Gears 5 Review (Chimz)
Fun Multiplayer, Weak Singleplayer
This review is aimed at both new players and fans of the franchise.
Simply put, whether you’re new to the franchise or not, the multiplayer is a lot of fun.
PVP
PVP is competitive and fun, with Team VS Team modes requiring an actual level of teamplay. If you like modes like DM, TDM, KOTH, then you’ll enjoy this.
Is there anything new compared to the older titles? Not really. The only difference is that your loadout is locked and will always start with Lancer and Gnasher, not letting you replace the Lancer with Retro Lancer, Hammerburst or Enforcer, or the Gnasher with Overkill. The only thing you can switch is the grenade between Smoke and Flash. This really takes out the variety of using different guns.
Horde Mode (Co-op)
It’s better than it’s ever been. You have multiple classes to play as which bring a lot of freshness by changing your playstyle by having unique passive and active abilities to use, and as you progress, you unlock Ability Cards for that class which improve it even more by with new passive upgrades/abilities. These range from “gain shield from shotgun kill”, to “enemies explode upon death dealing splash damage”.
Classes are categorized into different groups, having different roles such as Support, Damage, Defense and some being in the middle.
Most of them are fun to play and offer up new ways of playing.
The Fabricator is present and you spend energy (resource) to create or upgrade defensive structures or buy weapons/equipment.
Some classes like the Mechanic focus on this aspect of setting up defenses. Kills by Sentries will count as your kills so you won’t be left out of the scoreboard.
It's all fun but at higher difficulties you always NEED a good mechanic.
Map of the Day: Every 24 hours, a map is selected and some special modifiers are applied to it. These modifiers are like Mutators. Some of them will be beneficial to the player, some will make it harder, some will just be cosmetic and some will just be pure annoying.
Finishing the map of the day grants extra bonuses compared to other maps in the form of extra XP, Gold and Card drops.
Truly, Gears 5’s Horde Mode shines brighter than all previous titles.
Escape (Co-op)
Personally, my least favorite mode.
3 players start inside a hive (behind enemy lines), outnumbered and underequipped, having only their pistols, activating poisons and trying to escape as it spreads.
The maps consist of big boring hallways that branch out into multiple paths with some being dead ends.
Each map offers different encounters that either let you move stealthily and execute enemies without causing a firefight or give no option but to fight or high-tail it through the enemies.
What sets this apart from the campaign is that you are always underequipped and on the clock. The Classes mentioned in the Horde are also present here, though much less effective.
The end of all maps requires you to kill off a final wave (and any other ernemy who has been following you) so you can escape, which can be troublesome because if you can't kill them you can't win, even if you've been playing for 15 minutes, a single enemy can make you lose. Imagine losing at 99% progress, how fun, right?
They could have made the chopper provide fire support but I guess that would have actually been fun and a bad idea, huh?
I have tried playing this mode slow, fast with guns blazing and even speed-running and NONE of them made me enjoy it. It sounds fun on paper but in practice it’s not pleasant or rewarding.
Multiplayer Connection Issues
There are a LOT of major problems with connections.
Between me and my 3 friends, 2 can play normally but the other 2 can only play when using a DNS, and sometimes it still doesn't work. This is the same problem you keep hearing in reviews and discussions.
If you lose connection to Gears Service, you have to restart your whole game.
If you lose connection to Steam, you also lose connection to Gears Service and also have to restart again.
In-game Chat is disabled by default, and even after turning it on it doesn't work for more than half the players. So for most of you, there will be no communication at all. Say goodbye to coordination.
Campaign's Co-op Connection is different from other modes. For some people it works fine, for others, including me, it just doesn't work at all, no matter if we use DNS, VPN or anything else. We are just NOT ALLOWED to play campaign co-op.
Campaign
The plot is good but both the gameplay and the characters take hard hits.
The story feels more serious than the last game with higher stakes more bearable characters.
When I first heard Kait was going to be the main character, I dreaded the matter because I felt like it was going to be one of those “forced female character” for game politics, but fortunately it’s not.
Sadly, I have to say, Kait is simply unlikable. She starts fine but the more you play and get to watch her interactions with other characters, the less likable she becomes. Always brushing people off, not really caring about anyone and always “too busy to explain”, and a lot of times it's like she just answers out of necessity and would rather be left alone. Since she is the main character and most dialogues are centered around her, they feel void of emotion, her relationships don’t really matter and basically making the whole character side of the story fall flat. Whenever side characters interact with each other it’s fine and good, but whenever Kait is involved, everything is brought down.
Oh, and if you’ve played Gears 4, the “awkward dialogues” are still present and still as painful to watch as they were before.
As for the gameplay, it suffers from the popularization of “open world” gameplay that we are seeing everywhere. Two sections of the game place you into a giant map with a Skiff to move around. All main and side objectives are spread throughout this map, requiring you to drive from one point to another. This system doesn’t add any value and instead degrades the experience.
These locations are barren and not soothing to the eye or entertaining, so you’re basically just driving to from point A from point B, feeling bored all the time and constantly thinking “Am I there yet?”.
Maybe if the map was smaller, it would have been enjoyable but as it is, it is more tedious and frustrating than anything else and because it’s present in 50% of the campaign and you don’t get to skip it.
The last final nail in the coffin is a choice you must make. Without spoiling or going into details, this choice is so big that it will affect all titles that come after Gears 5, so much that there would need be dialogues, cutscenes and details made for both choices in each title. Essentially, double the work needs to be done for each title so that each choice would actually make a difference.
This kind of choice making is not part of the Gears of War storytelling. This isn’t Mass Effect where your choices are recorded and planned for in next titles.
Worst of all, the choice destroys the worth of both options, making them less important, both in short term and long run. It’s like throwing both sides into the trash. If the game had made the choice for you, then all these flaws and problems could have been fixed and you would have ended up with something spectacular that would burn itself into the player’s memory as one of the most iconic scenes in the franchise.
But unfortunately, we’re stuck with a crap decision that makes both choices devoid of any true importance.
Conclusion
Horde has never been better.
PVP is as good as it’s always been.
Escape s*cks.
Campaign is better than Gears of War 4 but is still tainted with bad game design choices and poor characters.
Would I recommend this? If you’re a die-hard Gears fan, yes, on a discount.
If not, I would only recommend the multiplayer if you can buy it on a good discount.