No matter what console you’re loyal to, you can’t argue that Microsoft has managed to score a massive win with the Game Pass. For $10 a month ($15 if you bundle it with Xbox Live Gold) you get access to a ton of games and all of Microsoft’s first-party games day one. Since its inception, there have been tons of heavy hitters from a range of developers and publishers, indie and AAA alike, yet the first party games to date have been kind of… mediocre. Sea of Thieves was a dumpster fire that I can’t bring myself to reinstall despite the reports of improvements, and Crackdown 3 was forgettable, to say the least. Was the third release following this method, Gears 5, going to break that cycle? Well, it was a step in the right direction.

Boasting the longest campaign in the series, I jumped into this option first. Taking place an unknown amount of time after Gears of War 4, the narrative follows the newer iteration of Delta squad as they work to reinstate The Hammer of Dawn in an effort to abolish The Swarm once and for all. It’s the same kind of passable Summer Blockbuster style story that we’ve all come to expect from the franchise that doesn’t really take any major risks until the final chapter which then ends quite abruptly, in a place where it feels like a final act should have been placed. While all of the surviving major players are present and accounted for, the series mainstays only appear when the story needs them, leaving Marcus, Cole Train, and Baird in supporting roles, rarely seeing battle and never being a playable option.

The core gameplay remains intact, with only a few major changes – one being the huge upgrade to the level designs, both in size and scope. The linear pathways are still present, there’s just a lot more of them, often tucking away a staggering number of collectibles or the normal ammo picks ups but leading to an empty room that serves no purpose just as often, if not more. In addition to doubling down on the linear areas, The Coalition thought that adding open-world segments with side quests would be an apt use of time and resources. In place of the occasional vehicular segments of the past, you’ll use a skiff, which looks like a dog sled with a mesh sail on the front of it (what purpose does that serve exactly?) to explore these areas. Even though the skiff handles better than any of the vehicles in the series history, it feels forced and made these segments a bit of a slog for me thanks to the cumbersome map that required me to select points close to where I wanted to go, instead of just setting a waypoint for where the mission was housed. At the end of the day, this feels like filler just for the sake of saying the game is bigger, but not better.

Throughout the game, Jack makes his triumphant return and as a first, is playable in co-op (or some of the multiplayer modes) and can easily be controlled in tandem by the host player. Instead of playing the part of the silent NPC who appears and disappears as the story sees fit, he brings some support abilities to the table, be it in combat or otherwise. I loved the option to strategically use him to place shock traps or stun enemies when playing solo (which can be upgraded regularly by finding specific collectibles within the world), but playing as Jack in the three-player co-op mode often feels like you’re sitting around without much to do and discouraged me from playing with more than one friend at a time.

Thematically, the campaign has shifted from being a cover heavy shooter to more of a survival horror experience. Not only are the enemies significantly more bullet spongy, but ammo pickups have also become an extreme rarity, adding a level of tension that hasn’t been seen in the series since the original trilogy. This shift pushes the player to experiment with the game’s vast arsenal that, at its best reminds you of what made the original Gears saga great, but at worst, feels like a step back. Certain guns remain unchanged, such as the boltok pistol, where others have added ridiculous amounts of recoil or handle so badly, it makes the option near useless (I am looking at you Retro-Lancer). The dark narrow passageways that come out to play regularly work in conjunction with some commendable sound design to deliver a creepy package. The trade-off here is that by the time the credits roll the big set pieces and action scenes that stood out in the past are completely absent. Even the normal boss encounters that would typically incorporate some sort of battle specific mechanics have been dumbed down to just shooting them in the face until they die or are implemented in a flawed way that breeds frustration more than adrenaline.

Outside of the campaign, there is a wealth of co-op and PvP options available which remain largely unchanged and deliver in the ways you’d expect, for better or worse. The newest being a Left 4 Dead style mode that pits you and up to two other players to escape a Swarm infested hive, starting with nothing but your pistol. Again, this works as it should and pushes the title into survival horror even further, thanks to the almost complete lack of ammo. With new maps being rotated weekly, this mode is a great addition for those who don’t care for the PvP option and find Hoard mode to be too much of a time-sink.

I can get behind most of the changes, with the exception of the open-world setting, which I feel was unneeded and an effort to cram more into the campaign without nearly as much effort. What I can’t get behind at all is the change to the Lancer’s chainsaw or bayonet charge – you now have to hold the RB button which doubles as the reload button. Not only does this royally screw my muscle memory from playing the hell out of the past entries, it becomes problematic when trying to reload in cover a shot or two from death, only to stand up in the middle of the battlefield revving my gun, only to wind up dead.

The issues don’t end there; I’ve had to replay entire chapters due to the game forgetting to save my progress at multiple points due to network issues, and I’ve been unable to even launch the game in single-player mode offline due to repeated outages on The Coalition’s end (note: this review was written at launch). There are additional issues that could’ve been resolved with some additional polish, which you’d expect from Microsoft/The Coalition, but here we are. The title has massive pop-in/out issues, is plagued with assets that are shiny for no reason, standing out across the map like sore thumbs making you think they were hiding a collectible or gun… only to trek over to find it’s a randomly placed asset that had no reason to reflect light in the way it did.

At the end of the day, Gears 5 is in many ways much like Crackdown 3. It’s not an awful game, but it’s largely unpolished and fails to deliver an experience that rivals the original trilogy. I didn’t completely hate my time with the game, but the more I played it, the more I wanted to reinstall the past entries. If you subscribe to Game Pass, you might as well check it out; however, everyone else should just wait for the inevitable giveaway from Games with Gold.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Thematic Shift from Action to Horror
• Wealth of Modes and Content
• Jack’s Return

Cons

• Lack of Polish
• Open World Setting Feels Forced
• Unwelcome Changes to the Arsenal/Controls
• Campaign’s Abrupt Ending

Gears 5 was developed by The Coalition and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is available on PC and X1. The game was not provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Gears 5, check out the game’s official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. However, for Review Rewind, we will sometimes skip the score and focus on the written content. These are typically for games that came out a while ago and we paid for ourselves – sometimes they’ve been in the queue for a while, and other times they’ve just been lost to time. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

 

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