Third-Person Shooter / with cover-based tactics
Sci-fi world (not a milsim)

Recommended with reservations

Summary:
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Great if you want the campaign; a pain for co-op PvE, and plain terrible for PvP.


Detailed review:
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PvE 8/10
PvP 5/10
Community 2/10

I have a love-hate relationship with Gears 5.

This review comes from someone who spent 540+ hours playing Gears 5, finished the campaign already and redoing it on Insane difficulty, reached the General rank in Operations (aka Seasons) 6 and 7 in record time, and unlocked plenty of the achievements throughout the different modes, both PvE and PvP. You can check my achievements and my screenshots.


*Great game solo - Stunning graphics; varied game styles; the campaign's plot is not bad and the baddies will get stuck in your head.


Now the negative sides, and there's a lot I'm afraid:

*Horrible multiplayer:

-Almost all ballistic weapons are nerfed in PvP. The one gun that is worshiped is the Gnasher (shotgun), with the occasional pickup weapons like the sniper rifles (Longshot and Embar) and the Torque Bow (explosive arrow bow).
Assault rifles are laughably weak. You can empty a whole clip of AR into an enemy's head and he'll still be standing, only for you to get blown up by one buckshot from his Gnasher after he runs all the way to where you are while getting AR clips emptied into him!

-AFK players never get punished. They only get kicked after a long time when the damage they caused is already irreparable, costing their team valuable time and in most cases the match, whether it's in co-op Horde Frenzy and Escape or PvP quickplay matches, including the weekly events.
Here's a screenshot of a player who has been AFK for 5 waves out of a total of 12. The game kicked him only at the start of wave 5.
Wave 4 with AFK player all zeroes still not kicked: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2518562976
Wave 5 when AFK player has finally been replaced by a bot: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2518564066

-Unique movement 'feature': wall bouncing. It's just plain stupid and unrealistic. This is a game set in a sci-fi world and still, wall bouncing makes no sense! Watch any YouTube clip about Gears 5 wall bouncing and you'll understand. To put it in a nutshell, it's a tool used by tools!

*Bullheaded developers: Whatever the player base wants, the developers go ahead and do the exact opposite.

-Bugs are rampant ingame. Just as I write this review on June 16, 2021, there's a new weekly event that had blinding red mist in it.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2518023779
This is how it looks like after getting fixed:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2518024025

-The developers acknowledging bugs takes time; fixing bugs might take weeks or months if ever. One of the most bewildering things is that they 'demand' you send screenshots and videos of the bugs from your own account and have them uploaded to YouTube and send them links. Well, I don't have time for that. It's been reported and you know exactly where to look. I don't work as a tester for you. Where are your Quality Assurance standards that let these bugs into the game to begin with? Where are your QA teams and testers? You boast of being a AAA game studio, so act like one.

-Matchmaking is abysmal. Yes, that's the suitable description. If you enjoy watching loading screens for minutes on end then being thrown into a PvP match midgame with a single player as a teammate against a team of five on the other side, then Gears 5 is for you. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2514286007

-Random disconnections are another trademark of Gears 5 servers:
Error example #1: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2515868533
Error example #2: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2513675389

-In the Competitive PvP (formerly known as Ranked in Operation 6), get paired with new players against veterans with literally hundreds of hours under their belt. The developers keep changing how Competitive works, only to mess it up worse and worse. The readily available excuse by diehard fans or shills on Reddit and Discord (It's honestly difficult at this point to differentiate between them) is 'The player base is small so deal with it!'

No, thanks.

-That reminds me of ping issues: If you're anywhere outside of the US, then you'll probably be connected to servers in Europe. If you're close, then you'll have ping below 60. If not, prepare to see your ping in the 3-digit range.

*Are you an achievement hunter? Well, a considerable number of achievements (like Re-up 10, 20, 30, 40 times) require you to literally spend hundreds and hundreds of hours to play the game. You want to get those achievements in half the time at best? Then the developers (The Coalition) offer you Boosts that you can buy. If you've been playing the game since it started and saved them up, you'll have plenty of Iron to get Boosts. If you're just getting started, then good luck. You'll need to purchase a lot of Iron with real-life money. It's not an obligation but it's definitely a scummy practice from The Coalition nonetheless.

Iron prices: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2518046879
Iron-to-Boost conversions: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2518047333

Just to put things into perspective, after playing the game for 540+ hours, with boosts active for about half that time, I'm still at re-up 16.

*Toxic community:
-The most hostile I've seen in decades of gaming. Think meme-lord teenagers who despise anyone who hasn't played Gears of War 1,2,3 'cuz u n00b! lel u just don't get it'
Well, I get it, these teenagers are emotionally 'teething' but why is this behavior encouraged by the developers who turn a blind eye to it in their own Reddit and Discord servers, which they operate themselves and have a daily presence in? One mature player said it best, 'Once the player base understand to differentiate between having a personaility and being rude, the Gears community will be much better for it'

-Try suggesting an option being added, which takes away nothing from the player base and actually adds variety, and prepare for the avalanche of salty memes and toxicity to descend upon you.
Whether on Reddit or Discord, the Gears community is not a pleasant experience. Even players in their early twenties who played GoW1 when it first came out a decade or so ago are considered 'old' by this teenage-centric community. The odd older gamer being welcomed is not the rule; it's the exception to it.

I still must say there are some wonderful and level-headed players out there, but they are rare and very far in between.

-Try communicating in game and you'll barely get a response, whether voice chat or text chat, the latter being deactivated by default by the developers for some reason. This is something I discovered myself after getting frustrated with the unintuitive HUD and googling for a while. So you literally need to go into your settings and turn text chat on. When I first played Gears 5, I met players with tens of playtime hours who had no idea there was chat ingame to begin with.
This proves particularly frustrating since there are so many different playstyles and classes to play with that definitely need coordination.

P.S. In the campaign, you will not be playing as the famous Marcus Fenix, the hero of the first three GoW games. No, not at all. He has a guest appearance role at best.

As for the lifespan of Gears 5, Operation 7 is going on and will last for five more weeks. According to official sources, Operation 8 will be its last.

Verdict: Recommended for the single player campaign (which you can co-op with a friend by the way) and only on deep discount
Discouraged for PvP or for any price over $15.