‘Gears Tactics’ is good, but now is not the time: Review

If I had played Gears Tactics a few months ago, I probably would’ve said that this was a good game. Not amazing, not perfect, but good. It starts slow but the way it ramps up over the course of the story is pretty satisfying, and the strategic gameplay, while very straightforward, is nice and smooth.

Unfortunately, Gears Tactics doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is entering the world at a moment when most people are stuck at home, clamoring for things to hold their attention as each day melds into the next and boredom skulks, waiting to pounce at any moment and consume our minds with malaise. The world has shifted. While some people have lost their jobs and income, others are getting sick and dying. It changes the way we look at things.

Playing Gears Tactics for PC provided by Microsoft right now, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, I kind of hate it. 

I would like to apologize right off the bat for this. This isn’t totally the fault of Gears Tactics or its developers. But this dark, plodding game is the absolute opposite of what I want in my entertainment right now.

Gears Tactics takes place 12 years before the events of Gears of War, closer to the beginning the war between humans and the brutish subterranean race of Locusts. While the Gears of War series has mostly stuck to third-person action where cover awareness, speed, and accuracy are paramount to victory, Gears Tactics slows things way down for an overhead tactics approach to this battle for humanity.

Following Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) Army member Gabriel Diaz and company, the story of Gears Tactics explores early efforts against the Locusts. COG forces work to rescue survivors and take out enemies that weren’t already destroyed by the humans’ Hammer of Dawn strikes, which are devastating satellite weapon blasts that incinerate everything in its path. The main  target is Ukkon, a powerful Locust scientist who has created some of the series’ biggest threats.

In Gears Tactics, characters move one at a time and can take three actions per turn, which includes things like moving, shooting at enemies when they’re in range and in sight, throwing the occasional grenade to turn Locusts into meat piles, or setting sights on a specific location to shoot at any enemy that moves through it on their turn (an action called overwatch). While the main Gears of War games are fast and flashy, Tactics requires you to slow down, assess your own positions and enemy positions, and figure out what to do so you can tear through enemies as quickly and efficiently as possible without getting overwhelmed yourself.

At the beginning, the gameplay is mind-numbing with its deliberate pace and lack of variety. As the game goes on and you collect more gear to make your fighters more powerful and level them up with new abilities, it starts to come together. No, there isn’t a ton of enemy variety throughout the game, and almost all the levels blend together in my brain. But the action gets more exciting as you chain together more and more abilities to keep the pain train rolling longer and longer. 

For me, however, this progression wasn’t really enough to keep me interested in the game. I kept playing because I had to for this review. That happens in this job from time to time, with games that I feel don’t hit the mark or are just straight up bad. But this was different.

Gears Tactics is a pretty good game, but the combination of its slow pace and dark atmosphere was really difficult for me to get into right now. Life in general feels darker and slower, and staying in a relatively small apartment all day every day for the past month and a half has changed what I’ve been looking for in a game.

Gears Tactics makes me daydream about other games I’d rather be playing right now. Two games from March that marked the early weeks of lockdown come to mind: Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal, which came out on the same day. Although Animal Crossing is unhurried in its pace, it’s bright and colorful and relaxing — a great way to chill out for a little while. And despite Doom‘s dark environment, it is fast as hell with movement mechanics that feel freeing. These kinds of games work very well in the present.

The world feels stuck and gloomy and I don’t want to lean into that. I want to be transported somewhere fun and exhilarating. I want to drive fast cars or pilot planes at top speed, or adventure across huge landscapes with swords and magic and mythical monsters, or run and jump through engaging platformers.

I don’t want to have my movement limited to three actions per round. I don’t want to slog through brown and grey apocalyptic levels. I don’t want to be confined to this game.

Gears Tactics isn’t giving me anything I want right now. It’s not you, Gears Tactics, it’s me.

Gears Tactics is available now.