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!’