This wouldn’t be such a problem given that Gears Tactics clearly isn’t the kind of game where you invest in building up a personalized army, except that it includes tons of customization options as well as a very clunky equipment inventory that lets you put special armor on your soldiers that provides special buffs and bonuses. Since the roster has limited spots, I quickly found myself dismissing soldiers I acquired early to free up space for the new, level-appropriate recruits. The other solution Gears Tactics employs is to give you regular slates of new recruits who come with enough XP to match your heroes… meaning that there is no real point to developing any of those early-game soldiers. The fifth time you do it, it’s utterly routine. The first time you have to outrun an advancing line of Locust carpet-bombing, it’s thrilling. This solution is somewhat effective at providing some extra variety, but it runs into trouble as there are so few side missions archetypes that they quickly become too similar to each other. You have to run a handful of side missions between each story missions, and since they’re all happening “simultaneously,” you can’t use the same characters on different side-missions. Between major story missions, you are often given a slate of “side missions” to choose from that impose different constraints about squad composition, banning a particular hero or limiting deployment slots or encouraging you to deploy a character from an under-used class. Gears Tactics’ solution to this problem is twofold. That also means that the game concentrates experience on those hero characters, and there is almost no chance for non-hero recruits to keep pace with them. The bigger problem is that Gears Tactics is a game where you can only bring four characters on a mission, and with three main characters, you end up being encouraged or even forced to run similar squad setups again and again. That's how it feels when the plot hinges on dynamics within the team's camp, or their convoy's journey across the wasteland. Characters might go and gaze out of them at a painted backdrop and comment on what they see, but the audiences know perfectly well there is nothing there. There is a subplot around the distrust between Mikayla’s people and their new Gears allies, but since the only characters given voice and action in the plot are Sid, Mikayla, and Gabe, its allusions to broader conflicts begin to feel like windows on the set of a stage play. Gears Tactics completely revolves around these three characters, maybe too much so. Along the way, they meet up with a band of ad hoc civilian militia led by ace sniper, Mikayla Dorn, who has been fighting the Locust alone to protect her community, but despises the fascist COG. Moreau behind the Locust menagerie of weaponized monsters. His work stoppage is brought to an end by the arrival of the impossibly grizzled Sid Redburn, a cold, one-eyed killer who talks like John Wayne and comes bearing a secret mission to kill a particular Locust officer named Ukkon. The invasion of the subterranean Locust is an apocalypse-in-motion, but ex-COG staff officer Gabe Diaz is through doing the dirty work of the corrupt Coalition of Ordered Governments, and has become the Achilles of the motor pool. The first image of the campaign is the footage of “Emergence Day” that opens the original game’s campaign, presented here not as backstory but as a recent world event. Gears Tactics takes place years before Marcus Fenix was hauled out of his jail cell at the opening of Gears of War. The good may far outweigh the bad, but it’s frustrating how often the bad feels like it is standing between Gears Tactics and a place among the genre’s greats. But its commitment to a single, linear narrative and the odd ways it employs the trappings of a modern action game can also make Gears Tactics feel confined. Each character can be developed along several different lines, and it can be a joy to see the way they fit together like the exact pieces you need to solve these puzzles at the most desperate moments of a mission. Battles are dramatic and kinetic, with hordes of Locust troops frequently threatening to swamp your beleaguered fireteam unless you come up with a good plan, and quick. Most of the time, Gears Tactics manages this synthesis of action game narrative and tactical combat very well.
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