Gears Tactics (XSX|S/XB1/Steam/Win10/Game Pass) - fast-paced, turn-based strategy. Out now on Consoles!!

Gears Tactics is the fast-paced, turn-based strategy game set 12 years before the first Gears of War. Cities on the planet Sera are beginning to fall to the monstrous threat rising from underground – the Locust Horde. With the government in disarray, a squad of survivors emerge as humanity's last hope. Play as Gabe Diaz, recruiting, equipping and commanding your squads on a desperate mission to hunt down the relentless and powerful leader of the Locust army: Ukkon, the evil mastermind who makes monsters. Against all odds and fighting for survival, outsmart your enemy in uniquely brutal, turn-based tactical combat. Experience the intensity of one of the most-acclaimed video game sagas in an exciting new way.

Rise up and fight
Gears Tactics is the fast-paced, turn-based strategy game from one of the most-acclaimed video game franchises – Gears of War. Outnumbered and fighting for survival, recruit and command your squad to hunt down an evil mastermind who makes monsters.

Immersive and character-driven story
Play as the defiant soldier Gabe Diaz, rescuing and building your troops in a journey of leadership, survival and sacrifice.

Customizable squad and equipment
Prepare your troops to face tough enemies, upgrading their skills and outfitting them with loot collected in challenging missions.

Aggressive gameplay
Command your squad in fast paced, turn-based battles, advancing and surviving intense and visceral encounters with the unstoppable, swarming enemy.

Massive boss battles
Defeat towering deadly bosses that defy your strategies and completely change the scale of the battle.

Thrashball Cole Character Pack

Thrashball Cole Character Pack includes Augustus Cole recruit and Thrashball Armor Set with rare abilities. Pre-order Gears Tactics or play Gears Tactics on Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta) before May 4, 2020 and receive the Thrashball Cole Character Pack.*

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Roonmastor wrote:Phoenix Point should scratch that itch, Ironhide. Not played it myself but from the original XCOM guy.

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Peter Crisp wrote:Just get £50 worth of Gamepass PC subs and get access to this and everything else it offers.

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Gears Tactics is an excellent turn-based tactics game that does a fantastic job of melding Gears’ famous style and action with the mechanics laid down by XCOM. It’s one intense and satisfying tactical battle after another, and it looks absolutely fantastic doing it. It does slightly wear out its welcome with too much of a good thing in its Gear-grinding side missions, and due to the lack of larger strategic decisions I don’t see it as being as replayable as its tactical role model. Even so, it’s an excellent campaign that leaves a great impression with some clever, Gears-appropriate original ideas.

Though Gears Tactics wears itself a little thin by the end of its protracted campaign, the rush of pulling together a victory from the jaws of defeat carries an exciting, chaotic energy. Unlike most strategy games, playing well doesn't necessarily make you feel like a mastermind, so much as though you've cheated death. Every successful plan, even a last-ditch effort, feels like a small stroke of genius. That's no small feat.

So, in conclusion. This is 100% a Gears Of War game, that also happens to be a top flight strategy effort. Arguably the best of its kind on the market, in fact, despite a bit of trouser trouble. It’s a spectacular thing to play through, and it’d be more than enough to merit the fifty quid price tag if it deleted itself on completion. Thankfully, however, the replay value is much greater than you’d expect. There’s the randomised side missions, for a start. And even for the linear-ish story missions, the massive spread of subclasses and squad compositions allow for way more playstyles than you can feasibly test out in one run. Plus you can play them on “veteran” mode after one completion, offering a new suite of game rule modifiers to present you with fresh challenges. It’s the first game in ages that gave me the urge to start a second playthrough in the same session as my first completion, which says a lot.

Speaking of which, I think it’s time to play a bit more Gears Tactics. You should do the same.

Gears Tactics' structure couldn't quite sustain the 25 hours or so it took me to get through the campaign, but slap the combat into a sequel with a couple more strategic systems that balance out the variety and pacing, and I'd honestly rather play it over XCOM, a recommendation I never expected I'd make.

Smart mechanics, aggressive battles, and tight storytelling make this a strong new contender in the genre, even if the campaign's pacing sometimes misses the mark.

Gears Tactics finds its niche by leaning further into the hyper-aggressive action and gore of the franchise. It throws tons of enemies at you, which forces you to move and keeps you on your toes, but can also become annoying and tedious in some missions. For a first-time outing though, Gears Tactics is a fantastic start.

All my quibbles are on the periphery of Gears Tactics, though. The core -- getting onto the battlefield and agonizing over every move -- is excellent. There's a smart experience here, one that feels both authentically Gears and tactics. That's the best possible outcome. Gears Tactics is a great Gears game and a great tactics game. This 90% doesn't miss.

The fundamentals of Gears Tactics work, but Gears 5 did much more than just work. It pushed the formula forward.

Moving and shooting and cutting up Locusts is a good time, even in a turn-based system, but that’s not enough to sustain an entire game. Every other element of the game — from the class system to the perks, to the way that missions and UI elements are designed — needs more refinement and care.

This is a near miss, but as anyone who has ever played a turn-based game will tell you, a near miss can be all the enemy needs to take you out. This is an interesting, but hardly essential, addition to the Gears family.

Held back by a few flaws, Gears Tactics remains a rock-solid turn-based strategy game fans of the genre will love.

Gears Tactics is better than the sum of its parts. It recreates classic Gears in a reverent and relevant way and adds its own flavour with some great new characters and new mysteries surrounding the locust. I look forward to playing this on Xbox in the near future, but for now I can absolutely recommend the game on PC. It’s deep, satisfying, and incredibly faithful and authentic.

With such appreciation shown to the roots of the whole franchise, as well as the courage to take the old settings of emergence day and make it something we’ve not experienced before, Gears Tactics is a reminder that Gears of War is an excellent example of world building that transcends being genre specific, and despite borrowing some staple gameplay elements from XCOM and other turn based strategy games, is a blast to play and an awesome strategy game in its own right.

Gears Tactics is, simply put, an excellent turn-based tactics game that stands up well against titles like XCOM and others at the top of the genre. While it has some slight issues, such as disappearing characters and a story that can best be described as "more Gears of War", the character development is better than the series' average and most importantly, it makes slight changes to the genre that make it a tactical joy to play. From extensive character customisation letting you specialise characters and teams, to gameplay tweaks, like adding a slight movement boost if you end in cover or removing the idea of a movement and attack phase of a character, Splash Damage has created one of the best RTT games in quite a while.

Gears Tactics isn’t just one of the biggest surprises of the year, it’s a vulgar display of power starring everyone’s favourite beefy boys in a bloody new direction that’ll test your trigger fingers with pure heavy mental action.

In summary, I'm really impressed by the work delivered by The Coalition and Splash Damage here. Technologically, Gears Tactics runs very well and with the resources and technology of the mainline Gears franchise behind it, the game looks beautiful too. On top of that, Gear Tactics offers forward-looking features like Variable Rate Shading and while it's not quite where it should be right now, with a bit of tweaking, it would be a no-brainer option to enable. Even without it, standard dynamic resolution scaling still does an excellent job in delivering added consistency to overall performance. Put simply, the strategy genre is an area where PC excels - and Gears Tactics is right up there with the best.

Gears Tactics Optimized for Xbox Series X (Xbox Game Studios – The Coalition – Holiday 2020). The critically-acclaimed, fast-paced, turn-based strategy game is coming to Xbox consoles later this year, running in 4K Ultra HD at 60 frames per second on Xbox Series X. Outnumbered and fighting for survival, recruit and command your squad to hunt down an evil mastermind who makes monsters.