Gears 5 has another huge problem caused by the developers, ‘The Coalition’. This is terrible as Horde mode is the best thing about Gears 5 currently. Versus isn’t fun. We already spoke about the problems with versus and so won’t echo it here. This is about the Horde mode. Yes we are aware of the changes coming in the next content drop and what changes are coming to certain horde classes. That has it’s own problems too but that’s for another time. Let’s take a look.
Now Horde has a big new problem that we noticed for some time now and it’s completely turned us off of horde. When you get to wave 8-12 the game will sometimes throw in a ‘Random Warden’. We call it a random warden because it feels random even though there is most likely a pattern. The problem here is that it makes everything so much harder and ruins everything for the most part. First of all who’s the guy or person who said that Horde on inconceivable difficulty wasn’t hard enough? Who was the guy who requested or suggested adding a ‘Random Warden’ to spice things up? Idiot! Many players like X35 Earthwalker (obviously not as good as X35) play with random players so the amount of team work we have is considerably less. Dealing with a warden is more of a teamwork thing, not a solo thing.
If you don’t have the right horde classes on your team, then beating a warden becomes a massive problem. The blade master is an easy counter but most players aren’t blade masters. The Warden most of the time sprints straight towards you and requires attention while the horde pushes on you. X35 Earthwalker as a gunner was holding down the entire left hand side of the map all by himself… after all he is the best Gears 5 player in the world. Hie entire team was on the right fighting at the base. Warden shows up in the wave. Eventually X35 see’s the downed symbol of a teammate, then two downed, then someone executed. X35 can’t go over there because he’s facing DR-1 oppressors, annihilators, and numerous enemies. Soon only one guy was left alive over there. Then X35 was the sole survivor. Then almost solo-ed the entire horde by himself while being chased by a warden. By the way, the survivor modifiers was on for that horde frenzy meaning if the whole team dies, it’s all over. That wasn’t fun. No one on the right side of the map had the actual means to beat that warden by the looks of it. All four got folded… like hoes. That’s not fun. We even in another match had two bosses show up which is normal but they got joined by a warden. Why?!! Who’s dumb idea is this. Once again the coalition has no idea what they are doing.
Next issue is the some of the modifiers themselves. They make things too ridiculous. Once again you are mainly with random players who do whatever they want for the most part. There’s a modifier called ‘even stronger enemies’ which makes enemies do 3 times more damage. That’s stupid. Remember that when you beat wave 4 the enemies do 2 times more damage. Then another 50% damage boost after wave 8. We talking about 350% more damage! A simple drone elite and even a simple deebee bot will down the whole team solo if not careful. It’s stupid. Then there’s modifiers that create chaos in combos. The freezing bullets modifiers is an example. The grenadier with the overkill was able to instant freeze a sniper class character from a good distance away. This caused instant death. The worst is when the drones can freeze you. Snipers, not so much at all. Some modifiers just straight up make things boring, prevents you from playing how the class should be played. The elite drones do too much damage as well but we have already talked about that. So imagine trying to deal with a rushing warden who’s got twice as much health, with random players, none has a direct counter, with a horde that has cheap modifiers coming after you. Again it’s not fun. We have beaten horde with ‘Random Wardens’ multiple times but it was boring and ruined things.
This is just two issues we brought up here. There’s more to say like how slow class progression is and that it takes too long to level up. Which is harder to do with the increased difficulty, single modifiers and ‘Random Warden’. When you fail, you don’t get the big prizes meaning you spent all that time getting to wave 12 just to get nothing. Those pity cards and 1 star doesn’t make up for it. We have been playing Gears 5 much less now. Since Horde was what we came back for but now that’s not fun a lot of the time. The Coalition once again is messing up and making decisions that ruin their game and makes their numbers get smaller and smaller. Now Gears 5 may be getting new content but it’s current state isn’t good enough for… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Gears 5 is here again and this time they have something new with Operation 6. This means new characters: Colonel Victor Hoffman, Queen Reyna and locust Zealot. It also comes with a new… well not new a map from the past called Speyer. We are overall disappointed with it. Like that’s all. That’s not going to bring in new players or change anything really. We like new characters though. Just stop messing around and give us Aaron Griffin!!!! The Coalition need to step it up.
Now this isn’t about about Operation 6. We always did like Hoffman and locust Zealot does look real cool. Don’t like how Queen Reyna looks though but hey. Tis is about horde and some issues it has. Even the new event which came with Operation 6 called ‘Escape from Kadar’. So lets’ get right into it. Horde overall is our favourite thing in Gears 5. We have survived hundreds of waves solo (with random players) and in a team. We have beaten inconceivable difficulty many times, even in Escape mode. So yes we are more than authoritative and relatable as a source of information.
Horde needs an additional resource for players. Players use their collected energy to power up themselves with passives like increased health, ammo regeneration, critical damage etc. This is very good and cool but then this means players aren’t donated their enemy to the fabricator for the mechanics t build strong defences. After all you need to be powerful to survive so you priorities yourself first instead of the team. They need to make it so that collecting energy contributes to both a energy and maybe boost points or experience points which you can use for upgrading yourself and the energy for fabricator or building. So yeah, they need a second resource management bar.
Now let’s talk about one big problem, actually scratch that – two! Two big problems with one literally being bigger. Firstly the Swarmak. This big good for nothing son of a pharaoh results in an instant loss. It’s presence means you lose. It spawns in and just heads straight for your base. It doesn’t take it’s time. If you aren’t under shelter or up in a really high place where the boltok spawns in Gridlock then you are screwed. Fences don’t stop it, sentry don’t stop it. Nothing stops it! We hit it with the demolitionists ultimate ability, had brawlers set it on fire and even a whole team attack it and it doesn’t die in time. Sure there can be exceptions like two demolitionists using their ultimates and then lancer grenade launch missiles spam with boom shots maybe but then another spawns to take it’s place which is stupid design. Why another? You out of resources by then. Regardless even if the whole team faced the swarmak, the whole horde are still coming for you including pouncers who jump right into your base, scions with heavy weapons and more. The Coalition got the formula right in Gears 4. The Brumak would sit back and fire it’s guns and missiles from a distance then after while it then makes it’s approach. It’s like it either waits until you almost killed all enemies or after a certain period of time. Do that developers instead of have the swarmak comes straight for our base and destroy everything. It’s better for the team to run straight at the swarmak and get themselves killed to so when they start again they get a different boss and keep all their fortifications alive, saving energy.
The Guardians and Sentinels are huge problem and simply put have no business in Horde. These guys are fast, deal immense damage and worst of all have large amounts of health then on top of that… they have shields. Cool design but shouldn’t be in horde. Imagine this. You have a nice base with great defence and sentries. Wave starts. A Sentinel shows up and heads straight for your base. It flies OVER all your defences and parks itself right in the back of your base while spraying it’s Tri-gun (which is like the strongest weapon in the game) killing everyone. If you are allow health class like demolition, marksman, mechanic etc you go down within half a second on inconceivable difficulty. We have seen it wipe out a whole team before. It doesn’t care about defences as it flies over. It’s so strong that you aren’t beating it 1v1 unless you are a Gunner class or maybe Pilot in your silver back. The shields get stronger in later waves too for some reason. You manage to get it’s shield down bu then it flies away behind cover out of reach so you can’t get it. Then comes back with it’s shield again. Wasting your ammo and time. So you need a team to face it which means less or no one is focusing on the horde coming to you since you are either fighting or reviving downed teammates. It can also straight up kill a downed person too which is unfair. Guardians are worse as they have salvo rockets which can down groups at the same time even when trying to revive. They can truly ruin a good run. Shriekers from Gears of War 3 were fine because they had really low heath but if ignored can really weaken your team as they fire from high up meaning cover is useless. Remove sentinels and guardians.
Now for the main reason that Escape from Kadar sucks. This big woman above this paragraph. The Matriarch is the alpha woman. Body building ladies don’t mess with her. All jokes aside she does rule. She doesn’t give a shake about your fortifications. Actually she doesn’t even acknowledge them or know what they are. She just walks through them and wonders what she hit (she doesn’t seem blind like beserkers). In Escape from Kadar you have loads of locust hybrids which come at you with pipes which delivery a one shot kill strike. Unless you have really high armour or good stim etc. Then you have Sires which rush you down and try to grab you. If they grab you, it doesn’t matter how much health you have as it’s instant kill if you don get freed from it’s grip. Those aren’t too bad but then the boss on wave 5 is a Matriarch which isn’t too bad but she does destroy all your fortifications. St wave 10 there’s TWO of them though at the same time. Unless you are a very specific build of classes you can’t stop them in time. It’s like Attack on Titan. The Matriarch is the armoured titan who smashed a hole through the wall and so the locust hybrid and sires can come straight in. Imagine fighting the sires and pipe swingers while dodging the big women who are trying to kill you. Also she can grab you and rip you apart even in the middle of your chainsaw execution! You be saying something she be like “wat chu doin likkle one” Then rip. We be like you can’t do that, it’s na execution. She be like “I make the rules”. So cheap indeed. We did beat them though. X35 Earthwalker being the universe ultimate strategist came up with a plan and it worked so well that we actually made it so easy. Inconceivable difficulty next. The Swarmak is the colossal titan and the matriarch is the armoured titan. Most teams can’t beat Escape from Kadar, even in advanced difficulty. It’s super tough unless you find that good formula.
Overall it’s clear that horde has some problems. Swarmak needs to be reprogrammed, Two matriarchs should be just one instead and less amount of enemies on later waves , guardians and sentinels need to be removed. AAn additional resource needs to be added for personal upgrades instead of the energy. This is us keeping it simple though. We aren’t going to go into every little detail. Horde needs to be improved. Maybe we will talk about the classes more next time. Now Gears 5 has horde problems but it’s problems are clearly seen by… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Gears 5 is a very popular third person shooter game developed by ‘The Coalition‘ and published by ‘Xbox Game Studios‘. Gears 5 is off course an Xbox exclusive that’s also on PC. So Xbox Series X and Xbox One. Right of the bat this game is overall very good but not excellent and we will be discussing the reasons why and what needs to change. The developers aren’t very good at listening. When they do listen it’s listening to the wrong people. Let’s take a look.
Let’s jump straight into the biggest problem that Gears 5 has. It has lost lots of players. So much that it’s a fraction of what it use to be. It’s improved a bit in recent times but still embarrassing compared to what they use to have. It was so bad that there were videos being made about Gears 5 dying and why it’s dying. So that’s clear proof of a problem right there. The biggest reason the player base has shrunk is because the game is a narrow corridor. There’s only one real way to play. Gnasher shotguns only + wall bounce like a maniac. If you can’t wall bounce really good and use the Gnasher shotgun then you are going to die, again and again. New players can’t do this, they just want to play the game but get abused and end up with final scores of 4 kills and 19 deaths. Gears 5 is suppose to be a third person shooter, not a beat em up game. That’s how close range this game is and has become. You even have youtubers like Landan2006 and others who even mock anyone using lancers and keeping back like they aren’t suppose to do that. Man, Landan and those youtubers use to cry about the retro lancer through the whole video. The remaining body of players are like Landan in this sense (we know from first hand experience and hate mail).
Let’s explain some more. New players join a match maybe taking what they learnt from the campaign. They see enemies, take cover and fire with their lancer. Since the enemies are wall bouncing like crazy most bullets miss them, even when out in the open with certain tricky movements. They close the gap. The new players tries to get their shotgun out but are dead before they can get a shot off or danced around. That’s their experience for the whole match. Gears 5 isn’t new player friendly. Those players are just there to serve as fodder for others montage highlight videos for youtube. That’s not fun. Those players don’t return. Developers need to do something and fast. Yes, practicing is important but Gears 5 doesn’t offer much room for that. You just get bodied (killed) again and again. Other games have done a much better job. For example Star Wars battlefront 2. X35 literally did a livestream on that game yesterday. It was his first time EVER playing the game. No warm up matches or anything but in his first matches he got eliminations, double kills, did the objective and won his first match against players who have been around for a good while. Sure X35 Earthwalker has natural skill and is the greatest and smartest gamer of all time but he has never played a Star Wars game before. Freshly downloaded and jumped straight into multiplayer. You can watch the livestream here. We will turn those matches into a video and later edit them into this post. Star Wars is new player friendly and gamers of different skill can make a difference and even fight back against seasoned players. In Gears 5… new players will literally be everyone’s whore… and being a whore isn’t good.
Now new players also struggle because there isn’t any help for them. The Lancer got nerfed to the point where it is useless in many cases. Gnasher users can just ignore it a lot of the time if it’s just one person lancering. This nerf decision game from dumb developers who listened to Gnasher shotgun only users… only. So they did their terrible decisions from Gears of War 4. Back then they nerfed the lancer, removed the retro lancer, removed the hammerburst and made it into a power weapon, limited to some maps. Basically every option players has that can counter a Gnasher shotgun has been removed or limited. The Lancer in Gears 5 is garbage. There’s actually nothing you can do against those gnasher players who spend all day on Gears 5 with their wall bouncing trying so hard to be like those pro players like explosive, franchise and toy soldier or like those youtubers like Dan the man (the best) or zeus the moose. Causal or newer players don’t stand a chance. Who wants to keep playing a game where they die all the time, stand no chance and have no fun? So the players leave and go to Fortnite, Star Wars, or call of duty. We saw two players (one was the guest of another) and they got destroyed. Their scores at the end of the match were like 2 kills, 20 deaths and 3 kills, 19 deaths. We never saw their names again. Gnasher shotgun users don’t care and glad the rifles get nerfed because it’s in their interest ALONE, not the game or communities interest. Well keep listening to them The Coalition (the developers), your player base is getting smaller. Congratulations. Make your game new player friendly and give options for newer and casual players. No casual or new player is going to look up and watch those videos online of what settings to have for your controller, sensitivity and how to hold your controller in a reverse claw grip stupid motion. No. We just want to play the game and have fun.
This leads to the next problem. There’s more to say about the last one but we have to move on (got things to do). There’s no options in Gears 5. Your options for starting load out in social matches is: Lancer, Gnasher, smoke grenade… that’s it. You select your lancer it only gives you the option to change skins. Gears of War 3 was so much better. You can pick between Lancer, Hammerburst, Retro Lancer, gnasher, sawed off. Gears of War Judgement was the best at this. There options was Lancer, hammerburst, retro lancer, Gnasher, markza, classic hammerburst, sawed off. For grenades it’s: frag, ink, stim, smoke and spot. Compare Gears of War: Judgment and even Gears of War 3 to Gears 5. There’s no options. Like we said before, Gears 5 is a narrow corridor, linear and boring. Lancer and gnasher only. Don’t you just love a restaurant that has a big fancy menu but when you open it, the only thing there is rice and chicken. That’s it. No lamb, pork, beef or duck. The rice is just white rice, no basmati, no brown and no jellof rice. Just white rice and chicken (no seasoning). That’s Gears 5. Gears of War 3 has the best multiplayer of all Gears of war games. Gears of War: Judgement is second. People still play Gears of War 3 now and at times it’s faster to find a match on 3 than 5 at specific times. Gears of War 3 is casual friendly but skill gap is very clear so the best players still come out on top but causal and newer players can fight back and get kills still. The retro Lancer countered the gnasher. The hammerburst countered retro lancer. Certan tactics with the sawed off countered hammerburst. The options allowed for different strategies, different tactics, different styles and different matches. Wake up developers… people like options.
The next problem is that Gears 5 is lacking very popular and good game modes from previous Gears of War games. Many people liked Beast mode from Gears of War 3. Many liked Overrun from Gears of War: Judgement. Where are those two modes now? Beast Mode was good fun and allowed for serious destruction as the powerful locust horde. Overrun is basically beast mode and horde merged together but not perfectly. Players still come back to Judgement for the Overrun mode. X35 Earthwalker did a recent livestream on Gears of War: Judgement, playing Overrun and some players joined eventually. Gears 5 is missing out on those big modes. Why can’t they create their own perfect horde + beast mode. Human players fight to gain points and build fortifications while the locust horde players tries to tear it all down. Missed opportunities here developers. What’s also a bad move is that they changed king of the hill. It use to be three rounds in Gears of War 3 (first to win 2 though) but now in Gears 5 we only have one round. That’s a problem because now you get less time to fight with your opponents, less time to learn about them concerning how they fight and how to adjust, less time to get revenge on the player that killed you and also less killing time and action. In Gears of War 3 X35 had two matches that lasted a long time and he got over 121 kills in one and 105 in the other roundabout. You can’t get kills like that anymore. Don’t mess with the things that players loved.
Another poor decision that The Coalition has made is making characters and skins mainly purchasable instead of earning them like in Gears of War 3. In Gears of War 3 you had to do stuff like get 2000 kills with the Lancer to unlock this skin and medal. Play 100 matches of horde to unlock this character or by levelling up. Get 1000 kills with each weapon to unlock chairman prescott. It was always play a certain amount of this, or get this medal or get this many kills or revive this many people etc. In Gears 5 it’s buy these coins with your money so you can buy this character. We at X35 Earthwalker have nothing against microtransactions. You can’t buy items that put an advantage over other players in Gears 5 which is good but when you had a certain character in Gears of War 3 it was also a statement to show you earned that character through that means. Like not everyone had Aaron Griffin. You had to play lots of horde to get him. So when people saw you had him, it was cool.
Gears 5 doesn’t even have the medals that appear next to your name. X35 Earthwalker completed the Gears of War 3 and Judgement campaign in the hardest difficulty and earned awesome rare medals as proof. They were displayed next to his name and hardly anyone had that medal. You felt special and elite. Gears 5 hasn’t got that. Bring it back The Coalition. Stop taking out good stuff! The medals also had certain titles and names that comes with them like ‘brutal Legend’ for the highest level of the MVP medal. There’s ‘god complex’ for the highest rank of revives. They appeared next to your name like ‘Gear deity’. You’d see some cool names and stuff you maybe haven’t got and would like. X35 Earthwalker had the ‘King of Cog’ title in Gears of War 3 which was fitting as he use to rule Gears of War 3. He was king. In Gears of War: Judgement his title was ‘Seriously judgemental’. Those were cool things. Nothing in Gears 5. Can’t even be done. Sad.
Gears of War: Judgement had many good things in it and one of those things that Gears 5 doesn’t have is character skins. In Gears of War: Judgement you could have a flaming skin, neon glowing skin. digital data effect skin and a whole lot more. In Gears 5 it’s just the character and that’s it. Gears 5 has weapon skins but not character skins which were cool and made you stand out. Imagine your Old man Marcus character but has a desert camouflage skin or golden marcus, or flaming marcus, even silly funny things like bunny suit Marcus or clown suit Marcus and he will have lines like “Hey stop clowning around” or when he gets shot but in the bunny suit says “that’s not very bunny… I mean funny, oh shut up!” That would be hilarious. You might say that doesn’t belong in gears of War but only the campaign needs to be all serious. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of fun in the multiplayer.
Since we are talking about Gears of War: Judgement, another thing that Gears 5 didn’t add that Judgment has is rewarding players for playing the campaign and other modes besides online multiplayer. Gears of War: Judgement had prize boxes that you aren’t for killing enemies, earning ribbons and levelling up. This applied to campaign as well. People who played the campaign weren’t wasting their time. In Gears 5 you get nothing for playing the campaign. The only way to get cards for your horde and escape character classes, or experience points to level up is to do multiplayer. Sort of recently The Coalition brought out a dlc that’s about the hive buster characters Mac, lahni and keegan. Only two days ago have we heard of just two people who started playing it. There’s no talk about the dlc at all. Everything is either multiplayer matches, horde or escape. Why? There’s no real reason to play it. You don’t get anything awesome, level up or anything. Hey developers! How about you reward players for playing the campaigns. Simple thing but yet they won’t do it.
Another problem is weapon balancing. We mention that the Lancer has been nerfed in Gears 5 and even worse they removed the increased damage buff you get from a perfect active reload. Anything that threatens the gnasher is nerfed or removed. The strongest weapon, most dominate weapon, most used weapon and what appears in the most montage videos is the gnasher shotgun. Always has been and looks like it always will. This is the problem. Imagine a shooting game where one gun is the dominant clear best gun and everyone uses that gun and only that gun. Image a call of duty match where everyone uses one gun only. Not fun or creative and it’s the same boring thing every time. Gears of War: judgement had the best weapon balancing of all the Gears of Wars. Gears 5 has terrible weapon balancing. They need to learn from previous games that have better multiplayer. In Gears of War: judgement almost all the starting load out weapons were strong and viable except the sawed off which was terrible. X35 Earthwalker got kill streaks and did serious damage with ALL the guns (except the sawed off). Lancer, retro lancer, hammerburst, classic hammerburst, markza and gnasher. The gnasher shotgun didn’t dominate anything except for code range co meat (as a shotgun should). Gears 5 it’s the gnasher all day every day.
Lastly the gnasher shotgun has certain, let’s call them trick shots, which shouldn’t be in the game. You have what’s referred to as a ‘back A’ and ‘forward A’. If someone comes in within range while you’re in cover you can do either one of those and consistently get one shot kills even though the shotgun isn’t facing the enemy! Last time we checked, bullets come out from the barrel of the gun, not the direction the camera is facing. I have seen pro players and try hards slide towards a cover, hit the cover then almost instantly pull back and fire at someone on the other side of the cover and instantly kill the person while their gun is facing 90 degrees in a different direction. That’s stupid. Sometimes it looks like their shot curves around a corner to fully one shot down you. Why is the gnasher shotgun capable of that dumb stuff?! Go online and see for yourself. It’s weird to describe but simply put, the gnasher shotgun is capable of trick shots where the bullets come out, from what looks like the camera, instead of the barrel of the gun. As if the gnasher needs anymore help. That’s almost like saying, Superman can move planets, destroy planets, hold a black hole, move in negative seconds, survive supernovas but that’s not enough… let’s give him more powers. How about as Superman breathes, his strength increases. You wonder why the player base has shrunk immensely and hardly anyone is talking about Gears 5 in a positive light. You wonder why Gears of War in it’s current state can’t compete with Call of Duty, Definitely not Halo (the best) and not even star wars battlefront 2 which we are currently having more fun with right now. Gears of War 3 had some of the most fun matches we have had in gaming EVER. Gears 5 can’t do that bro.
To summarise. There’s a lot of things that the developers, The Coalition, need to improve on and fix. There’s stuff from previous games that wasn’t put in Gears 5 which was a bad job. This isn’t us being mean and making fun of them. We are harsh because we truly care about this game. We can’t help it that we are better developers than all these current day game developers and if they had our input and leadership all these games would be better. That’s just facts. We have played Gears of war since Gears of War 1 and completed the campaigns in the hardest difficulties and played each multiplayer. We have done many game reviews and have shown to know what we are talking about. Check this out. We have asked many Gears of war players and most agree that Gears of War 3 had the best multiplayer. X35 Earthwalker’s mother plays video games and one of the games she plays is Gears of War. She loved and was serious about Gears of War 3. She wasn’t a big fan of Gears of War 4. Gave Gears 5 a try and soon went back to Gears of War 3. When most of the players, even a gaming mother and off course the greatest and smartest video gamer of all time (X35 Earthwalker) agrees that Gears of War 3 is better, then that clearly means Gears of war 3 is better! This means The Coalition is doing a worse job than what they did in Gears of War 4 and currently not as good as Epic Games with their Gears of War 3. It’s not hard. Take note of what was good and bring that into your game and if possible make it better. Add… not subtract. You’ve lost many players. Chased away new players and making some of the current players bored or annoyed. Fix this! Stoo making dumb decisions like making hammerburst a power weapon. Forum pages were full of players hating that decision with a few gnasher only users happy about it. Stop pleasing the few and sacrificing the many.
Overall Gears 5 is still a very good game and well made but clearly there are some areas that need improvement and some things that need to change and others that need to be added in. We lobe Gears of War. Our favourite multiplayer is Gears of War 3. It was the best. We had many great matches and we want more of that. Hopefully developers like The Coalition will learn from this and reach out to us. We can test games for you and look at your ideas. We want to help. Now we could say more but typing takes a lot of time. Now Gears 5 needs to change and Gears of War 6 must not make these mistakes but what doesn’t make mistakes is… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Gears Tactics is the new turn based strategy game developed by ‘The Coalition‘ and ‘Splash Damage‘ and published by ‘Xbox Game Studios‘. Gears Tactics is an Xbox exclusive said to be coming the 10th of November 2020 out on Xbox Series X and Xbox One. It’s already out on PC though. Gears Tactics is coming into a serious genre. Let’s take a look.
Gears Tactics is another big genre change for Gears of War. Gears pop has a big matchmaking and balancing problem. Gears Tactics though is going to be very different and we trust to be a very good game. The story in Gears Tactics is set 12 years before the first Gears of War game. Remember ‘E-day’? Yeah that basically. The focus is on Gabriel Diaz or Gabe for short who is the father of Kait Diaz. He was a lieutenant colonel in the pendulum wars but now a sergeant due to his own decisions and disagreement with the Cog. When things got real crazy the Bog call him back into the action. The problem is a locust monster called Ukkon. A ‘monster who creates monsters’. This locust, Ukkon, is the master mind who genetically engineered the Reaver, Corpser and Brumack. So this guy is the top priority target. So you must gather and recruit people as the Cog is basically in disarray. So it’s a squad of survivors. Get to it.
So straight of the truck we know this is a turn based strategy game. This means intelligence is needed. The golden rule of the Cog is take cover or die. Now it’s only natural to compare turn based strategy games to the best which XCOM 2 War of the Chosen. Now Gears Tactics no doubt will have the visuals and graphics advantage especially being on the Xbox Series X. We also trust Gears Tactics will have the advantage in terms of story. So what truly matters will be the gameplay and mechanics. Now Gears Tactics has been described as fast paced. It has to be. Especially when you have wretches around who like to rush you for melee damage while drones move around to flank. The action has to be strong in Gears Tactics. Plus it feels good to finally be able to face the locust again. We getting along with the swarm but they aren’t in the same league as the Locust.
Now off course there is character and equipment customisation. It’s a necessity at this point. So expect Lancers with extended drum magazines. Expect rifles with bayonets for close range action. There are five different classes for your characters: Vanguard, Support, Heavy, Sniper and Scout. Obviously each of these have their own roles and advantages but also get their own skill tree. The skills is where things get interesting. It’s too deep to get into real detail but let’s simplify. The Vanguard loves bayonet charting and gets bonuses like damage reduction for successful charges. They also heal by themselves every turn. The Sniper has a reduced accuracy penalty against targets far away. Killing targets can lead to damage bonuses or extra actions. The support literally focuses on buffing everyone from giving out extra reloads, extra actions, healings etc. The scout gets a cloak ability. It’s all about attacking from cloak and regaining your cloak. Mobility and deadly. The Heavy brings explosives, damage reduction and all about standing it’s ground and dishing out big damage (at times).
Now gamers who have played turn based strategy games should know what to expect at this point. Just apply the Gears of war formula. There will be missions of variety. Some off course will be more favourable for certain unit types. Some situations are better for the cloaking of the scout. There will most likely be a mission where you need to hold your ground for a time so the heavy is best. We hoped that each branching of skills are pretty much equal instead of one branch of skills clearly being better or more practical than the other. That’s a hard thing to do when you have so many. We were checking out the skills and for example concerning the Vanguard , the ‘Shock trooper’ branch is easily superior to the ‘Warden’ branch. Warden isn’t useless at all but doesn’t compare. As a Vanguard we would get shock trooper and Paladin. Easy. Hopefully they make a patch to improve the weaker paths.
You see the green badge? Off course you do. You know what that means. “Games built using the Xbox Series X development kit are designed to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the Xbox Series X. They will showcase unparalleled load-times, visuals, responsiveness, and framerates up to 120 FPS.” So you expect the best visuals, graphics and performances on Xbox Series X. Yes Gears Tactics has been confirmed 10th of November for Xbox Series X. We will leave a screen shot right below.
We checked out some Gears Tactics gameplay and it’s what we expected from this game. It looks good already and it’s going to get better. There’s a lot of detail on the screen. Overwatch is here to keep enemies in check, executions grant allies an extra action. Use disabling shot to ruin the enemies plans and shut down their overwatch. We hope the building up of your characters leads to you eventually become unstoppable for the most parts. Excellent turn based strategy games have loads of options and powerful combinations if the players know how to do it. Intelligence needs to be rewarded. The difficulty needs to be nice and high. Players need to find what works and what doesn’t. We like the details you get provided with while aiming at an enemy. From what we have seen we believe this is a good game.
Overall Gears Tactics is going to be a good game for sure. Whether it becomes the best turn based strategy game we will have to see for ourselves. It’s Gears of War, it’s turn based strategy and it looks good. There are boss battles and obviously it would be against the brumack, corpser, reavers and Uddok himself. The boss better not be a complete joke but can’t be tedious and annoying either. The developers ‘The coalition’ and ‘splash damage’ have done a very good job. We at X35 Earthwalker will have to see what else Gears Tactics has to offer. Now Gears Tactics might be getting tactical but none of their tactics will work against… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Gears 5 is the latest instalment in Gears of War franchise. Gears had a Tech Test earlier and many gamers got to try it giving us a taste of what it to come. Now X35 Earthwalker himself tried it and off course has his own thoughts and opinions of the game. Now remember that the Tech Test isn’t the final release at all and more work will be done. It’s all in development still so keep that in mind. Let’s take a look.
The first thing we experienced in the Gears 5 Tech Test was the bootcamp which was the tutorial for the game which teaches players about aiming, shooting, handling grenades, roadie running, cover etc, all the gears of war stuff. The tutorial was done very well. It goes over the main mechanics and what you need to know in order to play and survive through the game. There’s some character based humour as we all know Baird is very sarcastic and got some jokes which works well with Del who can also be sarcastic, have jokes and like Baird likes and is good with technology. It’s good to see the relationships, connections and interactions between characters. Makes things relatable.
The Bootcamp did show of the excellent graphics that Gears 5 is going to have. The whole area looked real good, the materials, lights and even the flying bot known as Dave looked detailed too. You can already tell that a lot of work is going into Gears 5. Even when you look at all the formations and environment in the distance it’s all detailed and does make you want to go over there and explore them, even if there aren’t any collectibles, just to take a look. The tutorial is too long though. There was a few combat instances that weren’t needed. Minor but still something.
Now the main meat is off course the multiplayer. The new things was revealed two weapons, a game mode and a few in game mechanics like kill cam replay mainly. The two new weapons in the Gears 5 Tech Test are the Talon auto pistol and Breaker Mace. The Talon auto pistol is basically a discount gorgon pistol. Yep. The talon has unbearably bad recoil and control. It’s damage is good though but what good is it if you can’t even control the thing when firing. This is coming from some who is a master with rifles including the heavy recoil retro lancer of Gears of War 3.
The breaker mace is a cool new melee weapon. Think of it like the energy sword from Halo in terms of you rush enemies or hide around corners and then hit them. If you land the hit then it’s normally a one shot kill. Like the beam sword you also sort of track the enemy when you start your swing if within range. Even though there are multiple counters to this weapon and melee isn’t encourage at all in Gears of War nor is it successful, it still feels super good to get a kill with this weapon. The Breaker Mace execution is so far the best in the game. More on this later.
The new mode is arcade mode which is basically a regular team deathmatch except each player must select a character and each character has their own starting load outs, kill perk and weapons to unlock. As you kill you gain personal points which you can then spend to get weapons. For example Kait moves faster than everyone else on the Cog team and if she has 6 points then she can purchase a torque bow. 2 points for a Bolton and 4 for incendiary grenades. So everyone is trying to get kills to purchase the weapons they need for the fight. Sort of reminds us of ordinance drops in Halo 4.
The new mechanics do actually change some things about the gameplay. For starters the melee is no longer a generic swing at your opponent with the current holding weapon. It’s now a swing with a knife which finally gives those knives the gears carried around a use. So whether it’s a lancer or Gnasher you will swing a knife with one button. Gears 5 finally has kill cam replays. Remember when someone killed you but you don’t know how or thought that shot missed? Well now you can watch and see for yourself what happened according to the game. Lastly rifles and some other weapons like the Snub pistol can now headshot enemies! It took the developers long enough to do this. So if the enemy has received enough damage and you then land some shots on the head, they die instantly like a headshot. This makes rifles more lethal.
Now we can easily tell that Gears 5 has had a lot of work put into it. The graphics are very good for what we have seen so far and that’s an excellent sign. The environment like the kids, water and lands around the training grounds are look so cool. Sounds are very good but some of the guns like the Lancer sound more on the weak side. Arcade mode is definitely going to be a hit with the players and many will have fun and great moments in them. These new mechanics show that new things are being tried and areas are being explored. Things do need be taken further though. Off course the weapons we mentioned much earlier isn’t all the new guns in Gears 5. We are just sticking to the Tech Test.
Now for the negatives of Gears 5. We have a lot. For starters Gears 5 is taking up after the multiplayer gameplay style of Gears of War 4. This is a mistake the Gears of war that had the best multiplayer gameplay was Gears of War 3. Even to this day there’s a good number of players who are still playing Gears of War 3. We even know of a mother of three children who tried Gears of war 4 multiplayer but instead went back to 3. The developers want a faster paced, quick everything multiplayer which isn’t the best for a Gears of War game. Gears of War is about taking cover, not dashing everywhere. Even the golden rule of the Cog is “take cover or die”. This highlights the other major issue of the game. Gears 5 based of the Tech Test has no actual counters to the Gnasher shotgun. That weapon has ruined the game for many players. It’s still the dominate weapon in the game. In Gears of War 3 even new players could play the multiplayer and stand a chance because there were weapons they can use to give them a fighting chance against a crazy wall bouncing Gnasher shotgun user. In Gears of War 4 we have seen new players try and then leave because they had no fun being completely destroyed every single match. We remember one player who stayed for four matches (Gears of War 4) in a row and tried their best only to get a heavy negative result in each match and until finally leaving. We know for a fact they aren’t coming back.
In Gears of War 3 you could use hammerburst, sawed off and the retro to counter and force Gnasher shotgun players to change their strategy. In Gears of War 4 Gnasher worshipping players kept complaining until their daddy (the developers) hushed them down bu removing retro lancers and making hammerbursts a power weapon. This is going to be the problem in Gears 5 and we can feel it. The developers need to learn from Gears of War Judgement which easily had the best weapon balancing of all the games. The rifles dominated at mid range AS THEY SHOULD! How is a shotgun beating rifles at mid range in Gears of War 3 and 4? HOW?! Halo understands… at mid range the shotgun pretty much does nothing and that’s a shotgun from the year 2557… the future. The Talon machine pistol is a discount gorgon pistol and it’s crazy recoil doesn’t help to stop the Gnasher. The enforcer feels better and seems more effective but doesn’t compare to the retro but just you wait, the Gnasher worshippers will complain about the enforcer and cry for nerfs. We have so much to say about this but we have to try and keep this short. Lastly Arcade mode suffers from players abusing the weapon system. X35 Earthwalker once entered late into a match that was horrible. The enemy team were all camping up in a high place on the Training grounds map. One player had a sniper and never moved from his spot. The other tea mates watched the entrances to his location. X35 did what he could and even destroyed half the team but couldn’t reach the sniper. X35’s team were clearly new at the game and kept going into cover and then standing up taking their time trying to aim at the sniper who would snipe all their heads off, getting multiple kills and continuously purchase snipers to keep going. Eventually three of the players had snipers and the whole team camped in their spot. Talk about lame. X35 Earthwalker left the match… Something needs to be done.
Overall we found Gears 5 multiplayer to be disappointing. It it stays the same or is like Gears of War 4 then we know it’s not going to be great. Changes are needed and the developers need to take into account that different experienced, skill and style players will be trying the game. From what we can see so far we are looking forward to Campaign, horde, Escape (new) and Map builder (new). Trust us when we say we are big Gears of War fans. We played every Gears of War game, beat every single one in insane difficulty concerning the campaign and found every collectible. We have made Gears of war videos on Bitchute and Youtube and even streamed the games but sadly we aren’t excited for this game. We are looking forward to it but not excited. When it comes out is when it comes out. The multiplayer we already know what time it is (how it’s going to go down). Don’t get us wrong, Gears 5 is a very good game. Looks great, works well, responsive controls, the mechanics work, the voices are good, new weapons modes and you can Cleary see that a whole lot of work went into developing this game. So overall it is a very good game. We are just disappointed with the multiplayer especially when we compare it to Gears of war which we enjoyed s much that us and many others are still playing after all these years. We even had more fun playing Gears of War judgement multiplayer over the Gears 5 tech test. Honest feedback is honest feedback. If you want to know more about what we think concerning Gears of War 3 then check out our previous blog post here and over here. So we do like the game and looking forward to it but not the multiplayer.
Gears of war 4 has some serious action for gamers but one mode that certainly stands out is Horde. Gears of war is an Xbox exclusive and no we don’t care if you can play it on PC. PC isn’t a console, it’s a computer and therefore doesn’t count. Many players have tried to beat all 50 waves of horde in Hardcore difficulty and have failed. So the idea of taking on Insane scares them. Let’s take a look.
Insane is the hardest difficulty in the game. Players have way less health than normal and the enemies have more health than normal. Also the enemies are very accurate too. So when you see a drone charging a torque bow, make sure to take cover or die. Players literally die in a few shots and if you are anywhere near a boomshot or drop shot blast, then you are done for. So if you want to stand a chance in Horde then first things first… take cover or die. Second things second be completely aware of what’s going on and what enemies are around at all times. No excuses.
Plant the fabricator in a good spot where you have maximum visibility of the area and good amount of cover, preferably with some high cover too. All players must fight right next to cover and never be alone. Each player of the team needs to have from very good to excellent movement skills to be able to dodge incoming attacks, enemies and get around quickly. Each player’s selected class must have at the very least, 4 skill cards equipped. Communication is very helpful but the marking and pinging system works just fine though. Remember when we said “never be alone” well also make sure you aren’t all bunched up together so that one drop shot kills you all. We’ve seen it happen before when a team rushes to go receive someone and BOOM!
Let’s discuss the enemies. Some off course require more attention then others. Some enemies you can just handle yourself and the team doesn’t need to know. Enemies like the Scion Boomshot, buzzsaw and drop shot are problem with the drop shot being a major problem unless you are under a shelter. Enemies like them and guardians need to be marked and called out as they are capable of downing players instantly and running fortifications and entire structures. Once called out have the right player handle them unless you need two to destroy them quickly, the sooner the better. Lastly do not underestimate Juvies. Those little freaks can ruin everything. Just one sneaking in can down each player one by one. They can down you in two hits alone. Remember what we said, never fight alone because once downed enemies will rush towards you straight away to finish you off. Call out enemies and finish them quickly and appropriately.
Bosses are the biggest threat and can seriously kill your run. Snatchers are considered the biggest threat and require everyones attention as they can advance on your base the fastest and damage everything real fast. They also have a one shot kill attack that forces everyone to take cover. Take these down fast. Kestrels are just annoying as they do keep their distance but can fire over cover, their missiles aren’t a one though so keep an eye on where it’s firing from and make the necessary adjustments. Soldiers are needed for these things. Carrier is considered the easiest as it moves super slow and it’s attacks are easy to stop. Get the soldiers or heavies to keep the explosions coming and they should be done for. Swarmak is considered the second worst thanks to it’s huge pool of health, constant firing and that it can walk right through your base forcing all to evacuate as coming near it’s foot results in an instant death. You must defeat these fast and everyone must focus it down. Bosses are literally unstoppable and requite immediate attention. The heaviest hitters must focus on them. As we mentioned, kestrels only need soldiers to handle if there are two thanks to their rifles. It isn’t easy for heavies to hit them with their boom shots. Call out to your team when a snatcher is charging up it’s one shot kill so that everyone can hide in Time. Swarmaks and snatchers need everyone shooting at it quick. Beware though as in later waves, when you kill. boss quick, another can spawn.
The main thing that must be discussed are the classes of the players. What to pick, what combination and what’s not needed at all. The classes are: soldier, heavy, sniper, engineer and scout. Now what’s needed? Every team for insane difficulty needs one scout (just one) because that’s where all the energy comes from. Scouts naturally gain double the amount of energy you would normally get as long as it’s during a wave. Soldiers are needed to be that versatile strong continuous damage dealer. The engineer is needed because they can seriously reduce the costs of fortifications and keep everything strong. Now the two that aren’t needed are heavies and snipers. This doesn’t mean they are useless. It just means they are not essential and it’s up to the team. Heavies deal the most damage of all classes but must stay topped up to do so but there are ways around this. Snipers can almost one shot anything with a head shot but requires more focus and skill due to aiming for head shots only. The best combination is most likely 2 soldiers, 1 engineer, 1 scout and 1 heavy. You could have 1 soldier, 1 scout, 1 engineer, one sniper and 1 heavy. Regardless never have two engineers or two scouts. We also never recommend having two snipers. Two snipers consume too much ammo boxes. Two scouts reduce the bonus of depositing energy as the total is shared. Two engineers just take up another class slot. One can easily handle the job.
So your scout must deposit bonus in order to gain an extra 50% energy every time you deposit your energy which when combined with your double energy collection is crazy amounts of resources allowing your engineer to buy whatever you need. Scouts should also have health boost and dodge to make collecting the energy during waves much safer and keep you alive. peed boost is needed to get around much faster, rush to downed team mates to revive them and works so well with dodge. The Engineer must have repair boost as it saves a whole lot of energy by reducing the repair costs, remember you will be repairing all the time. Also turret discount and sentry cost are very good as they also save you a lot of money, especially when it comes to turrets which are the most expensive fortification. The soldier must have assault rifle damage, grenade damage and active reload boost. When the assault rifle damage and active reload boost are maxed out, your lancer becomes much stronger than the mulcher dealing insane damage to everything. Even big scions die incredibly fast. Grenade damage is to take out the clusters or that one strong target. For heavies we recommend explosive launcher capacity and damage because well max a drop shot that does 120% more damage than normal is devastating and having like 4 times more ammo than normal is a beautiful recipe but if you combine that with marked damage that’s an additional 50% damage and heavies are all about the damage. Lastly snipers need headshot and precision rifle damage for 170% damage increase on all headshots. You can then combine with called shot and magic bullet for that additional potential damage of 80% for a grant total of 250% on headshots.
Now in terms of how to play that’s ultimately up to the team but we can give a good idea. If soldiers have the resupply and grenade capacity cards they can hold 8 grenades and every 15 seconds get another free grenade, which means they can plant two grenades at spots to cover areas and alert team mates of enemies that come through places the team isn’t watching. You could even plant grenades to protect the sniper. The soldier is who should be handling all the juvies, trackers and small enemies. They must give continuous damage and blow up bigger targets with their grenades. The soldier literally just fights everything. Engineers need to get the fences up, a few decoys and definitely some turrets for the stronger more final waves. They alone should do all the building. Scouts need to be out there collecting all the energy while the wave is active, this is the most dangerous and so soldiers and other should be covering them. Grab the energy and drop it off every round as it’s the same amount as if you held on to it for many rounds. Snipers need a good spot of elevation and must be safe with a good exit route in case of emergency. Get those head shots all the time, that’s all you are good for. Heavies need to blow everything up, simple. Big guys? Blow them up. Smaller ones you can just rifle them down but when it comes to higher waves you will need to use your explosives, even for drones. Engineers need to build a weapon lockers for their heavies so they can get back major ammo without taking up a ammo box, off course all can use the locker but priority should go to the heavies. Why soldiers are so good is that with 8 powered up grenades they can take down bosses real fast and anything else for that matter and having the continuous firing rifles like the hammerburst, retro or regular lancers is excellent consistent damage. Soldiers can literally do anything. The scout is also in charge of reviving people all since they can become the fastest in the whole team.
Off course there is much more we can say like how if you had a whole team of one class, the soldier class would do the best. Something to think about but here is just some tips and things to think about when it comes to beating horde in insane difficulty. Find what works for yourself and do your best and don’t take things too seriously. So even if you beat all 50 waves in Insane difficulty you will never beat… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Gears of war 5 was announced at E3 and is being developed by ‘The Coalition‘. Many Gears fans have been waiting for this game. It has been said to come out in 2019 on Xbox One and Windows 10. So much new things are happening and that’s a good thing. We at X35 Earthwalker respect exploring different directions and taking some risks. Let’s take a look.
First things first. The lead character for Gears of war 5 is Kait Diaz. The story will be mainly entered around her, her family mystery. Already some fans are being stupid about this and complaining, saying that Gears shouldn’t have a female lead and that this is a feminist movement thing. If there was no solid reason for focus to be on Kait then we would agree that the story could centre around something else but this is not the case. Kait and her family have the biggest Gears of war secret right now. Something that many if not almost all the fans have been asking about. Let us explain.
Gears of war 1 we heard a narrative female voice who sounded like a leader talking about the horde and humanity’s attempt being pointless pretty much. In Gears of war 2 we meet the Locust queen who surprised us all… even Cole Train who said “I thought she was suppose to be butt ugly”. She was human but how was that possible. In Gears of war 3 we know that she had communications with Adam Fenix who is Marcus’s dad. So everyone has been wondering how does a human lead the monstrous locusts and boy has that springed forth some theories. Then in Gears of war 4 we find that Reyna was being treated differently by the Swarm (who are the Locust), held in a separate place sort of like a throne and that Kait has the Locust symbol stating that it belonged to her grandmother. We demand answers. Was the Locust Queen mistreated and abandoned by humans, found by gentle locusts before they were war hungry and she with hatred for humans inspire and lead the locusts to take their rightful place living on the surface and taking it away from humans who fight each other and pollute the planet?
Now the characters have received some design changes. Del doesn’t look cool in the slightest, his armour and hat makes him look actually quite silly. We don’t like it. Kait looks the same and that’s good. JD has the biggest change, having a shaved head, looking rougher than ever, which is understandable as there isn’t someone going around with a cart selling vaseline and coconut butter for their skin. He also has some sort of arm contraption that seems to stabilise his arm (where did they get the technology for that). His arm looks infected and dangerously red like he was wounded and infected by a new Swarm species and thus needs that contraption to keep him in check. Marcus however; hasn’t aged a day. In fact he looks like he got younger. We aren’t joking. Look at Gears of war 4 old man Marcus and then Gears of war 5 Marcus. You see? We told you so. How? We don’t know… maybe it’s maybelline…
Gears of war 5 is guaranteed to be the largest Gears game yet. Notice the large environments like those glaciers. Notice how Kait and Del used a vehicle to traverse the ice. This means that exploration will be part of the story. It’s confirmed that in Gears of war 5 players will travel across glaciers, check out sunken ruins and even head across deserts. Like seriously, sunken ruins. Did someone call Lara Croft. Honestly like with Halo Infinite, Gears of war 5 is sounding sort of like an open world game. We aren’t saying is but sort off. Gears of war isn’t that big of a game for that but we definitely will be travelling.
The Swarm have definitely upgraded. There are some new ones around and following the patterns of the original Locust. There are some small numerous ones flying around in the air like how schools of fish swim around in groups. This is just like the aryls from Gears of war 1. They were a great enemy and good to see something like that back. There is a giant leech like enemy that can latch unto people and uses a big mouth to try and devour you. There are some that act like parasites and can infect machines. Some old Cog bots like the DR-1 have been taken over by the swarm and can now move and worse, fire at you with their shoulder mounted tri-shots. There are also large Scions who wild two large spiked clubs that are perfect for smashing your head in (who would have guessed). Well those juvies are still here and man are they so annoying.
Now as a Microsoft release, expect cross platforming between the Xbox One and Windows 10. The whole campaign is playable in co-op. Both online and local with a friend. That guy sitting next to you. Gears of war is meant to be a visual showcase as well. So players can expect amazing HDR at 60 frames per second with 4K Ultra HD resolution on the Xbox One X. All wonderful stuff. Check out the trailer down below for some extra sight seeing.
Overall Gears of war 5 is looking to be the be a huge impact. They didn’t release any information concerning the multiplayer, weapon balancing etc but without a doubt many will be waiting and eager for that. Just make sure that the Gnasher shotgun isn’t the clearly dominate weapon in the game From a story point of view this is going to be huge without a doubt. Now once again, concerning Kait being at the centre we have no problems with it but the whole family mystery thing can easily be solved and revealed as a strong secondary while having the main story focusing on taking the fight to the Swarm but either way, we hope it’s done well. Now Kait’s family may be mysterious but no where near as mysterious as.. the ‘Earth Walk!’
Gears of war is an awesome game and many will agree with that statement. X35 Earthwalker has played every Gears of war game and has completed the campaigns, mastered horde and more. The multiplayer is where the most attention is at. Many changes have come to the game, especially Gears of war 4. We at X35 Earthwalker can say that we aren’t happy with the direction the game is going in and the changed, especially recent ones.
First of all we will start of with Gears of war 3. Three has the best multiplayer. The mechanics were the best. It was the right pace. In Gears of war 4 the game is so fast paced that players don’t have time to perform executions anymore and those were a big part of the multiplayer. It was where you made a statement to your opponent. it’s where the salt was truly rubbed in. It was the fastest way to create a rival in the match. Now in 4, everything is so fast that no one has time to execute really and if they do it’s the same Gnasher execution. Making the game faster only seems to be something for pro players. 3 was actually new player friendly. New players could try 3 and actually have some fun because they stood a chance at doing something and fighting back. Gears of war 3 had the best multiplayer feel and mechanics. In 4, new players get slaughtered, bullied and abused in game. They don’t stand a chance.
The weapon selection was much better in Gears of war 3. Players can choose from Lancer, Hammerburst, Retro Lancer, Gnasher Shotgun and Sawed off Shotgun. Each weapon had a purpose, technically a counter and forced players to stay alert and have the ability to adapt in match. Gears of war 4 is seriously bad in this department. The retro lancer was removed because many Gnasher shotgun only using players, who love and breathe the Gnasher, complained. The developers listened and made it a power weapon only. Recently a decision was made for the same thing to happen to the Hammerburst. So soon the Hammerburst will be a power weapon as well. This is stupid and it’s the developers only wanting to please people who aren’t good enough to adapt to defeat people who use these guns. The sawed off and retro were good counters to the Gnasher shotgun. It prevented shotgun users from having their way all the time if used correctly. The hammer burst was excellent for supporting your team at a distance and it countered the retro lancer. The Enforcer smg has such a small clip that if you miss a few shots, you will not down your target meaning it isn’t a counter to the Gnasher shotgun. It’s very situational.
Soon the current state of Gears of war 4 will be lancer and Gnasher only. What about the Enforcer? Players already complain about that already. If you aren’t using the Gnasher then you are as they say “a noob who needs to go back to Call of Duty“. So even the enforcer isn’t safe, not that it’s any good really. A simple solution would be to make one mode where it’s like Gears of war 3 in terms of weapon selection while competitive or whatever has the similar settings to what the pros play. Core mode shouldn’t be touched. Only competitive should be adjusted to satisfy other players or create more options. Now new players who play Gears of war go into a match, get 5 kills and 17 deaths and don’t play again. At least with counter weapons you stand a chance against wall bouncing pros who live to feed of the weak. New players don’t know how to wall bounce. Honestly this new change has killed our excitement for the game. Probably just stick to Horde mode now.
So these changes, makes Gears of war have less variety, everyone has the same stuff all the time, more copying pro tournament, less new player friendly, one weapon based matches and more boring. Decision are clearly being made for one group of players and that’s a bad move here. Even the pacing of Gears of war 4 is too fast but that can’t really be changed. We still like e Gears of war 4 and think it’s a great game but these changes will make it just a good game. It’s clear we aren’t happy about this. Don’t be too surprised if you don’t see X35 Earthwalker on multiplayer as much anymore.
If you are happy about the changed then definitely good for you and we hope you continue to enjoy the game. To all those cry baby Gnasher only using players, well you got what you wanted so maybe less complaining now… so much hate mail to read through already. We just hope the developers think about what they are doing carefully. Now it doesn’t matter what happens to the weapons, it will never be a match for… the ‘Earth Walk!’
Gears of war 4 has made some changes for the better while some stuff that was great in Gears of war 3, they didn’t bring over. The developers have to make decisions and not all the time it works well with the players but hey, decisions must be made.
Gears of war 4 has a lot of characters to select from. The largest selection out of all the Gears of war games. Yet some people are still not happy with it. X35 Earthwalker’s favourite character is ‘Day of the dead Del’. It has some gold on the armour, the clothing style looks real nice but the only problem he has with the character is the face paint which looks horrible. They should make the same skin but have it without the face paint. Most of the characters pretty much look to similar and not that different at all. In multiplayer, everyone is moving around quickly, doing what they need to do so the characters will need to be designed in such a way that you can recognise the differences really quickly. The V, E and whatever other day gears characters with the helmets on are not impressive at all. The carmines pretty much look similar except Clayton.
The point is that they could have been more creative with the characters. For example they can create new characters for the sake of multiplayer only. A completely new person and give them unique lines. We do know that it requires more work and effort but we think that’s necessary for a big game like Gears of war 4. Give some new characters signature accessories on their uniform to make it stand out. Maybe a new gear character with bright coloured hair. Or go crazy and create a chef who had to defend himself with a gnasher from a fallen soldier who tried to evacuate him. So the chef still has his chef outfit on or whatever. There is lots you can get away with in this game. Maybe a cool dude still in his suit, maybe he use to be a celebrity like the Cole train.
Some characters should be in packs but they should have done what they did in Gears of war 3 which was make some characters unlocked through certain achievements get a certain number of multiplayer kills and even make some difficult ones like get the quad to unlock young Hoffman but in knights armour and it has that clangy noise that knight armour makes when moving. Something big like that. They should have brought back unlockable stuff as that gives a sense of progress to players. Last of all they need to bring out the Aaron Griffin character and hurry up! He was X35 Earthwalker’s favourite character in Gears of war 3 and by far the coolest character overall. His lines were epic level and he completely stood out. Bring back Mr Griffin and we will actually use our in game credits to get him.
Overall there is quite a lot that the developers can do concerning the characters in Gears of war 4. Too many characters seem similar and not as much stands out. We certainly have no interest in the colour blast characters but they are cool to some extent. We at X35 Earthwalker hope to see much more from Gears of war 4 in the future. What we can expect to see in the future though… is the ‘Earth Walk!’
Gears of war 4 decided to continue the campaign tradition by making sure that it isn’t easy to beat. Seriously, Gears of war 4’s campaign is very ridiculously hard. Many have found it too difficult. Some are still stuck near the start because of those stupid DR-1 robots that continuously walk towards you with the overkill. That’s right it’s that hard but a good challenge and certainly not impossible. X35 Earthwalker himself will provide some advice here as well.
The start of the campaign has been considered as one of the hardest parts of the game, especially because of that one level where a ship drops of DR-1’s and shepherds and you have limited space to run and take cover. Now normally this would’t be too much of a problem but since it’s insane difficulty expect to die a lot. Let’s explain just how hard Gears of war 4 campaign is on insane difficulty. One burst of the hammerburst will bring you almost half dead. One shot from the boltok will bring you near full red. The lancer can kill you within 2 seconds. One shot from the sniper rifle kills you. That’s right, it doesn’t matter where it hits you. If that sniper round hits your foot, well you still are dead. Now you can see where the problem is. A normal swarm drone can literally can kill you within one second. So when those DR-1’s with there abundance of health keep advancing towards you, constantly shooting the overkill (which is stronger than the gnasher) and Shepherds sort of staying back and spraying their enforcer smgs at you, all of a sudden the level near the start becomes incredibly difficult.
It gets much worse and frustrating. The enemies in Gears of war 4, specifically those stupid swarm grenadiers, are far more aggressive than the enemies from the other Gears of war games. Some enemies are actually fearless. For example during X35 Earthwalker’s livestream in a certain level on the way to the hive, there was a certain swarm grenadier that always rushes towards X35’s location in attempt to try and unload a shotgun round into his face. Well why doesn’t he just shot it before it comes near? It’s insane difficulty meaning you do much less damage than normal, also enemies are never alone there are three drones nearby who keep shooting at you and don’t forget how quickly an enemy can kill you and it’s worse when there is a swarm sniper in the back watching you closely. It gets even better. With our low amounts of health, the gnasher shotgun (over powered since Gears of war 2) kills you real quick. Also one melee hit from a drone sized enemy instantly kills you. You need to truly rely on cover, aim and timing.
If only we could leave it as that. Well we can’t. Anyone who knows Gears of war know that the humanoid enemies are technically the easy ones to deal with. It’s the not so humanoid ones that really shake things up. Imagine being in cover with your bots and firing at a group of swarm drones. Then all of a sudden a small group of Juvies start rushing towards you. Now it’s horrible. Juvies are the worst on insane difficulty as they only need to slap you twice to kill you. They can dodge your bullets and even mantle kick you which stuns you and pretty much guarantees your death. You may have to wait until your health recovers as you took some damage from being shot. It forces you to make a choice, kill the Juvies quick before they get close while staying in cover, or run away from Juvies and dodge bullets. Both can end in death. Pouncers make things real complex as they force you to take cover, but if any juvies show up then you have to run, but Pouncers fling things at you which do heavy damage.
So as long as you stay alive all will be well. Wrong! Your bots actually matter in this game. They don’t stay alive forever anymore. When that pouncer jumped on Del, X35 thought he would be fine but nope. Del died and back to checkpoint. If your bot is downed and no one saves that bot then they die and back to checkpoint. So keep your bots alive, especially when it comes to Snatchers. One of the best advice we can give any gamers for Gears of War 4 campaign is that you must try and keep a sniper or similar weapon around at all times as much as possible for handle some areas in the game. A sniper, torque bow, embar, boltok really do help out. They do heavy damage per bullet and all capable of head shotting and killing enemies easily. Especially when they are so far away and sticking your head out for more than 2 seconds can be real risky at times. The up side is that your bots have quite a bit of health and can be useful at times so don’t ever feel guilty about letting your bots take some of the heat for you; however please note that enemies will always target you first, even if your allies are nearby. We have seen Juvies run past all the bots just to get at the player and kill them.
Another thing to take into account is knowing when to use heavy weapons like the buzzkill and muncher. Normally those weapons will destroy everything but in insane difficulty those heavy weapons will get you killed. This is because it takes a little bit of time for you to drop back into cover with your heavy weapon and enemies can still hit you during that time. Pick your moments. If it’s a horde of juries then a buzzkill will tear through the whole of them but if it’s standard drones then that might just be a big mistake.
So let’s summarise some stuff here. Always stick to cover. Use your bots to your advantage. Take snipers and explosive weapon wielding enemies seriously. Always try to keep a sniper type weapon with you. Know when to revive your bots. Never let any enemy come close. Be careful with heavy weapons. Most importantly just have fun, don’t let it get to you. Don’t be one of those foolish people who break their controllers. If you die, which you will (a lot), then laugh at yourself. Follow X35 Earthwalker on Mixer and twitter to know when he will continue his insane difficulty livestream. Whether you are good at campaign or not, it doesn’t matter but what does matter is that you do the ‘Earth Walk!’
