What makes gears of war so good

The character skins are lifted from the campaign desert Kait with sand goggles, for example. No-one notices your banner. In the heat of battle, no-one has the time to stop to gawk at a blood spray, some of which are truly bizarre Sea of Thieves pirate ships, anyone?

Hardly anyone emotes. None of the executions float my boat. The final battle pass reward is a flashy Gnasher skin. What I must point out is that Gears 5 ditches the controversial loot boxes of Gears of War 4, which is very much a good thing. In their place you earn Supply simply for playing Versus, Horde or Escape, and when you fill up your Supply gauge, you get a random customisation item from the Supply loot stream.

It's also worth pointing out that all this progression unlocks customisation items only. There are no weapons to buy, so no pay-to-win elements. Skill cards, which are used to boost the abilities of characters in Horde and Escape, cannot be bought with real world money. Instead they're earned through levelling up the individual characters and can be upgraded by earning more of the same card or paying with Scrap, Gears 5's virtual currency earned when duplicate items are broken down.

Any goodwill earned from ditching loot boxes is countered, however, by the depressing battle pass progression system and the distinct lack of cool customisation items to unlock at launch. Let's have a look at the store, then, where no doubt we'll see cool new threads up for sale. Skins are bloody expensive. God dammit, Fortnite. Coming to a conclusion that encapsulates the overall Gears 5 package is tricky, then, because it's such a mixed bag.

A bulging bag, admittedly, but a mixed one. The campaign really is great. Perhaps even better than great, the more I think about it. All the new things about it - the open world stuff, Jack's powers, the light RPG elements, the side quests - all this stuff was done better years ago by other games.

But those other games weren't Gears of War, which has actual decent third-person shooting, actual interesting things happening, and a story that doesn't try hard to win awards. But while Versus, Horde and even Escape are, ultimately, fine, they're let down by the party pooper progression system.

The hope is The Coalition tweaks how the battle pass works, because as it stands, Gears 5's grind is depressing. Will Gears 5 rekindle Gears of War's glory days on Xbox ?

I doubt it. But The Coalition has finally stamped its personality on the series, even if it's taken a few missteps along the way. Gears 5's campaign reminded me just how much I love a good Gears of War campaign. I'm not trying too hard. Gears isn't trying too hard. We're holding hands, safe in the collective knowledge we're in this together, and it's going to be one hell of a ride. Buy Gears 5 from Amazon [? We want to make Eurogamer better, and that means better for our readers - not for algorithms.

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Jump to comments Editor wyp Wesley is Eurogamer's editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it. Recommended Riders Republic review - lumpy and loveable extreme sports playground. Recommended Back 4 Blood review - weird but wonderfully moreish horde shooter.

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And the first — and the most obvious — element is the mechanics. Because Gears of War was, above all else, a bloody great game. Playing it was a blissful experience, and every action had a weight to it. Taking cover and popping up to take aim feels good. Shooting at enemies and watching them get blown to chunks feels good.

Nothing exemplifies the mechanical perfectness of Gears of War better than the active reload mechanic. In the midst of an intense fight, surrounded by enemies, when you run out of ammo in a clip and perfectly time the next active reload to be able to let lose with renewed vigour lends so much thrill and agency to the combat.

Gears was a strictly linear game, and its levels were little more than corridors and arenas designed specifically as combat encounters- but they shined exactly for that reason. It was all carefully handcrafted, to make every encounter an intense and thrilling encounter.

From the positioning of cover, to expertly placed chokepoints, to the more open arenas to allow players opportunities for flanking enemies, Gears of War knew — pretty much all the time — exactly how to shape itself to keep throwing new, interesting, and varied fights at the player.

And while the first two elements have been strictly gameplay oriented and mechanical in nature, the third element is a bit more abstract- the atmosphere. But while the first game in the series may not have excelled in those areas, the one area that it did excel in was the atmosphere. Reload your weapon and take a few more shots.

Execute a downed enemy? Everyone on your side gets another action. You can run roughshod over the enemy by chaining your successful attacks together, even against impossible odds.

Learning how to keep things rolling so the enemy barely has a chance to respond feels good, and brings the game the weighty feeling of power and capacity for violence that made the originals so satisfying. Gears Tactics holds up the franchises standards for visual quality, as well. Cutscenes were indistinguishable to my eye from those in Gears 5 , as were some of the animations.

Every map includes a fully rotatable camera, and the lighting and the textures are all top notch. But the game falls apart when it tries to create a cohesive, unified experience. The wires holding everything together are too often visible, and it wrecks what little immersion Gears Tactics manages to build up.

When things are going well for your side, the game can sometimes fail to provide a tone that matches where you are in a level. Soldiers will crack wise with a tense bark, or command new recruits to act more like soldiers. Everyone needs to man up and stay frosty! Missions will sometimes stop on a dime, ripping you out of the game too suddenly. This can happen just when it feels like the mission is just getting good, and during those moments it almost feels like my reward for doing well is taken away.

I won the mission, and to celebrate that win everything just kinda … ends? This happened more than once — another Boomer had come up from an emergence hole, or an avenue of escape was suddenly blocked off by some explosive Tickers.

Not all missions are created equal. Defensive missions in this turn-based adaptation tend to drag on and on, once again killing any sense of momentum or fun. An early boss battle, fought against a massive, troll-like monster called a Brumak, is especially dull. Instead of leaping from cover to cover, I was stuck limping into the corners of the map to try and catch my breath.