Gears Tactics

Brother!

You might have heard me express, every now and then, my personal issues when it comes to playing tactical games. It's not that I dislike them, rather the opposite in fact, I'm just inherently terrible at all of them. Perhaps it's  testament to my patience or intelligence, but I could never wrap my head around the basics of tactical planning without bashing my head against a wall time and time again. Oftentimes my go-to solution for any problem is to crush with overwhelming force, which isn't even remotely real tactical planning but more just common sense. Be that as it may, I can't get enough of the genre and, by extension, the sub genre of tactical turn based games.

The Tactical turn based genre owes much of it's DNA to the original 'X-COM: UFO Defence', and much of it's renewed interest in that series' revival; 'X-COM: Enemy Unknown'. Folk like me just couldn't get enough of the unparalleled tension of splitting one's fate between the responsibilities of strong management and a roll of the dice. It's an absolutely intoxicating balance, possessing that slight control over the positioning of your troops, knowing that a single mistake could spell their doom. Whatsmore, this genre is colourized by the fact that most of these titles boast a permanence to their consequences. Once a member of your team ends up dead they are, more often than not, gone for good. A fact which exacerbates the tension behind your every choice, for obvious reasons. This is the allure behind the X-COM games, The Wasteland Games, and is sure to have a part to play in this upcoming 'Gears Tactics' if my cold-read holds any merit behind it.

Although, I will admit that my initial gut reaction to the very concept of 'Gears Tactics' (All the way back in it's E3 announcement) was trepidation mixed with confusion. The Gears of War games, in their purest form, were little more than mindless shoot 'em up games with an incredibly loose grasp on story and characters. The main feature of a 'Gears of War' game is the ability to eviscerate the enemy in the most brutal possible way whilst roleplaying as a literal mountain of meat. Those first three games revealed in this identification and the team never once sought to expand beyond this, which is why many people saw the franchise as dead after that finale. Once the new studio took over, however, the games started taking a new 'story-first' approach. This was a new 'Gears of War' which invited investment, personal attachments and, crucially, expansions upon the lore. This is the world in which this new 'Gears Tactics' title fits nicely.

Set 12 years before the rescue of Marcus Fenix at the beginning of 'Gears of War', 'Gears Tactics' looks to take place not too long after the firebombing of world in a desperate attempt to eradicate the Locust threat. (An attempt which does not work, obviously, or else we wouldn't have a series.) This title looks to divorce us from any of the main cast of previous titles and saddle as with a group of unknowns lead by a character who is apparently the father of the main series' new star. (I stopped playing these games after 3, cut me some slack.) This means that everyone in this title apart from the captain is a brand new face with the potential to snuff it before the credits; potential which, in my opinion, 'The Coalition' would be foolish not to capitalize upon at some point.

From the little gameplay glimpse that we have seen from the Game Awards trailer, we can see how the team behind 'Tactics' have gone above and beyond to secure the 'X-COM' crowd, even going so far as to literally copy their HUD layout in identical fashion. (Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.) We've yet to get any tangible hands-on gameplay to sift through, but honestly everything looks so familiar I can likely give you a good overview of what to expect. Combat will be broken up into rounds wherein the player has a chance to perform their actions, after which the enemy can respond. Actions will be split into 3 categories, movement, firing and special abilities, with the act of firing usually finishing the turn no matter how many 'action points' that the player still has available. The trick will come in the fact that whenever the player takes a position to fire, instead of having to rely on the accuracy of their trigger thumb they must count on a percentage chance of hitting the desired target. This percentage can informed by a number of factors including the individual stats of the firer, how much distance there is between the them and the target, and how much cover is in the way. (Alongside how protective that cover is.)

'X-COM' may have set the groundwork for constructing a game like this, but it is up to The Coalition to populate that game with context and a large amount of enemy variety. Luckily for them, Gearbox already did wonders in that regard 10 years ago. Although in the trailer all we've really seen so far are the Grunts, Brumaks and the Corpser I would be surprised if the final game didn't feature Beserkers, Boomers, Theron Guards and all the other creepy monsters that are so fun to shoot through in the main games. In fact, I feel like the Gears universe has such variety to their enemy design that they could seriously even give 'X-COM' a run for it's money in that category, and that's something that I do not say lightly.

As far as story potential goes for a title like this, that's where I start to have my doubts. The trailer from the Game Awards seems to tease some plot about chasing down "The monster that made the monsters", but I thought that whole storyline was what the new Gears games were following. Isn't that what the whole 'Queen of the Locusts' plot point was created for? (I genuinely have no clue, I stopped caring about these game's stories the moment that the team started to care.) I also wonder about whether or not this genre of game opens up enough space to tell a story. As I said, this genre is almost reliant on the implementation of perma-death functionality in order to fuel it, and it can be hard to tell a serious linear narrative when staying true to constrictions like that. (Just look at how weird the story cutscenes look in the upcoming 'Watch Dogs: Leigon')

Personally, I gave up on the Gears of War games once 4 rolled around, and haven't looked back since. As such, Tactics has been the first title to truly turn by head and make me pay attention; and yes, that is entirely down to the fact that this title went 'turn based tactical' on us all. Even if I don't care much about the story and lore behind this franchise anymore, I still find myself particularly intrigued by that core gameplay because the 'TBT' formula is just so darn strong. Unfortunately, I am held back by the fact that Gears doesn't appear to have bought anything new to this genre, (Or if they have, marketing stubbornly refuses to talk about it in trailers) so it makes it feel like their using this gameplay approach as a clutch rather than because they thought it would make a good addition to the Gears world.