Gears Tactics’ structure crumbles around the side missions due to a lack of variety. The game features four types of side missions: Rescue, Sabotage, Scavenger Run and Control. In Rescue, you need to save two soldiers from torture pods. Sabotage sees the squad attack a Locust stronghold and destroy its Imulsion supply. Scavenger Run tasks players with grabbing equipment as Nemacyst bombings inch closer each turn. Finally, Control has the squad holding two positions to collect supplies. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these types of objectives, but Gears Tactics overly relies on them to its detriment. It regularly sidelines its own story and main missions to task players with these side missions. It’s not bad until you realize that the game interrupts the flow of the campaign after nearly every main mission and completely throw off the pacing of the entire game. One mission you could be laying a trap for Ukkon, and the next, rather than springing it, you must complete two side quests. In an effort to increase the length, Gears Tactics actively sabotages the pacing of its campaign. Considering the campaign makes up the entirety of the Gears Tactics experience, the amount of required side missions to continue the story is just too much.

Players can take up to four members into battle with units coming in five different classes (Support, Vanguard, Sniper, Heavy and Support), each with their advantages and disadvantages. Support’s weapon of choice is the Lancer and utilizes healing and motivational abilities. Vanguards serve as the tanks with their Retro Lancers. Snipers, equipped with the Longshot, cover allies from long distances. Heavy’s and their Mulchers plant themselves into a spot and lay down suppressing fire. Finally, Scouts and their Gnashers can move fast and hide from enemy troops. There’s lots of variety and strategic decisions to consider when building a team, especially since you can’t take every class with you and non-Hero characters can permanently die if you’re not careful.

Sometimes someone is just going to have bad luck, but always make sure the units are spread out. When flanking enemy units, make sure there aren't any other soldiers in a position who can hit the player just as easily as the en

If the player wants the Vanguard to be a dominant offensive force, skills found in the Warden and Shock Trooper trees are ideal. The Warden branch, in particular, allows for the creation of an exemplary tank. Picking up the Distraction skill allows the Vanguard to force enemies to fire on them, taking the heat off of other team mates under threat. This synergizes excellently with the Badass skill; shearing a full 75% of the damage of the first shot to hit the Vanguard on every turn means they are more or less guaranteed to come out nearly unscathed. Even if they don't grabbing the Self Revive skill means that even death won't keep them down, causing them to pop back up after the first time they get dropped. For a more field control based approach, the combination of Breach, which causes Locusts caught in the skill's radius to give up AP and health to their killer on death, and demoralize, a weapon attack that both damages and debuffs enemies hit by it, makes the Shock Trooper ideal for asserting control over a bat

Here’s a tip: if taking on a tough boss, injure all the weaker enemies first, but don’t kill them yet. When their health is sufficiently whittled down, unleash a string of executions at once to give a huge boost in action points that can be used on the b

The two opening skills for the support are both incredibly useful in their own right. Empower essentially hands an action point off to an ally, delegating the damage-doing to a more specialized soldier for a net increase in hurt thrown the enemy's way. Stim is simple and direct healing, a nice pop of 100 points at the skill's first level. While not exactly overly impressive, that little boost can be game-changing - 100 points of health can mean the difference between a soldier making it out of a crossfire alive or d

The game also, surprisingly, doesn’t have much to do once the credits roll. Outside of Veteran Mode, which does tweak the formula with modifiers, there are no additional multiplayer or co-op modes to jump into. For a franchise that built itself on robust Romantic multiplayer Games and co-op options, Gears Tactics feels light on modes. While it may focus too much on side quests, it makes up for it with solid gameplay. Like a traditional tactics style game, Gears Tactics is played from a top-down perspective with players taking turns to maneuver around the map, attack and set up tactical positions. During your turn, each character gets three actions to move, take cover, fire on enemies, set up overwatch, use abilities or execute downed enemies.

Gears Tactics is the latest game in the Gears (or Gears of War , as boomers may call it) franchise. A radical departure for the third-person shooter series, Gears Tactics is instead a tactical, turn-based RPG similar to XCOM or the recently released John Wick Hex . So far, it’s also only available on PC, not the Xbox