Gears 5

Review

I had the pleasure of seeing this game firsthand at E3 this year, and I was impressed by it to the point of returning to the queue twice to have another go! But, let me tell you that I am super impressed now as I have been playing it for the last week and can’t enough of Gears 5!

Gears 5 is a third-person action/shooter game developed by The Coalition and published by Xbox Game Studios, and is available for PC and Xbox One at the Microsoft Store.

The game has several modes of play, which includes a lengthy campaign consisting of 15 chapters across 4 acts. The campaign can be played solo or in co-op with up to 3 players and has four levels of difficulty, from beginner to insane. The game also features a few multiplayer gameplays, such as the Horde (which is one of my favourites so far), Escape and Versus modes (which contain four different types of gameplay, such as King of the Hill), Team Deathmatch and a couple more.

First, let’s have a look at the campaign. As you launch the game, you’ll be given a recap of what happened in the last game through a beautiful cinematic introduction that will also outlay the new game story.



At first, you’ll be playing JD Fenix for a few acts, and then Kait for the rest of the game. And each time you’ll be accompanied by two additional characters and a flying robot. In the first mission, it will be Dave (the robot), but he will suffer from a malfunction caused by hitting the wall far too many times. But don’t worry, Jack is the new Dave, and has better features and does work properly.

All way through the game, you’ll be ordering Jack to attack your enemies, open doors, hack into systems, layout traps, pick up ammo or weapons, heal you and your teammate, make you invisible for a certain amount of time and even can take control of an enemy mind. However, he won’t have all of these fancy skills straight away; you’ll either be given, or you’ll find, specific updates as you move through the levels. You’ll be able upgrade Jacks skills by finding components throughout each of the stages, so make sure to look everywhere and collect as many as you can so you can update Jack quicker. The components are small, but it is easy to identify them; they’re rectangle and have up to 5 yellow lines in them. Some are also hidden in compartments against walls. There are collectables to pick up in each of the levels too.

Gears 5 is pretty much a fantastic story with a lot of epic fights, and let me tell you it is absolutely super fun and addictive!  The levels are very well-designed, and it will take you quite some time to visit everything. On some occasions, you’ll be jumping into the thick of it and fighting waves the Locus until reaching the extraction points, while on other occasions, you’ll be travelling on a skiff (which is some sort of vehicle with steel skies and a large kite) from one place to the next on large maps across deserts, snow and towns.

Each of your characters will have four different slots for weapons. At the start of the game, you’ll have 4 specific weapons, but as you go through fights, you be able to pick up enemy weapons or fellow COG weapons. Within each of the levels, there are blue and red ammo crates. The blues are basically bullets, while the red are explosives.

As I mentioned above, I played several horde and escape games as well.  I tried to connect in the versus mode but was unlucky at each attempt.

The Horde mode is just fabulous. This mode can be played on 12 different maps, and there are 8 difficulty settings. In a nutshell, you have to fight 50 waves of Locus to win the game. There are 5 players in your team, two blue ammo crates per turn and a fabricator. Every time your team kill an enemy, they drop energy points which you need to collect and store in the fabricator to buy defences, or you can upgrade a few skills on your character between the waves.

In the Escape mode, you play with two other people; you have a small amount of ammunition, and you need to reach the escape pod before the entire map is filled with poisonous gas.

What a fabulous game with stunning graphics and huge replayability. Plenty of setting options as you would expect, and you can play the game with a gamepad or with your keyboard and mouse. I did have some connection issues a few times and had to wait for a while before I could reconnect. Apart from that I have no other problem.


Positives

+ Stunning graphics
+ Fabulous story – Campaign mode
+ Campaign mode can be played solo or co-op
+ Great multiplayer modes
+ Fun and addictive

Negatives

- Had a few issues connecting into multiplayer game (versus mode)

Review Summary

Up to Gears 5 - it’s frantic, it’s fast, it’ superb and it’s a must-have!

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Zeepond Rating: 9/10

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