CHAINSAW CHESS

Fantastic combat makes GEARS TACTICS strategy game worthy of the PC. a

Gears Tactics and I share the belief that a sniper rifle should practically be an extension of the hand of god, so mighty it feels almost unfair. Late in my campaign I could fire off seven rounds in a single turn, chaining together shots that gave me free actions for every kill. This is the power fantasy version of a tactics game, and pitch-perfect Gears of War, down to the cranial pop of a Longshot’s bullet landing a critical headshot.

Tactics has a linear campaign, told with very pretty Unreal Engine cutscenes. It’s easily the best-looking tactics game I’ve played, and it’s hard to oversell how precisely this game translates Gears into an overhead turn-based perspective.

Gears Tactics is an aggressive strategy game that throws piles of enemies at you, because it knows you’ve got frag grenades that can turn a pack of scurrying wretches into chicken nuggets, or a chainsaw gun that has a 100-percent chance to slice even a full-health Locust in half.

XCOG

While it first looks an awful lot like XCOM, Gears Tactics plays differently. Every turn in XCOM is about the tension of how few moves you can make. Gears is more freeform, giving each of the four soldiers you take into a mission three actions per turn. And every time one performs an execution move on a near-death enemy, the rest of the squad gets an extra action point for the turn, the design equivalent of a platoon shouting “Hoo-ah!”.

You’re not trying to make the best of your meagre options each turn. You’re trying to extend your turn for as long as possible, every kill offering up the opportunity to earn more actions, until everything lies dead at your feet. I love how every turn pushes me to be creative with how I combine my squad’s abilities.

The support class can gift an action point to a squadmate, and you can pair that with another ability that earns the support soldier an action back each time that squadmate gets a kill. It’s like placing a bet on them and then trying to follow up.

Each of the five classes have skills that combine in clever ways. The heavy, who carries a chain gun, can earn an extra action point for going into overwatch, making it the perfect defensive class. The vanguard can knock enemies out of cover, enabling you to keep pushing forward.

Each of the five classes have skills that combine in clever ways