First Impressions: Gears 5 (Xbox One X)

Gears 5 has problems. You only need to Google ‘Gears 5 bugs’ to see this and for a game with this much hype and marketing, it can be considered unacceptable. Having not played any of the multi-player yet we can’t comment on that but we have played a couple of hours worth of the single player campaign so here is our first impressions.

An Opening Recap

Gears 5 begins with a recap video of the events of Gears 4. This was actually a relief as truth be told, the events of that game were lost to memory. It’s short enough but hits all the major talking points of the previous game bringing everyone up to speed.

The Story

At first Gears 5’s story is pretty standard stuff, continuing on from the events of Gears 4 with very little fanfare. All the same characters doing the same things. It’s not until Chapter III of Act I that the story really gets going. However, even with that it’s a little too familiar. It’s hard to say if it’s going to get any better or worse at this stage but the interest is there.

That familiar feeling

If, like us, you’ve been playing Gears games from the start, you will feel right at home here. The controls are safe and very familiar. Muscle memory will take over and it’s comforting. There are no major changes here, it plays like a Gears game with some of the added extras from Gears 4. It will never not be fun chainsawing your way through bodies.

A Very Pretty Game

On Xbox One X, Gears 5 looks amazing, we didn’t really notice any visual bugs until Act II where things began to fall apart. Before that though, it’s all in the detail and Gears 5 has very impressive detail. The last Chapters of Act I, where it’s just a huge street battle akin to events in earlier games is mind-blowing.

In turn, character models also look great. Moving and acting like human beings and the voice acting is top stuff.

Bugs

As we said at the start of this first impression, the game has its problems. Now, we didn’t notice anything until Act II but what we experienced here is simply unacceptable for a game of this calibre. At first, it was minor blip as we were unable to progress without the AI being there. However, he had disappeared. After running about for a moment he suddenly appeared out of thin air allowing progress.

Then the big one happened…

While trying to get through a door (using Jack to spark a generator) nothing happened. The door would not open and there was no way to progress. While looking to see if something had been missed, the game suddenly crashed, going back to the main menu. Upon going to continue the game, it was discovered that our progress had been reset 3 Chapters. We could no longer continue from the point the game had crashed and instead would have to replay several Chapters again.

This pretty much killed any interest in continuing to play the game for now. What’s the point if this happens again?