a refreshing take on the tactics genre that has something for both Gears of War fans and newcomers to the series. While the difficulty varies for boss fights, this is a great place to start if you’re a fan of Gears but haven’t delved into Turn-Based Tactics games yet.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
