Gears 5 Review (Silly Goose)
Campaign Review *SPOILERS*
Pros:
-It is currently the only playable Gears game on Steam
-New Game Plus mode with modifiers and other settings to customize your experience. You can swap character skins, carry over upgrade progression, and even swap out Marcus Fenix for Dave Bautista, voice and all. It was cool to see the prospective live-action actor for the character interpret the script compared to the original VO.
- Some cool locales and set-pieces
-I enjoyed using JACK's abilities. I found they all had practical uses here and there, even if it was only to progress the story.
-Basic stealth sections were alright. The enemy AI isn't very attentive on higher difficulties and they seemed rather dumb, but its functional. It is a good thing that the friendly AI doesn't trigger them because I saw my team sprint feet in front of swarm drones on multiple occasions. Overall it is satisfying to pick a couple of drones off before the firefight begins.
Cons:
-Open-ended levels are a cool concept and a welcome change of pace for uber-linear games, but I found the settings boring and barren. They are a real slog to get through, especially if you want to complete the secondary objectives. I am not a game designer nor do I really understand how to structure a game, but a more condensed level, perhaps a few blocks/streets on New Ephyra with one of the APCs from the first game, would have been a lot more fun to explore than what is presented.
-I played on experienced (hard) difficulty and enemy explosives, for the most part, are one-hit kills. Hunters and grenadiers pose a fair(ish) threat, but Scions with dropshots are more frustrating than challenging. Enemies are also extremely spongy. I haven't played any of the Gears games in a while, so I watched some gameplay of GOW and GOW2 and noticed that although explosives are still as lethal, enemies go down significantly easier.
- The violence seems significantly toned down compared to previous games. I noticed that blood decals are almost non-existent even on ultra settings, and any blood spatter on the floor or walls almost looks like oil. Blood from getting shot or blown up seems closer to the norm.
-The story is bland and follows lots of tropes, you can see things coming from miles away because the game blatantly shows you what is going to happen through Kait's visions. Two examples come right to mind. The whole game centers around you activating a super weapon as a last-ditch effort against the enemy. This is the third time the series has followed this narrative path, with the Lightmass bomb in GOW and the Anti-Lambent weapon in GOW3. It's not even the fact Gears 5 has a similar story, its more that your actions don't feel important at all, whereas GOW and GOW3 had some serious weight to their conclusions. There are some plot points, especially towards the end that seem so forced. It has always frustrated me when characters who have proven themselves capable of wiping out hordes of monstrosities and taking down enemies the size of skyscrapers, etc, get killed off in the most unceremonious ways, i.e. John Marston in RDR. The dialogue is passable, but the jokes and banter between the team can get cringey.
-The friendly AI is atrocious. Despite the AI shouting "I see you!" or "I'm coming!", revives are spotty, and more glaringly their offensive capabilities are lacking. I often found myself fighting multiple enemies at once while my team sat passively behind cover far behind, refusing to push up to gain ground with me.
Conclusion:
It's more Gears of War. I do not recommend this being your first entry into the series. Boot up the old 360. If you don't have one hop over to Epic and pick up the GOW remaster remake deluxe GOTY edition or whatever it's called. That being said, If you're like me and just want to scratch the itch of not having Gears of War games on Steam, this will do. I also got it on sale for $12 which is a good deal. I would not pick this up at full price. Although my cons section was much juicier than my pros, I still liked hopping back into the gears universe and blasting away some subterranean abominations as the COG and for that, I give it a thumbs up.