Gears of War 4 Guide

Gears of War 4 is The Coalition's first full, new Gears of War game. And it feels like a good mix of old and new, capturing the characters and gameplay moments that made the series feel so impactful in the first place while advancing a new set of characters, a new, well-justified story, and the sort of multiplayer options you'd expect to see.Gears of War 4 is set years after the events of 3, where Marcus Fenix sat down, took his do-rag off, and made you think that the Locust threat was more or less over. Gears 4 puts you in the boots of Marcus' son, JD Fenix. It seems that the situation has changed since we last checked in on this universe, as the younger Fenix and his colleague Del have abandoned their post, left the Gears, and taken up with some "outsiders." The COG may have successfully fought off the Locust, but in the years that followed they seem to have become quite the oppressors themselves, with robots known as DBs doing most of the heavy lifting as they attempt to rebuild the planet and repopulate the race. It's politically muddy in ways that the previous trilogy would occasional hint at, but now you're seeing the effects of that trilogy spun out, 25 years later. It's a good swap that makes the good guys the bad guys, as the game opens with your crew of outsiders raiding a COG construction site. The game doesn't spend much time actually exploring this new flip, though, as a new/old threat of creatures that come to be known as "the Swarm" rear their ugly head around halfway through the game. While the airdrops of robot troops made the game's opening chapters feel at least a little different, the Swarm come off as the Locust troops of the previous games but with somewhat better AI. They'll flank you, they'll hop over your cover to knock you back, but they'll also just post up behind something and take mindless shots in your direction. And they'll occasionally emerge from nests that look suspiciously like the Locust emergence holes. So the bulk of the game, then, just feels like more Gears of War with some new unspeakable creatures thrown in along the way, including a "snatcher" who sucks up downed players and traps them inside the creature's stomach until other players put enough rounds into the enemy, forcing it to puke the player back up.

There's some neat stuff in there, but I was definitely left wishing that the campaign didn't cruise back into its comfort zone quite so quickly. It also must be said that the game is really leaning into its status as the first step in a new Gears of War saga, sometimes at the expense of its own story. The world is interesting and I like its cast of characters, both new and old. Cool things happen along the way that enrich the Gears of War universe. But Gears of War 4 is mostly setup with very little in the way of resolution. The ending moments feels like they're missing an encounter or two. You can play the campaign cooperatively with another person, or you can dive right into the game's multiplayer modes. The competitive multiplayer brings new weapons into the conflict, but that doesn't mean that it isn't still a map full of bulky, shotgun-toting fighters who love to roll up behind you and splatter you into a mess before you know what's happening. This is the fifth Gears of War game, and by this point you probably already know if you're into that sort of thing or not. I used to be, but as the competitive community developed and got better and sneaking up behind you and shotgunning you down, I fell out of love with this mode in the game. On one hand, it's a shame that this facet of the game isn't more inviting to new players.

The most obvious of these is what the entire game is built around: cover-based shooting. The mechanic deserves far more credit than it gets and Gears 4 shows why. Each level is expertly balanced so that it’s imperative to hide effectively, and that cover-seeking tactic never gets old. From the excellent prologue to the final fight, it’s constantly satisfying whacking your shoulder against the terrain. The Coalition clearly realises that Gears is at its best when you’re engaged in all-out war so goes out of its way to deliver just that. It’s never over-bearing or overdone, but you’re rarely too far away from another firefight. When the enemy threat comes, it does so with fury – it’s what you want from a blockbuster. There is a slight discrepancy in terms of your opponent, mind. Most of us are familiar with the Locust Horde after four outings against them. Wiped out at the end of Gears Of War 3, there was always going to have to be a changing of the guard. Enter robots. Certainly not the worst decision The Coalition could’ve taken and the story behind it is well told it’s just not as fun to shoot a machine in the head. The early stages of Gears 4 tend to get bogged down in shootouts with chunks of metal, and it takes the wind out of its sails. There’s such a deliberate pace to Gears online that you can’t help but warm to it – even if it has been sped up a touch. New additions such as the ability to reach over cover and grab your enemy (before pulling them over said cover and stabbing them to death) up the ante higher still. The learning curve has been reintroduced, and while it won’t take skilled players long to master, this is the perfect balance between then and now. Although, yes, the shotgun will still be most people’s weapon of choice. Gears 4 features a brand new enemy force: The Swarm. Unfortunately they look, act, sound, fight, absorb unholy amounts of lead, and probably smell exactly like the Locust, the series’ classic foes. This prolonged déjà vu is yet another way in which the game feels stale, and it reveals a disconnect in the writing: the characters fail to make that incredibly obvious connection, one every player will realize in the game’s first chapter, until late in the story. Other new enemies, like the soldier droids employed by Jinn, are even worse bullet sponges than the Swocust (I came up with that), though they’ll occasionally do something interesting like charge at you and self-destruct when they take too much damage. Considering how repetitive the stop-and-pop gunfights can get, being forced out of cover by a lumbering kamikaze robot is almost a welcome change.

Gears of War 4 is more Gears of War. Luckily, Gears of War kicks ass. The newest game doesn’t offer many surprises, but it’s still enjoyable to play. Like the earlier games in the series, you control a beefy dude (or lady!) from a third-person perspective. You still take cover, still hunker down and “roadie run” from place to place, and still carefully time your active reloads to fill each clip with extra-powerful bullets. You still shoot at big, squishy enemies that burst open like gore pinatas. You still carve monsters open with chainsaws. After four games starring the same group of COG soldiers, Gears of War 4 passes the narrative torch to a younger generation. Instead of playing as Marcus Fenix and his crew, you control his son, JD Fenix, along with JD’s friends, Kait Diaz and Del Walker. The new cast is baby-faced compared with the grizzled old gang, opting for eyebrow rings and dyed hair in place of out-of-fashion do-rags. They’ve got more personality too, with the sort of constant quips and jokes you might expect from an Uncharted game. Looking at the protagonists, you would think Gears of War was ready to transition into a new age, but within the story, these characters actually inherit many of the problems of their parents. Some of the dialogue hints at some interesting motivations for the characters’ rebellion. For example, Kait notes that she has more purpose in life than to repopulate the planet, as the COG would have mandated. Unfortunately, Gears of War 4 never really explores many of the good ideas it presents. Mostly, they’re just an excuse to give you more things to shoot.It’s a good thing, then, that shooting is Gears of War’s strong suit.  Before a Horde match begins, players choose a class: Soldier, Scout, Heavy, Sniper, or Engineer. Each class has a specific strength: the engineer, for example, can repair fortifications, and the heavy packs a punch. This decision means teams will immediately begin negotiating who will take which role. I was bummed whenever I was stuck with a class I didn’t want to play, but I still appreciated that Gears encourages players to communicate with one another to get the job done.Players can further customize Horde by equipping something called “Gear Cards,” which can set bounties or give players special abilities and bonuses for the match. You might equip a card that gives you a small health boost, or perhaps a bigger ammo reserve. If you’re playing as a sniper, you might pick a bounty for landing headshots.

You might give yourself a bounty that pays out if you can get 100 assault rifle kills. More cards can be equipped at higher levels, which the player gains by accruing XP during matches. Gear cards further influence how you approach a match, making the experience about more than just defeating waves as quickly as possible. Before a match begins, players must set up a large chest called the “Fabricator,” which can 3D print anything from turrets to ammo. Fabricators can be set up anywhere, and they serve as the team’s base of operations. Depending on where you set up, you might have a totally different experience on a map you’ve played a dozen times. You might decide to bunker up inside a warehouse for added structural defenses, or you might decide to set up shop in a high vantage point with the best line of sight. In addition to regular boss rounds, Horde also occasionally introduces challenges. Challenges are special shared tasks like needing to clear the round in a set period of time or tasking players with killing 10 consecutive enemies within a small window. It’s stuff like this that makes me hopeful that Horde 3.0 will have some longevity; there’s so much to consider and play around with.

Gears games have always been about taking cover. A third-person camera hangs just over your character’s shoulder, and with the press of a button, you can stick to cover. Once there, you can do a variety of things. You can mantle over the cover, or you can pull an enemy over to your side and execute them. You can pop out and aim, or you can wildly blind-fire. Like its predecessors, Gears 4 manages to add weight and heft to small interactions like going into cover, so that you feel the force of your character hitting the concrete. Those animations, combined with the up-close camera, gives the game a remarkable a sense of physicality that you cannot find in most other shooters. Gears of War 4’s weapons also capture that kinetic vigor.

The chainsaw bayonet is a violent earthquake of exploding bits; the Marzka semi-automatic rifle connects like a satisfying fist-bump. The new game introduces a few other new toys to play with, most of which make for fine additions to the Gears of War repertoire. There’s the EMBAR, a charge-shot sniper rifle that must be fired with a specific cadence, lest it overheat. Then there’s the aptly-named Overkill, a shotgun that fires two shots: one when you pull the trigger, and a second when you let go of it. Despite Gears’ already-formidable weapons line-up, inclusions like the EMBAR and Overkill not only feel novel, I’m still having fun with them after dozens of hours. Gears of War still has, hands-down, the most gratifying headshot in any video game. There’s something morbidly perfect about a burst skull in Gears: that tactile crunch is like bursting bloody bubble-wrap, perversely satisfying because it’s so gory and gross.Playing on normal difficulty, I found that I would regularly run out of ammo for my standard weapons. That snag would prompt me to pick up the enemy’s arsenal and make do. It’s a small design decision that pushed me to change up how I was playing, but it rarely shook up the overall experience. Encounters against standard enemies often played out in the same way regardless of which weapons I was using: I’d stick to the same cover and pickoff enemies one by one. Combat briefly became more interesting whenever Gears 4 threw specialized enemies at me. The “Pouncer,” for example, is an armored beast that carries itself as if it were a large cat. If the player gets too close, it’ll pounce and pin you down. Hence the name. The only way to kill it is to shoot its weak spot, which naturally resides on its hard-to-see belly. Another neat enemy are the scorpion-esque Snatchers. Snatchers have an obvious weak spot, but it doubles as a pouch they can use to transport things. Unlucky players mightget sucked into the Snatcher’s stomach, and the rest of the team will need to shoot the pouch before the Snatcher makes off with the player. Enemies like the pouncer and the snatcher are aggressive, and can quickly put a player into a vulnerable state. The smartest way to combat them is to stay mobile, seeking out cover on-the-go.