review with trailer, price and game experience.

Convert the frenzy of a Gears of War In a game of strategy is to fight against your own essence. Swap blasts for grids, cartwheels for movement limits and their iconic “eat shit and die”For a hitting statistic, it's the closest thing to a foot shot. And yet, faced with what anyone in their right mind could foresee, Gears Tactics not only works, too it feels very gears.

Splash Damage and The Coalition sign a tactical combat style here that never comes across as slow or limited. They know that battling with a Lancer in their hands is something else and that the key is not to convert Gears of War in a tactical game, but quite the opposite.

More Gears of War than tactical game

The first key to bring tactical strategy closer to the rhythm and dynamism of a Gears of War It involves manipulating how your characters move. Fighting heavily with four soldiers in every game, our turn does require that part of thinking very carefully about who moves first and for what purpose, but not waiting for what you will do two or three turns from now.

With three moves for each character, sometimes less or even enough more, go a long way on the map to protect yourself in a cover, throw a grenade and leave the character in a defensive position waiting for a Locust to cross his line of shot is anything but limited.

Tackling an enemy troop flanking from all sides and maintaining suppressive fire translates to that bullet festival where you feel empowered and thrust enough to piss yourself in the face of any beast that stands before you. Like in a Gears of WarYou don't just come to kill Locust, your job also involves humiliating them.

Precisely for this reason the game puts everything on your face so that you comply with that maxim, even giving you some extra steps so that your character goes further when his last position is a cover than when he supposes to be standing in the middle of the calico.

Yes in Gears of War you jump from parapet to parapet, here you must also be able to do it. Even more so when that is the previous step to burst the head of a Boomer with a shotgun or cut it open with the saw of your Lancer.

Uncontrolled power is no use in Gears Tactics either

But how do you make a game where you seemingly have the pan on the handle both fun and challenging? This is where the role of the enemy comes into play and, how could it be otherwise, the style of approach they always pursue. To the cry of "For the Queen!", The Locust do not fight one by one, but in horde mode.

That sometimes the games are greatly lengthened is precisely because of that. There is no pause, no individualism, much less room to let you rest. Dozens of enemies are waiting for that false move, or that wrong shot for a tight stat, to completely change the situation and put you on the ropes.

I have lost count how many times have I been from believing myself invincible to being with water around my neck And, if the thing was not crooked enough to assume that the level had to be restarted, also turning it around to make of that situation an Uroboro with a Ticker smile.

So, embracing the spirit gears To promote mobility, coverage strategy, and the pressure and aggressiveness of the enemy, Gears Tactics creates the perfect breeding ground so that the toppings are the ones that end up extolling the recipe.

Among the spices are not only the variety of enemies, classes or weapons, from the doctor with Lancer to the scout with a shotgun, or from the Theron that encourages his troops to the Locust sniper that prevents you from moving from your position, but also how the abilities of each one can define your strategy.

Well armed and better equipped

Almost more than how to move or who you shoot, in Gears Tactics It matters what ability you use to take advantage of each movement point. With a tree with four branches for each class, how you evolve your main troops or the ones you rescue, defines a lot what kind of experience you want to enjoy.

Those who want to focus on buffing friendly units and destabilizing opposing lines can focus on that. The same for those who are looking for the spectacular nature of an impalement with the Lancer Retro and face-to-face or, as has been my case, looking for movement bonuses to multiply the number of actions to be carried out in each turn.

With a sniper, and with similar cases also in the other classes, the passive powers and to execute in combat Navigate between things like the last bullet in a magazine raising the critical strike percentage or increasing accuracy from an elevated area.

Those are filler, less attractive but necessary. The options you unlock between one essential skill and another. The rest are the ones that, in a fight against a boss, without a doubt the most fun and demanding fights, force you to go to the menu, spend a reset point for the skill tree and they invite you to highlight what type of strategy you are going to use.

Going to all the possible combinations gives for the Bible, but understanding what this is about Gears with skills it is relatively easy with a good example. Let's continue with the example of the sniper, a class with three turns and three bullets in its rifle:

• First turn: I move to the closest coverage.
• Second shift: I take advantage of the elevation to get a shot of maximum precision that leaves the life of the Locust trembling.
• Third and last turn: I take advantage of an ability to fill all my turns if I manage to shoot down or kill an enemy.
• Fourth shift: I even shoot a Ticker close to another enemy so that its explosion reduces its life, but I did it with an ability that marks that, if I hit that shot, the magazine refills automatically without the need to spend a turn to reload.
• Fifth shift: I change my position again to have a better angle of the Locust that has been left with less life.
• Sixth shift: I put the sniper on guard so that when the Locust moves, it will automatically fire the coup de grace.

In the variety is the spice

From such an example it is easy to get out with the idea of ​​being very cool and, the truth is that if you make a successful use of the grenades, it certainly is. However we go back to before. Among all that string of actions, it includes a single mistake. A cover you can't get to, a bullet that misses or critical damage that doesn't manifest.

From being left over to being sold and without a charger in a matter of seconds. Even more so when what follows that turn is a horde of Locust that appears somewhere near the map, ready to put that unit in trouble and limit your heroism to when all those skills recharge from here to two or three turns .

It's great. For real. I had a great time. So much that it almost hurts more how all that effort is left tarnished for a variety that does not transfer to the objectives that you must fulfill in the missions. These, dividing between main and secondary, end up clinging excessively to the second to lengthen a campaign not too extensive.

With small variations to limit movements, give more precision to enemies or invite you to meet certain requirements to win more and better rewards, the story presents you with groups of missions that you must complete to continue with the plot.

Missions more bland and uninspired that sometimes they even allow themselves the luxury of repeating scenarios you just went through. And so, enjoying more when Gears Tactics he dares to twist his mechanics and include large monsters in battles that require specific strategies, some of those missions begin to be done uphill.

Equipment, colors and numbers

Going through them usually implies that if you meet the secondary objectives or spend some time exploring, you'll get to take a new one home. supply box to lay out your Gears with better weapons, grenades and armor.

This, which is part of the grace of the evolution of your characters along with their sum of skills, becomes a difficult drink to go through because of the menus. By archaic, slow and little orderedSpending time deciding which boots to wear to your favorite character for the next mission means breaking that constant rhythm that they have miraculously achieved at the controls.

A small nuisance that becomes toothache when those characters that you have armored with the best of the best cannot play a specific mission, thus forcing you to be changing equipment from one character to another to give that heavy soldier a bit of a vibe with Minigun that you should use in the next fight.

For having some main characters that are due to a story, how Kate Diaz's father –the most Gears of all Diaz– He lived his early life, the possibility of losing essential characters as it happened in XCOM It is not an option. By rebound, your attention to all those secondary that you are recruiting is decreasing as the hours pass until you have no choice but to start studying who they are and how they can help you.

The idea has not been, ultimately, holy of my devotion, but neither has it prevented me from enjoying the game from start to finish. Luckily the freedom of the game when choose partners It has been limited at times to one principal and three recruits, which has allowed me to focus and become attached to some secondaries who have saved that sour ballot.

iGamesNews's opinion

If Marcus and Dom have shown us anything, it's that a couple of stumbles and mistakes never stop a Gears, and Gears Tactics remains faithful to that dogma. We wish that the level of perfection that he demonstrates when transferring the action of shooters to tactical combat also materializes in other areas, but that everything does not scratch at the same level does not make it a less recommendable game.

What could have been an isolated spin-off that is out of the norm and that remains there, for the memory, has proven to be a change that deserves more and better in future installments. Returns that, for the commitment and fun shown for all of us who have vibrated with this saga, we hope to continue enjoying in the future.

Gears Tactics has been provided for analysis by Microsoft.