CHAINSAW CHESS

Fantastic combat makes GEARS TACTICS a strategy game worthy of the PC.

- Wes Fenlon

Gears Tactics and I share the belief that a sniper rifle should practically be an extension of the hand of god, so mighty it feels almost unfair. Late in my campaign I could fire off seven rounds in a single turn, chaining together shots that gave me free actions for every kill. This is the power fantasy version of a tactics game, and pitch-perfect Gears of War, down to the cranial pop of a Longshot’s bullet landing a critical headshot.

Tactics has a linear campaign, told with very pretty Unreal Engine cutscenes. It’s easily the best-looking tactics game I’ve played, and it’s hard to oversell how precisely this game translates Gears into an overhead turn-based perspective.

Gears Tactics is an aggressive strategy game that throws piles of enemies at you, because it knows you’ve got frag grenades that can turn a pack of scurrying wretches into chicken nuggets, or a chainsaw gun that has a 100-percent chance to slice even a full-health Locust in half.

XCOG

While it first looks an awful lot like XCOM, Gears Tactics plays differently. Every turn in XCOM is about the tension of how few moves you can make.