varingblaarGears 5
Spoiler warning: If you haven't played Gears 5, I suggest you do so before going any further. If this spoils it for you, it's not my fault.You have been warned.
Part six of playing through the Gears of War series in co-op.
Oh we're in the era of live service games now, are we? 7 years after release and I'm still getting pop-ups for daily login multiplayer boosts I don't want and cosmetic DLC packs that do nothing. Can I just play the game please?
The Story
JD, Del and Kait from Gears 4 are back, with a friend. I don't know how I feel about Fahz. He's a real suck-up. The "golden boy" that does everything the First Minister says, but condescending towards his squad mates to the point that nobody wants to work with him. He comes in clutch once or twice and shows his attitude is really a weak self-esteem. Is this character development? Not sure.
Kait is the one that holds the story together. Turns out that amulet her mom gave her at the end of Gears 4, is a big deal. Reyna is the daughter of Queen Myrrah. So Kait is Myrrah's granddaughter, and through the amulet she's having visions. We have to go sever the connection between Kait and the Hivemind. Why don't we just destroy the amulet? I don't know. This whole adventure does provide a lot of background lore for Queen Myrrah and how she came to be, with medical reports and pictures. It's pretty cool from a world building perspective.
As usual, completing the mission that we set out for at the beginning of the game (skiffing in the ice), leads to more things that need doing (skiffing in the sand), until we have a final big fight (the Kraken) to finish the game. Nothing different from previous games, but well executed and keeps you engaged. The story is always moving and there are almost no interruptions to the flow. It just pulls you along.
New Gameplay Systems
Why do I have to play the boot camp? I've played 4 other Gears games over the last 3 months. I think I've got most of it. The only real difference is the chainsaw bayonet has moved to its own button and functions more like a weapon secondary effect. For instance, the little missiles from the Lancer GL is the same button.
What is more interesting, is JACK's new abilities. He's an active member of the party and can be controlled by a player, offering support actions. He carries ammo around, stuns enemies and can be sent to solve puzzles. Once his abilities begin to upgrade, he becomes an invaluable part of the squad. We've been two players through the entire series, so JACK is an NPC. We can have different abilities ready to go, but when one is used the cooldown applies for both so we need to coordinate. Not a problem after 5 previous games.
There's a little bit, and I do mean the smallest bit, of stealth gameplay. Sneak (mostly walk) up to certain enemies from behind and disable them with a quick button press, ripping batteries out of Deebees or slicing the throat of unsuspecting Drones. The mechanism from Gears 4 of pulling an enemy over the wall and executing them is actually useful now. A few situations during the game are clearly set up (and prompted in dialogue) to be stealth sequences. They're super simple and easy to figure the optimal path. The only time it doesn't work is when the button prompt fails and you accidentally greet a Drove with a little blade tap instead of murdering them. Then we go back to shooting anything that moves, business as usual.
The new DBNO ("down but not out") system takes getting used to. Where previously the timer would simply run out and you could spam A to move around a little better, now the timer moves quickly unless A is actively being spammed. Once revived, if you go down again the timer continues where it stopped. Reasons I don't like this...
- When going down, it takes a moment to be angry at the world before I remember to spam the button.
- My poor controller.
- If we fail the mission and I'm still spamming the button, the menu pops up and I restart before there's a chance to respond. If I was trying to move when this happens, I sometimes select the wrong menu item. More than once we accidentally quit the session because of this.
Better Combat
Combat feels frantic and fast paced. The first few big fights are in wide open spaces, each person doing their own thing, but supporting each other with revives or calling out focus points. Enemies are no longer bullet sponges and actually react when hit, meaning you can stop them in their tracks or knock them out of cover. Ammo is still a constant limitation and using dropped weapons is still often needed, which also fits the vibe. I do get Overkill, Longshot and Boomshot ammo from COG drops, which I don't think happened before?
The Claw is a terrible weapon; It's wildly inaccurate even when "zoomed in", the firing rate changes all the time and it takes half a decade to reload. No thanks.
The whole frantic combat thing is amplified by enemies that quickly change position, often jumping straight over your head. Especially in tight, closed areas this can be disorienting if you end up in the wrong spot, so it helps to take a moment and assess the situation before running in guns blazing. Overall a much better playing experience.
Can we talk about difficulty spikes though? Gears 4 had the Swarmak fight that made us take a break and come back when less frustrated. In Gears 5 there's a Matriarch fight that kept us busy for more than an hour. In both cases this appears to be about the halfway mark of the game. Coincidence?
Minor Glitches
A couple times the game glitched out on us. Mostly it seems the game had a hard time recovering from checkpoints if they happened in the wrong spot.
In a particular instance we died, retried, and just fell through an endless white void. Quitting and reloading did the same. Helpfully the game offers an option to retry from the previous checkpoint, which was in the middle of the first Kraken fight in the desert and the next part of combat simply didn't trigger. We stood there staring at the Kraken trying to break through the doors, but nothing happening. Eventually we reloaded the chapter and played the whole chase sequence to finish the chapter.
In a later chapter we had to protect the truck while it was being unstuck. After defeating the Carrier nothing happened. Reloaded, tried again. Same thing. Coincidentally we used JACK's Pulse and found a Swarm Leech stuck under the terrain with no way to get to it. We had to replay the entire chapter to fix it.
Speaking of the next section not activating, there were a couple situations where we completed an objective and the next one didn't come up. So we walk in circles, wondering what we're supposed to do, only to find out if we'd walked in a random direction it would tell us through dialogue and the objective would pop up. But there was no indication and it honestly felt like backtracking. For a game where you spend almost all your time following a pointer with a star on it, it's jarring when the game decides to not give that objective indicator immediately. That feels like a design flaw.
My troubles with the game are pretty minor and I guess it comes with the territory of such a big complex game. Sometimes objects clip through terrain, sometimes a save doesn't reset the gamestate perfectly, as long as it can be fixed with minimal replaying, it's fine. It happens.
The Skiff
Honestly this was probably my favourite part of the game. It's sort of open world, but very confined with only a few places of interest, so it's very obvious when you find something. Then there's a little adventure during which we learn about our characters through dialogue and fun little set pieces can be staged. Drones standing on thin ice that we can shoot, helps us understand we can do the same with the Matriarch later in the game. At the end of the little side quest, we get a reward. Complete all the locations for a side quest and JACK received a very powerful ability. Honestly, I could play an entire game that's only this.
It was a little sad when we had to finish the snow skiff levels and proceed with bombing the ice, which was a fun moment overall. I was also very happy to discover the next act is also riding the skiff but this time in the desert! The open world layout for this part was more confusing, playing with levels, but it made sense for the type of terrain.
Hivebusters
In terms of story this feels lighter. The opening cutscene has a few jokes. We're still stereotyping characters and getting away with it because the places they originate from are fictional. Other than that, it's entertaining. There's comical banter between the characters even during fights, and the occasional heartfelt conversation (and backstory) while walking from point A to point B.
Level design is mostly linear, though sometimes the next place to go isn't immediately obvious. It's real pretty. Lots of overgrown tropical vistas. The lava tunnel section is a long sequence of sliding, steering to avoid obstacles that don't do any meaningful damage. Occasionally the layout looks like you can go left or right, only to be forced to one direction in a physics-defying manner. But it's more of an interactive cutscene than a gameplay level.
In terms of story, it's pretty average. As soon as we discover Hoffman is in charge, I was sceptical. I've never liked him. Turns out I was right to question his authority, as this entire operation is rogue. But the characters decide to persist "for the greater good and personal honour" as they always do.
Mechanically I'm not so fond of this one. Because there's no JACK, each character has an ultimate ability. Mac has a shield, Lahni has extra melee damage, Keegan has ammo. They're all sort of a little useful but not really worthy of the name "ultimate". It seems there's one upgrade for each ability per chapter, that each do a specific thing. If you miss it you can't get it. The changes are not groundbreaking the way JACK's upgrades were, and the story is so short that there isn't a point to getting to know the abilities better. Mostly it's just free ammo from Keegan when there's not enough lying around.
Overall fun to play, not groundbreaking, looks pretty and adds a little more lore to the expanded universe.
