Gears 5
If you had to list three games that the XBox is best known for, Gears would be one of them. It’s a flagship game for Microsoft and as such, much is expected from each new release, and Gears 5 is no exception.
Gears 5 proudly continues the tradition of being a brutal third-person cover shooter that is as fun to play as it is gorgeous to look at. In fact, if I had one negative thing to say right from the get-go, it’s that any game that looks this good should have a photo mode. Come on guys, I wanna take a break from spraying blood everywhere and take some photos.
But back to the game, the solid cover shooter mechanics still work well and there are plenty of guns to keep things moving, and a healthy scattering of bigger guns to help you smash your way through some of the chock points.
The campaign whilst linear to start with does give you some almost open-world options as you progress through the game that offers a handful of optional objectives and a number of collectibles to uncover and upgrade your robot companion.
Yes, you read that right, Gears 5 gives you a new robot companion, called Jack.
Jack can be quite handy, you can send him to pick up weapons for you, shocking or blinding enemies during battle, so it’s worth looking for components to upgrade his skills, as his abilities do come in handy during the heat of battle.
The campaign is meaty enough to keep you entertained for a decent while.
Gears 5 comes with the usual stable of cooperative multiplayer modes, with Horde offering traditional wave-based combat for you and a group of friends, the traditional deathmatch (which always sees me dying more often than anyone else in the history of dying in video games). But also a new mode, Escape, where you and up with two friends have to battle through a gauntlet of enemies moving quickly to stay ahead of a cloud of poisonous gas that is relentlessly pursuing you.
So all up, Gears 5 is another solid outing and will no doubt please the games many fans, but I think it is still highly accessible to new players as well. Not being a huge fan of the series, I hadn’t played any Gears for a few years, yet Gears 5 was easy to get into.
Rating: R16 Restricted to persons 16 years and over. NOTE: Violence.
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