![]() ![]() That can turn them from generally effective fighters into spectacular killing machines that can mow down two or three times their number of enemies. Where things really get interesting is when you start chaining together abilities from the five different classes that grant you additional action points, either for one character or your entire squad. You may only ever have four troops at once, but they can feel like an army.The fundamentals of combat are about improving your lethality by flanking, using melee charges, tossing grenades, and other abilities, and it’s great. The only ones that ever got on my nerves were the melee units – including those Ticker jerks – where I could never quite tell if they were in range of striking my troops or not. They all have distinctive and interesting abilities to counter, including some that automatically attack if you get too close (countering the insta-kill Lancer chainsaws) and some who explode in a cloud of debilitating poison gas on death to discourage executing them when they’re downed. ![]() Gabe leads a squad of up to four Gears into battle against a substantial lineup of recognizable Locust enemies (introduced at a steady clip throughout with a gruesome close-up and a couple of tactical tips) that range from basic grunts and exploding Tickers to buffing Kantuses and tricky Theron Guards. Still, the dialogue is written and acted well enough that it serves its purpose of establishing the signature Gears flavor and giving us a monster to hunt without getting in the way. And despite some hints that he might attempt it, the villainous Ukkon never develops beyond one-dimensional evil. Even the heated friction between grizzled old Gear Sid and the prickly engineer/sniper Mikayla never amounts to much. He has his tortured past of having fallen from grace after leading an operation gone wrong and going into self-imposed exile in the COG motorpool, but being brought back for one last job doesn’t really change his mind about anything – he was fed up with the COG’s corrupt leadership before we meet him. Through some impressively animated cutscenes we get to fill in a few gaps in the pre-Outsiders Diaz family history, though Kait’s father, Gabriel, never really comes into his own as a memorable main character. Gears Tactics deserves to be a success, although it has been stymied slightly by the surprise launch of a new entry in the better established XCOM franchise.The story of Gears Tactics takes place 12 years before the original Gears of War – of course, when it comes to gleefully cutting alligator-looking dudes in half with chainsaw guns it’s very much business as usual. It’ll pay to specialise here, as a lot of the talents located on the outer edges of the skill tree are powerful enough to turn the tides of battle in your favour. ![]() There isn’t a “meta” layer like several other tactics games, just this series of tactical assaults, but Gears Tactics gets around this with charm: the combat is enjoyable and gory, the customisation tools at your disposal are powerful and each of the classes available have extensive skill trees, letting you build them out into one of four different archetypes within that class or even a mix of a few different types. ![]() This gives you something else to distract you with during missions, and tweaking your weapons between missions is pretty entertaining in itself. You find new items on the battlefield inside crates scattered across the battlefield, letting you find all of these items, plus weapon mods. ![]()
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