

Their motivations are clear – they care for each other, they have no doubt about their role in the world… All Gears of War games are tailor-made for the DudeBro audience, and that’s perfectly fine with us.

Gears tactics review series#
Well, almost spot on regarding the Gears series heroes, save for a fact that instead of America, we have planet Sera, and, of course, that several prominent Gears heroes are women… DudeSistahs? Definitely! Anyways, the Gears franchise heroes are the equivalent of college jocks in metal armors, talking in slang, preferring straight, determined, short answers over any deep philosophy. Characterized by their love of College football, pickup trucks/SUVs, beer, cut off khaki cargo shorts, etc.”. We still owe you an explanation of the “DudeBro games” phenomena… One respectable online source states that DudeBros are “suburban males, usually 16-25 years of age, hailing from anywhere, USA. The second factor that makes the game interesting is the dialogues between heroes, which vary between lighthearted banter, continue through to doomsday whining, and all the way to the (predominant) DudeBro encouragement. Yes, the game is definitely 18+… Turn-based DudeBro strategy This is the signature move, one that is best-known in the Gears of War franchise – getting closer to Locust grub and sawing it in half with chainsaw bayonet mounted on the Lancer rifle. For example, one talent enables +1 action point to any troops in the vicinity of a soldier that performs a successful melee execution. Your heroes level up and unlock new special attacks that, in many cases, create a battlefield synergy. First and foremost is the quality of the core turn-based combat, and the progressively increasing complexity of actions you can perform.

It would all be mega-boring without two important factors. There are only a few templates in their design: defense of two fixed points on the map, race against time while collecting loot boxes, rescuing an X number of troops, and finally, a “kill everything that moves” type of mission, with three boss fights that are an exception from those rules. The simplicity expands into the mission design. How many Locust can you kill before you get bored? The system is very simple and straightforward. Between missions, you can level up your troops by choosing nodes in their class-dependent talent trees, and by using weapon and armor modules you looted for augmenting their gear. Tactics is all there is! There is no base-building, economy, and tech progress as in XCOM games – instead of an ever-evolving threat on Geoscape, you have a fixed set of story missions augmented with an even bigger number of side missions which provide the filler necessary for the 22+ hours campaign. Horror in Gears Tactics is not the focal point like it was in Incubation, but the turn-based mechanic presented in the game and its mission structure has clearly evolved from that game. It felt like Aliens without being set in an actual licensed Alien universe. This great game from 1997, a tactical spinoff of the Battle Isle strategy universe had a robust, turn-based gameplay and a sinister vibe that combined SF staples with survival horror. The founding inspiration was not just XCOM, as many (very) young apprentices in game journalism think, but the good old Incubation: Time is Running Out. But the truth is, it goes much deeper than that.
Gears tactics review full#
Using half or full terrain cover, having a defined set of action points for your units, and 3D isometric environments – all of these features suggest that the game borrows heavily from the modern XCOM games by Firaxis. Gears Tactics follows the core mechanical aspects of Gears shooters, but translates them into turn-based, tactical form.
