I’m disappointed to say that despite Gears of War being one of my favourite video game series, I am extremely late to the party when it comes to Gears of War 5…oh sorry, Gears 5. I’m not quite sure why the ‘of War’ part of the title was dropped by to be perfectly honest hardly anyone ever used it anyway. Back to my original line of thought, Gears 5 released in September 2019 which was right at the end of what I call my ‘prolonged gaming drought’ where for around three or four years I played hardly any games and certainly not any new ones. I didn’t even know there was a fifth Gears game until several months later, which considering I call myself a fan, is a little worrying.
But I have finally righted the wrong in my life and played Gears 5 to find myself not only enamoured by just how much it refreshes the Gears of War formula, but also thrilled by the sheer size and scope of the game.
A few months have passed since the end of Gears 4. Kait is still trying to process the revelation that she is the granddaughter of Queen Myrrah, the leader of the Locust whom Marcus killed at the end of Gears 3. Aware of the coming storm, Delta Squad (consisting of JD, Del, Kait, and Marcus, with comms support provided by Baird) travel to Azura, the place where the war ended twenty-five years earlier, in the hope of reactivating the Hammer of Dawn, potentially giving humanity the edge over the impending Swarm resurgence.
The Hammer of Dawn was intentionally taken offline permanently following the end of the war by Anya Stroud, JD’s mother, to ensure its massive destructive capabilities were never abused again. However, when the Swarm invade the satellites aren’t properly aligned and going against orders JD uses the Hammer to save some soldiers, inadvertently causing their deaths, as well as the deaths of dozens of civilians and injuring himself in the process.
Several weeks later Kait and Del are on a CoG recruitment drive when the settlement they visit, led by Kait’s uncle Oscar, is attacked and Oscar is killed. Kait feels a strong connection to the Swarm whilst she is there and Marcus advises they visit the New Hope research facility, locate Niles Samson’s A.I. and learn what they can about Kait’s connection to the Swarm, and more importantly how it can be used in humanity’s favour.
But I have finally righted the wrong in my life and played Gears 5 to find myself not only enamoured by just how much it refreshes the Gears of War formula, but also thrilled by the sheer size and scope of the game.
A few months have passed since the end of Gears 4. Kait is still trying to process the revelation that she is the granddaughter of Queen Myrrah, the leader of the Locust whom Marcus killed at the end of Gears 3. Aware of the coming storm, Delta Squad (consisting of JD, Del, Kait, and Marcus, with comms support provided by Baird) travel to Azura, the place where the war ended twenty-five years earlier, in the hope of reactivating the Hammer of Dawn, potentially giving humanity the edge over the impending Swarm resurgence.
The Hammer of Dawn was intentionally taken offline permanently following the end of the war by Anya Stroud, JD’s mother, to ensure its massive destructive capabilities were never abused again. However, when the Swarm invade the satellites aren’t properly aligned and going against orders JD uses the Hammer to save some soldiers, inadvertently causing their deaths, as well as the deaths of dozens of civilians and injuring himself in the process.
Several weeks later Kait and Del are on a CoG recruitment drive when the settlement they visit, led by Kait’s uncle Oscar, is attacked and Oscar is killed. Kait feels a strong connection to the Swarm whilst she is there and Marcus advises they visit the New Hope research facility, locate Niles Samson’s A.I. and learn what they can about Kait’s connection to the Swarm, and more importantly how it can be used in humanity’s favour.
If you go back through my reviews of Gears 2, 3, and 4 you’ll know that I don’t speak very favourably about their stories. Gears 3 was certainly the strongest among them, but even then, it was brainless nonsense. Gears 5 takes most of the loose threads that were never addressed about those games plots and weaves them together into not only a fantastic story that really ties the whole series up to this point together. It’s not the job of a sequel to pick up the slack from its predecessors’ laziness, but Gears 5 makes that its sole purpose and whilst there are still some threads that were left untouched, what Gears 5 produces is some A grade storytelling as far as military shooters go that tries to answer all the answered questions left by the previous entries.
Gears 4 gave the characters much more personality than the original trilogy had for its Delta Squad, and Gears 5 doubles down on that by fleshing out these characters into three-dimensional people with their own motives and flaws. It allows you as the player to connect so much more deeply with the characters, and even make your own mind up about who you agree with, and who you think is a jackass. For example, I wasn’t all that keen on JD in Gears 4 because he was arrogant and short sighted, that side of JD is amplified in Gears 5 but it’s much easier to understand why he is like that because he is given so much more to say, which is ironic considering he has less screen-time due to him not being the player character this time around.
Kait was by far the most interesting character in Gears 4 and Gears 5 plays up the whole identity crisis storyline for her in interesting ways where it not only causes internal battles for herself, but external battles with her squad and even the leader of the CoG.
Gears 4 gave the characters much more personality than the original trilogy had for its Delta Squad, and Gears 5 doubles down on that by fleshing out these characters into three-dimensional people with their own motives and flaws. It allows you as the player to connect so much more deeply with the characters, and even make your own mind up about who you agree with, and who you think is a jackass. For example, I wasn’t all that keen on JD in Gears 4 because he was arrogant and short sighted, that side of JD is amplified in Gears 5 but it’s much easier to understand why he is like that because he is given so much more to say, which is ironic considering he has less screen-time due to him not being the player character this time around.
Kait was by far the most interesting character in Gears 4 and Gears 5 plays up the whole identity crisis storyline for her in interesting ways where it not only causes internal battles for herself, but external battles with her squad and even the leader of the CoG.
Gears 5 makes some major changes to the established Gears of War formula and it can take some getting used to and probably won’t sit well with everyone, but I’m going to try my best to explain why I feel it’s really managed to move the series forward in a significant way.
Despite my constant complaining about modern games pointlessly including open worlds and skill trees for the sake of it, Gears 5 does just that and it actually works really well. An open world I hear you scream!? How on earth does that work? To clarify you’re not given a single, large, open world to explore, but instead the two middle acts that contain the vast majority of the game each have their own hub worlds that you are free to explore at your own pace, complete with side missions, secret areas, and plenty of collectibles to find. You navigate these areas with a vehicle, and then once you reach a location of interest, you’re thrown back into the familiar Gears gameplay of linear third person shooting. The first and fourth acts are more reminiscent of older Gears games, but these relatively short sections only act to set the scene for the story, or provide an epic finale and set up an inevitable Gears 6.
The skill tree is in reference to the return of your lovable robot sidekick Jack. The new Jack has abilities that aid you in combat that can be unlocked through story progression or by completing side missions. You’ll then also find upgrade tokens throughout the world which once you have amassed enough of them can be spent on upgrading the abilities further to provide added benefits. Jack is an invaluable tool in Gears 5 as you’ll be up against significantly tougher foes, and in larger numbers than in almost any Gears of War game to date. This is a positive and a negative point as whilst it certainly makes the stakes feel higher and success provides greater satisfaction, it can feel like the game is simply just throwing enemies at you all the time and never giving you a moment to breathe. Some combat areas, particularly in Act 2, are also not overly well designed and so can make some sections of the game quite frustrating.
The weapons have also been entirely rebalanced and some functionality has altered. Your trusty Lancer which is an invaluable tool in the previous games is now mostly useless. The bullets do very little damage, there’s huge amounts of recoil on it, and the chainsaw bayonet function has been remapped to the same button as reload meaning that more often than not you’ll want to chainsaw someone but end up reloading instead. But fret not, there are plenty of new weapons to satisfy your desires, including a grenade launcher variation of the Lancer. My personal favourite weapons is a new Swarm weapon called The Claw. It’s incredibly inaccurate for the first few bullets, but the longer you fire the more accurate it becomes. However, it also has a high chance of misfiring, meaning you’ll need to take your finger off the trigger and start again. The payoff for this is that it’s extremely powerful, but once I got used to the recoil it’s a weapon that I simply couldn’t live without. Grenades are also pretty pathetic in Gears 5. I had to basically stick people if I wanted them to even take damage because the blast radius on frag grenades is so small now that it’s like a firecracker going off instead of a highly explosive weapon. There are new grenade variants too, including the return of shock and incendiary, but I never found myself in a situation where they were useful.
Despite my constant complaining about modern games pointlessly including open worlds and skill trees for the sake of it, Gears 5 does just that and it actually works really well. An open world I hear you scream!? How on earth does that work? To clarify you’re not given a single, large, open world to explore, but instead the two middle acts that contain the vast majority of the game each have their own hub worlds that you are free to explore at your own pace, complete with side missions, secret areas, and plenty of collectibles to find. You navigate these areas with a vehicle, and then once you reach a location of interest, you’re thrown back into the familiar Gears gameplay of linear third person shooting. The first and fourth acts are more reminiscent of older Gears games, but these relatively short sections only act to set the scene for the story, or provide an epic finale and set up an inevitable Gears 6.
The skill tree is in reference to the return of your lovable robot sidekick Jack. The new Jack has abilities that aid you in combat that can be unlocked through story progression or by completing side missions. You’ll then also find upgrade tokens throughout the world which once you have amassed enough of them can be spent on upgrading the abilities further to provide added benefits. Jack is an invaluable tool in Gears 5 as you’ll be up against significantly tougher foes, and in larger numbers than in almost any Gears of War game to date. This is a positive and a negative point as whilst it certainly makes the stakes feel higher and success provides greater satisfaction, it can feel like the game is simply just throwing enemies at you all the time and never giving you a moment to breathe. Some combat areas, particularly in Act 2, are also not overly well designed and so can make some sections of the game quite frustrating.
The weapons have also been entirely rebalanced and some functionality has altered. Your trusty Lancer which is an invaluable tool in the previous games is now mostly useless. The bullets do very little damage, there’s huge amounts of recoil on it, and the chainsaw bayonet function has been remapped to the same button as reload meaning that more often than not you’ll want to chainsaw someone but end up reloading instead. But fret not, there are plenty of new weapons to satisfy your desires, including a grenade launcher variation of the Lancer. My personal favourite weapons is a new Swarm weapon called The Claw. It’s incredibly inaccurate for the first few bullets, but the longer you fire the more accurate it becomes. However, it also has a high chance of misfiring, meaning you’ll need to take your finger off the trigger and start again. The payoff for this is that it’s extremely powerful, but once I got used to the recoil it’s a weapon that I simply couldn’t live without. Grenades are also pretty pathetic in Gears 5. I had to basically stick people if I wanted them to even take damage because the blast radius on frag grenades is so small now that it’s like a firecracker going off instead of a highly explosive weapon. There are new grenade variants too, including the return of shock and incendiary, but I never found myself in a situation where they were useful.
Graphically Gears 5 is gorgeous with some richly detailed environments, a lot of colour to make everything pop, and a buttery smooth framerate. I did have significant difficulties with the brightness of the game though and I’ll put it down to a rubbish brightness slider. You’re given three images which you need to balance shadows, light, and colour on, similar to how HDR calibration works (but this isn’t the HDR functionality, this was just brightness). Except I could never get all three images to look right. So, I was always needing to adjust the games brightness whenever I went from a bright outdoor environment to a dim indoor one, and then back again whenever I left. It was extremely tedious to say the least, and I can’t understand why a traditional brightness slider couldn’t have been implemented instead.
Gears 5’s score is also very nice. It retains the style of the previous Gears games, but particularly in combat feels much more energetic and powerful.
I want to talk about spoilers for a bit so skip to the end if you want to avoid them. Can I just address the whole JD or Del choice you have to make close to the end of the game? It feels extremely out of place and unnecessary to me. Firstly, this is the only ‘moral choice’ the game has you make, and on top of that I feel that there’s a very clear right and wrong choice just based off each character’s journey through the story. I opted to let JD die because his actions at the start of Gears 5 put him in a position where he needs to make amends with everyone and reform the alliances he broke. He succeeds in this by the time the choice needs to be made, and that to me is a great way to end his character arc. Yes, it leaves his and Marcus’ relationship unresolved, but JD also seemed reluctant to even want to fix that throughout Gears 4&5. Del however learns to separate himself from JD and see the world through his own eyes thanks to Kait, he’s a stronger person come the end of Gears 5 that is a much bigger contributor to the team than JD ever was. So, to me it seems only natural that JD should have died, and that no choice should have been given to the player. I can’t even imagine a scenario where Del dies and that meaningfully impacts the story, because he’s only just got into his stride.
I had a tremendous time with Gears 5 and I feel very annoyed with myself for not playing it sooner. Whilst there were certainly times where I found the game overly frustrating, or as though it wasn’t playing fair in some of the tougher combat scenarios; aside from those minor issues I had a whale of a time with Gears 5.
It’s the kiss of life the series desperately needed, ensuring that it can continue to be a major Xbox IP for years to come. It’s utilisation of arguably tired modern tropes it uses to its strengths and is all the better for it. Without a doubt, Gears 5 is the new reigning champ of the series and a game I would consider a must play!
Gears 5’s score is also very nice. It retains the style of the previous Gears games, but particularly in combat feels much more energetic and powerful.
I want to talk about spoilers for a bit so skip to the end if you want to avoid them. Can I just address the whole JD or Del choice you have to make close to the end of the game? It feels extremely out of place and unnecessary to me. Firstly, this is the only ‘moral choice’ the game has you make, and on top of that I feel that there’s a very clear right and wrong choice just based off each character’s journey through the story. I opted to let JD die because his actions at the start of Gears 5 put him in a position where he needs to make amends with everyone and reform the alliances he broke. He succeeds in this by the time the choice needs to be made, and that to me is a great way to end his character arc. Yes, it leaves his and Marcus’ relationship unresolved, but JD also seemed reluctant to even want to fix that throughout Gears 4&5. Del however learns to separate himself from JD and see the world through his own eyes thanks to Kait, he’s a stronger person come the end of Gears 5 that is a much bigger contributor to the team than JD ever was. So, to me it seems only natural that JD should have died, and that no choice should have been given to the player. I can’t even imagine a scenario where Del dies and that meaningfully impacts the story, because he’s only just got into his stride.
I had a tremendous time with Gears 5 and I feel very annoyed with myself for not playing it sooner. Whilst there were certainly times where I found the game overly frustrating, or as though it wasn’t playing fair in some of the tougher combat scenarios; aside from those minor issues I had a whale of a time with Gears 5.
It’s the kiss of life the series desperately needed, ensuring that it can continue to be a major Xbox IP for years to come. It’s utilisation of arguably tired modern tropes it uses to its strengths and is all the better for it. Without a doubt, Gears 5 is the new reigning champ of the series and a game I would consider a must play!