Introduction

Gears Tactics is the very latest addition to the feverishly popular Gears of War franchise, and a refreshing spin on the IP. While every other GoW game you've played is a third-person or hybrid third+first person shooter, "Tactics" is a turn-based action strategy game in which you play God by commanding a squad of heroes who embark on missions to clear out enemies and solve challenges within a level—similar to what the XCOM series offers.

What makes Gears Tactics unique is that the squad isn't confined to a grid. You can command individual characters to different areas of the map to work on different objectives, or combine all of them to multiply force. When in combat, each character can shoot, take cover, or automatically fire at any target in its line of sight (oversight). Each character can also revive fallen squad mates. Taking out enemies with certain skills yields additional action points, there's also a glory-kill mechanism that yields additional points. Gears Tactics lets you build your own squad by choosing between five character classes, each with its own skill tree, customizable with mods, armors, and weapon modifications.



Set in the GoW universe and a prequel to the original, the Gears Tactics campaign follows Gabe Diaz, father of Kait Diaz from Gears 5, who embarks on a secret mission to search and destroy Locust scientist Ukkon, who's responsible for developing deadly monsters for the Locust army.

Developed by Splash Damage and The Coalition for Xbox Game Studios, Gears Tactics leverages the immensely versatile Unreal Engine 4 and takes advantage of DirectX 12 exclusively. It can be fairly taxing on your machine with all details cranked up. Gear Tactics is one of the first titles to support Variable Rate Shading. In this performance test article we put the game through our huge selection of graphics cards at three resolutions and also include a mini-review at the end, whether the game is worth paying full price for or you had better wait for a discount.