First impressions as a newcomer to gears

[Bird_Dog]

After having played through Gears 5 - I‘m not sure I understand why they shortend the title, as there is still quite a bit of war going on and now it sounds like one of those mechanics simulators, but I digress – I‘d like to share some of my impressions of my first delve into the gears franchise. One of the resons why I‘m not writing this as a review is, that steam insists on a binary yay-or-nay recommendation and I can‘t make my mind up about whether or not I do recommend the game to anyone…

Note: I‘m only talking about the single player experince here.
Also: If you haven‘t played the game yet, beware of unmarked spoilers past this point.
Thirdly: I apologize for the bad english. It‘s not my first language, and most of it is self-taught. Also, for some reason the forum‘s spell check doesn‘t seem to work for me.

First impression:
My first impression was dominated by the requirement to make a Xbox service account. A process Microsoft absolutely nailed - if the intention was to make the experience as awfull as such a simple thing can possibly be made…
It started with the fact that the required e-mail adress was rejected for some weird reason - I use the same old hotmail adress (a microsoft service I should add) for all my logins, and MS of all folks is the first that has had a problem with it…
So I had to make a new adress just for that. Off to a good start…
Then I had to come up with a nickname. And off course Xbox service is among those caveman-services that for some retardet reason still insist on a unique nickname, despite the fact that with the associated e-mail adress, there allready IS a unique identifier for the account.
Meet the newest member of the xbox comunity: hasseldbyms…

NOT a good first impression.
Moving on.


Setting, story and lore:
I tried to puzzle together as much of the stuff from just playing the game and at least trying to read as many of the collectible snippets of text as I could find on my playthrough and not relay on outside sources, though some outside information has allready seeped in.
I said trying to read, because I did skipp quite a few, since pausing to read those allways breaks the flow of the gameplay somewhat.

So, on a distant planet named Sera – I think – there is a strange civilisation of humans and some human-gorilla hybrids constantly at war with some weird humanoid creatures called the Locust - or the Swarm; I got the impression those two terms were used pretty much synonymously.
With the term Lambent having ben thrown into the mix – apparently for the sole purpose of confusing the newcomers to the franchise even more - in some context I think…

My best guess at this point is, that this Sera is some lost human colony that has technologicaly regressed for one reason or another to at least as far back as mid-20th century, as one of the characters mentioned that his ancestors have invented – or re-invented – the transistor.
This civilisation now lives on some interesting schizo-tech level where hovering robots with energy shields exist alongside propeller powerd fixed-wing aircraft, fallout-style vaults coxist with buildings in a late 19th/early 20th century style – complete with wood and plaster interior walls, and both electron-tube monitors and holograms are seen alongside death-ray satelites and wind-powerd sleeds.

The civilisation calles itself the COG – the acronym was spelled out somewhere, but I got the distinct impression that the devs started with the acronym and worked their way backwards from there…
The COG is some sort of authoritarian regime. Probably with some religion thrown in as they refer to some guys called the all-fathers. From the looks of it, I assume some sort of thech-worshiping cult somewhere between the Bortherhood of Steel and the Cult of Ford from Brave New World. At least that‘s the idea I got from the picture of a huge statue of a hooded figure holding up a toothwheel in a worship-y way (oh crap, now I sound like the main cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer…).
It would make sense in the context of a loss of technology and a slow and painfull rebuild, though it doesn‘t come up much over the course of the game…

Anyway, the COG doesn‘t seem to be too big on things like freedom of speech or democracy, as there are stacks of pamphlets found in one office stamped in red with “Seditious Material“ and the killer-robots utter phrases like “Sedition will not be tolerated“.
One character also mentiones that you have to get a permit – and probably be subjected to strict censorship – if you wanted to write a history book.
So, I guess the so-called “outsiders“ may have a point when they call the COG facists.

You the player are a member of an elite military unit called Delta Squad – because why would it be called something else?
The unit consists of several proud examples of the aforementioned human-gorilla hybrids wearing gunmetall gray wheely bins. And one girl. Creating the visual impression of a greyhound having ben adopted by a family of partialy shaved bears…

I am however forced to write the term “military“ in some rather large quotation marks.
Delta-Squad is as mildly military as it gets.
Starting with the girl wearing earrings (realy good idea while trooping through the undergrowth...) and what looks like a tea cosy as part of her combat uniform.
They all follow orders only when they feel like it and have nothing better to do, and at one point a character, when reminded by a squad member of higher rank off the chain of command, literaly gives his superior the finger.

Character interaction consists mostly of glib one liners and blatant alpha-male ♥♥♥♥-waving.
The game does hang a lampshade on this pretty early on, but it doesn‘t get any points for that beacause, a) the lampshade hanging was about as subtle as the sexual metaphors in a zero punctuation review and b) the game then continues with the chest-pounding testosterone fest unabated.
I don‘t want to sound too mean. Some of the one liners made me chuckle and the main character is at least somewhat relatable, but overall the humor comes accross as annoyingly juvenile.

I haven‘t talked about the plot yet, have I?
Well, no problem. It‘s pretty insubstantial.
There are two major plot lines running more or less in parallel. One is about a prolonged fetch quest to gather killer satelites to be used as a “resolve plot if running out of ideas“ button.
And the other is about the main character, Kait apparently being half-Locust and looking for answers about her past in abandoned creepy laboratories.
The whole thing is about as painfully generic as it gets. All the way to the prerequisit genetic experiments on childern, the mad scientist and the only female member of Delta Squad ending up strapped to an operating table at some point…
The killer satelites meanwhile have very powerfull death-rays – although you can apparently still stand only a few dozen meters away from one and look at it to no ill-effect, so I‘m forced to hang a big question mark over their true level of power – but their targeting systems suffer from a bad case of the gremlins, because off course they do…

Neither of those two plots gets actually resolved. The killer satelites only work when the plot demands it and their final use in the end-battle requires a fingerquotes “heroic sacrifice“ from an f-ing robot…

Kait‘s plot is left even more dangling over the abyss of potential sequel.
Not that it matters too much. As I said, it‘s about as generic as it gets.
Unfortunately, being generic and predictable doesn‘t prevent it from being highly confusing. Back in Act 2, in the creepiest of the labs, Kait expresses her wish to have her Wi-Fi connection to the Locust severed, and after some unsubtle threats, the mad scientist agrees to do it. But off course he betrays our heroes – or at least that‘s what it looks like when Kait‘s personal Friday shoots at the mad scientist and then disconnects her from the operating table by pulling all kinds of cables out of the machine. But then Kait says that she has ben disconnected from the Locust (I think) and this is why the old queen of the Locust has come back, so the mad scientist maybe didin‘t betray them, but why did he then try to get them killed?
If this paragraph is confusingly written, then his is because it represents my own confusion with the plot. Maybe someone can straighten it out for me…

The closest thing the Kait-plot gets to a climax is when the old queen of the Locust – who looks like a cross between a female, chaos-worshiping Nebezial Asheri (obscure and nerdy fantasy comic book reffrence) and something from japanese porn – shows up out of f-ing nowhere in what I can only call a cameo, to deliver a “choose who dies“ moment for the player. And it realy ♥♥♥♥♥♥ me off.
Not because I felt any sort of attachment to either of the two chunky alpha-males at stake, but because those moments are always manipulative and highly contrived. Why couldn‘t Kait save both by pulling a Soap-on-Sheppard on the Queen?
Make me choose between two characters was a bad idea when Wolfenstein did it, and repetition hasn‘t sweetend it.
It also pisses me off because after having had her 30 seconds of fame, the queen then simply exits stage left again, not be seen or heard from again for the rest of the game. And if this part had ben left out, one pseudo-emotional moment of dog tag-handover aside, bugger-all would have changed.


Gameplay:
Eh, I could take the easy way out here and just write “Cover based shooting!“ in bold and all caps. And maybe add half a dozen exclamation marks…
But lets dive a bit deeper. As deep as one can dive into a wading pool anyway…

The problem is, there is nothing else. It‘s just cover based shooting from start to finish. Even the token, scripted vehicle sequences in the last act are literaly nothing other than you crouching behind a fast moving chest high wall for a few seconds.

So, lets talk about the shooting and the guns.
You are restricted to two long guns and a sidearm and one type of granade. And the granades are thrown by first equiping them like a wapon. Something most shooters have stopped doing for good reason over a f-ing decade ago…

Most guns are way too situational and too limited in both use and amo supply for a game that only lets you carry three at a time.
Shotguns have the usual videogame-shotgun-syndrome that makes their damage output magicaly drop down a black hole once your target is beyond arms length, the sniper rifle is single shot and amo for it is apparently carved from the wood of the true cross as sparse as it is. The closest thing to a general purpose weapon is the Lancer assault rifle, but… let me put it that way: My dear old mother shoots a tighter group with her garden hose than this bloody gun does…
There is some sort of semi-auto battle rifle I quite liked – or at least, I would like it, if the game would allow me to carry more than half a handfull of bullets for the bloody thing!

You carry barely enough amo to last you through a decent firefight, and the fact that even the standard mooks are bullet sponges doesn‘t help.
So, after every fight I essentialy pause the game and stumble all over the battlefield to hoover up every gun and discarded magazine, while my AI squadmates are all standing at the exit to the next encounter like a trio of dogs waiting at the door for walkies.
Giving me more amo to carry and letting me replenish it in a single go from a big amo drop like in Modern Warfare, would have helped maintining the gameplay flow.

The game features a number of enemies that can drop me in a single hit even on medium. Just to add to the frustration. And some can one-shot me even while I‘m passionately making out with my chosen chest-high wall, leaving me with a vague sense of betrayal...
Chest-high walls are nontheless so important to the game that if all else fails, chest-high walls literaly fall from the sky in convenient places, so that I‘m not sure if the game is taking the ♥♥♥♥ out of itself or not…

Boss fights:
Oh dear...
The first is a minor variation of the old “sidestep the charging bull, let it stunn itself on the wall, then kick it in the gonads“ schtick, and it hasn‘t aged well…

The other two are literaly two times the same cross between a sand worm from dune and a giant squid, where you have to survive getting molested by tentacles for a while before something happens that lets you move on...


Final words:
Now, I know this all sounds rather negative, but for some reason I can‘t convince me that it‘s a bad game. Not sure why though, because lets face it. It is a pretty stupid game.
I guess if a game makes me start a second playthrough then it has to be doing something right at least. But at the same time, it‘s certainly not going to end up in my “best games ever!“ list...

edit: changed a comment that didn't fit the overall tone

[他妈的你妈妈的猫]

Kk

[Damien Azreal]

You're reading too much into the title change.

The previous titles were pretty much always referred to as just Gears 2, Gears 3.... Gears 4.
So, they opted to shorten the title.

No special reason.

[im feelin' like teej]

k lol