Paid around 6,50€ for this and, after finishing the campaign, I can not understand how this series has been around for so long.
Played through the campaign in 3 player co-op, and there was not a single point in the entire 11.5 hour time when we didn't have something to complain about.
I played Gears 1 way back when Xbox360 was a thing, and I don't think the series has evolved from that at all.
First off the game requires you to log into your Microsoft Xbox account. Then, for co-op, you need to link your Steam account to the Xbox one, and add your friends through the Xbox linking pop up as friends within the Xbox environment. It took SO long to get this working correctly, since the UI is console-grade a$$.
Grafix?
Graphics-wise it looks okay. It's from 2019, and I think it holds up alright. The city scenery looks pretty, yet the open world maps (2 of them) are very barren and the color schemes are bright white for the snow one, and ugly badly lit red for the desert one.
Movement?
While basic movement is fine, the sprinting is still god-awful, locking you into running forward with limited sideways movement. Movement overall is clunky, as you need to cover-hug a wall before you can jump over it.
Gunplay?
The gunplay is boring. The guns feel very weak, lack impact, are highly inaccurate, and to top it off enemies are bullet spongy as hell.
How can a shotgun called "Overkill" -- which shoots two shells per shot, and can fire twice before needing to reload -- not kill a basic enemy grunt at close range? The basic Lancer gun requires you to unload an entire magazine worth of ammo into an enemy before they die, and this is on Intermediate (the second easiest difficulty). How can a series, on it's 5th iteration, have such low impact weaponry?
Aiming? What's wrong?
There's also something wrong with the aiming in this game. I've played so, so many shooters during my life, reached Master level in the original Overwatch at one point maining Tracer (if that even matters), and I can not for the life of me aim in this game. Tried with mouse smoothing on and off, and both felt horrible. It's definitely made to be played with a controller and aim assist on high.
Melee?
The tutorial teaches you like 3 different melee mechanics, which are all left unused in the campaign. Melee is extremely weak, only used to fend off "Juvies". The Stealth kill mechanic comes up multiple times during the campaign, only to be instantly forgotten about because the enemy placement forces you to do firefights when stealth fails 10 seconds in. Me and the other human player attacked an enemy grunt (basic enemy unit) in melee, swinging our knives multiple times, and he downed us both in one shot. Yeah, I know, skill issue.
Co-op?
In 3 player co-op, the team plays two humans, and the third player gets the robot. It's an interesting idea that creates assymetry in gameplay, but the issue is that the only player to get upgrades and fun stuff is the robot. At the endgame, the robot is nigh-immortal, constantly stealthed, can stunlock multiple enemies and insta-freeze almost every enemy in the game, making them almost instantly killable. The two human players are stuck with whatever weapons the game decides to give them -- and take away in the next 5 minutes due to a cutscene, forcing them to fend off yet another horde attack using only the basic, weak as hell default guns.
Every firefight in the campaign goes like this:
1. Human players take cover.
2. Robot player goes to the enemy backline, starts killing everything.
3. Humans sit behind cover taking potshots at enemies outside of cover.
4. Robot player kills everything, while human players run out of ammo yet again because everything is so spongy.
You can play every firefight one handed: right click to aim, left click to shoot, bind your reload on your mouse to time the power up reload mechanic.
The story?
The story is about Kait, a girl that shoots guns. She and her team goes around shooting guns at enemies, and stuff happens. It all ends in a cliffhanger after a big car chase scene where you don't actually have to fire your weapon once. I'm not kidding, you do not have to shoot your gun to finish the chase. There's a boss at the end, which is recycled from an earlier map. Shoot the glowy bits, win, get no satisfactory story ending in return. Once the story finally gets interesting, it ends. It's sad.
The other gamemodes?
I don't know, I didn't try them. I won't be touching the versus mode with a long stick, a game old as this the multiplayer is probably filled with sweats and I'm too old for that. I'm interested in the Horde and Escape modes just to see if there's any actual buildcrafting and upgrade paths to do, and we'll probably play the Hivebusters campaign just to see if it's any different since the main campaign left us baffled at how bad it was.
MTX?
There's a LOT of MTX.
Bugs?
Plenty.
Overall?
For the 6.5€, it was okay, mostly due to the jokes we made about it. I just can't fathom anyone paying more than 10€ for this modern looking but extremely clunky, old style shooter.
