First, you may want to do a quick read on this.
So, if you have read my Gears 4 review you might have read the bit about how some games have a death wish of wanting to be "that game."
Well, that's Gears 5 for you.
I was still reeling under the exhilaration of having played Gears 4 just a little over a month ago and had loaded up Gears 5 with barely contained excitement.
An excitement that evaporated when within a couple of minutes of starting I got stuck. Stuck. In a Gears game. Unbelievable. If you haven't played it then without going into details let me tell you it involves looking through a crack in a wall.
But being a good little gamer, I gathered the tattered remains of my gaming faith and plodded on. Later, much later, in the red sand location, the same thing happened. This time I got stuck and looked and looked and scanned and looked around 360 degrees, thanked the powers that be that 23 years ago I decided to shave my head or right now I would be pulling the stuff out in huge clumps, gave up, and, oh the disgrace of it, had to look it up on YouTube. Most people make a big deal about the weakness of the Death Star. I don't care about that. What gets me is the bloody ventilation ducts. Never liked ventilation ducts. Ducts are the ultimate architectural insult. Necessary but a better alternative is needed. Bloody ducts.
But like the Snatcher in Gears 4, these were two isolated and minor annoyances. Even though there was no more getting stuck in the game, it just did not feel like a Gears game anymore.
Here is a brief list of subjective peeves:
- The common law sin of all open world games: You have to frequently refer to the map. A map. A gosh darned map in a Gears game. A wannabe, completely unnecessary, pseudo-open world in a Gears game.
- Upgrades through Collectibles in a Gears game that have no impact on gameplay but keep popping up everywhere.
- A skill tree in a Gears game. Not for you, for the darned robot. The collectibles upgrade the robot which you can completely ignore because the game is 100% playable without its assistance.
- Side missions, argh, in a Gears game.
- Choice in a Gears game. This one is the Idiot Leader of the game. How Gears 6 will continue after this unless it has access to your last save game from Gears 5, I don't know.
Why? One solitary inquiring mind wants to know why? Why after four games did they decide to ape "that game" that is not a Gears game?
There are downright bad games that you suffer through because, fundamentally, you are an idiot. There are games with bad controls. There are games with bizarre camera angles. There are games that send a clear message of "F you, I am what I am, take me or leave me, see if I care."
Gears 5 is one those games that does everything except hiss back at you. It seems safe but at the same time you feel it would be best not to provoke it.
I wanted to like Gears 5. I did like it. But just when I was happy that the aggravating bit was over, minutes after the current objective the game threw me back into the mess.
It was one of those "complicated" relationships where you desperately want to like the girl, but the girl's only outstanding quality is throwing pointless tantrums.
You can blame her upbringing or her peers or society at large but what remains in the end is that the girl throws tantrums for no reason. And this girl is not amenable to therapy. You can only like her if tantrums are your thing.
Here is hoping that Gears goes back to being Gears and stops trying to be "that game."
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