Quick Look: Gears 5

Disappointed to hear Brad and Jeff shrug off the Retro Lancer. That thing was super strong back in Gears 3. But yeah this is a game I will almost certainly play (along with 4) now that I have it on Game Pass, but probably wouldn't have bothered with otherwise.

I propose that all games would be improved with a little bit of the bubbly.

Even though the story means absolute nothing to me, and I haven't played any Gears game past Gears of War 3...I really liked what I saw here. It looked good, even with the giant bra-like sail with a not too logical set-up . The combat, the game mechanics, sound/music and cover system, you cannot beat nostalgia!

I will definitely get this at some point, great summer game!

And I do mean it.

I always like Gears but haven't paid full price for any of them since Gears 1, luckily don't have to wait a year for a discount anymore. Gamepass, baby (damn I sound like an ad).

Lol. Yeah i think jeff is a bit tired from baby blues and came off more negative cause a case of the grumps. He might be this way for a bit, but that's just my speculation so take it with a grain of salt. He mentioned trying to play the game with the baby near by and needing to lower the volume and hunch over etc. Not the most pleasant way to engage a series. I can see your point. Most wont agree on the site but MS coverage is tuff given that most games on MS XBOX get played on PC for the staff since they have powerful pcs and are really sensitive to fps. They play most exclusives on PS4 and then cross platform games are just better looking on PC.

So Brad's hot-take is that the 3rd person shooter, Gears 5, should have evolved into a trendier 1st person shooter like DOOM?

Okay...

I'd agree with all of this. The embarrassingly lazy stuff that gets said about Xbox, which mostly isn't even true anymore, makes them sound like the "casual" people who still think you "always have to be online and can't share games on Xbox, man!"

Meanwhile, Uncharted with its horrible combat and pointless (if mostly beautiful) open world stylings gets deified. It's all tiringly predictable.

The locusts sounds like goremetal vocalists haha.

Its a bummer the gears games are so scattered on PC, the first one got a PC release but not the second, and third but the fourth and fifth are.

What games do I need to play to get as introduction to 5?

This looks kinda interesting, made me look up the MS game pass benefits for PC.
Seems like MS is pushing this thing hard right now:

2 months of "Xbox Game Pass Ultimate", which is PC&Xbox for $2.
There's also this:

"Joining Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will upgrade your remaining Xbox Live Gold or Xbox Game Pass for Console or Xbox Game Pass for PC time into Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for the same amount of time, up to 36 months. All conversions are final. See xbox.com/gamepass for details."

Does that mean that somebody with 36 months Gold, could get 3 years Ultimate for like $36? If it really works like that, then that would be an insane deal.

Nobody is going to remember this game came out by the end of the year.

Annoying and repetitive gameplay, as per usual with Gears.

@thekitkatshuffler: The only thing embarrassing here is how triggered you are by people being bored by this franchise.

Yeah, the sidequests are for the robot and "the game isn't hard" so skip them and don't let the semi-open world part be a net negative. But also don't die a bunch and say upgrading Jack is useless.

Upgrading stim especially is really useful. Temporary invincibility would have helped in this QL.

I didn't go the towers first so i had to find everything without the towers which made it way better. I sometimes don't like how Jeff's criticism is based exactly on how he did something. People might do it another way and get a more organic experience. I mean if you don't go to the towers it feels much less empty.

@binarygod: Totally agree with you. He becomes more and more jaded with age. I love Jeff after Dan he's my favorite bomber but have he enjoyed any game released this year?

Kind of surprised how buggy this game has been for me. Grabbed it off gamepass and twice now in my 3 and a half hours with the game I've gotten stuck seemingly because of an infinite save bug? Once in Act 1 and now at the beginning of Act 2. The game is just permanently auto-saving and has halted me from progressing through the level completely. The first time I quit out to the main menu, the game just hard crashed upon getting to the main menu and the second time I got stuck in an infinite load trying to get to the main menu. Really wasn't expecting those kind of issues. Outside of that it sure seems like a Gears game with some pretty minor tweaks. Granted I haven't jumped into Horde or PvP or Escape yet but the Singleplayer continues to feel like I remember Gears of War feeling except now I can tell Jack to do stuff and the health icon isn't as annoying as it used to be. Glad I got this off gamepass.

EDIT: Looks like the campaign has got a handful of bugs, the infinite auto-save one being the big one. Not only does it have a chance to completely crash the game, but it also can block chunks of progress (I lost progress on every collectable up to where I was in Act 2 after a *third* crash). I'd say just hold off on playing the campaign for a bit.

JD seemed normal in the previous game why did they decide to make him an asshole?

Gears 5 is easily the best in the franchise. Haters be damned. Kait and Del are the two most likable protagonists the series has ever had. And there are so many fantastic good QoL changes. The open sections I find really enjoyable. It changes the pace of the game up which is nice. All the Multiplayer stuff feels great too.

I really like how in some modes they really try to differentiate all the characters to give you different reasons to change up who you are playing as. I played a Horde mode last night as Jack and it was super fun being able to support the rest of my team while they did the most of the grunt work.

I really just don't understand Jeff's take on this game quite honestly.

Bring on the Gears 5 horde mode Playdate!

God of War was open world-ish, so Microsoft copied that