Missions range from the standard fare to unique takes on inter-faction interaction (say that five times fast). The Sky Shield mission tasks you with assisting Jim Raynor and Terran Forces. In Unleashed, you can relocate your base — literally shift and move your Nexus — to avoid interruptions in mineral collection. Many of the cinematics and voice recordings have been completed or are seriously underway at this point, but no official release date has been revealed.
Things have opened up in Metal Gear Solid V, even more so than Ground Zeroes, and the Metal Gear formula is adapting around it. That is not to say you may no longer walk through a stronghold in a cardboard box, but it seems far less likely than ever that you would do that given all the options at your disposal. Do you explore the area and find your way to the objective, relying on your intel and your wits? Do you interrogate an enemy soldier on where to go and then leave the enemy stronghold to re-enter from a different angle? Or do you cause a ruckus, get the objective, and then call your extraction chopper to high-tail it out? The choice, as is a bit new for the series, is yours. Metal Gear Solid V is, needless to say, doing a lot of new things. But from the looks of it, everything new is done quite well and is built off of something reliably old. With this latest installment in the series, Metal Gear Solid V looks to be a very different game than before but nevertheless looks good for it so far, all while running at 1080p and 60 frames-per-second on a PlayStation 4.
Gears Tactics, as a prequel, doesn’t answer any of the questions Gears 5 left us with, but is still a tale worth exploring, whether it be for the new characters or the additional context the game provides to the universe. It will also provide many hours of gameplay. Gears Tactics will last players between 20-30 hours, depending on the difficulty. It’s a lengthy campaign with an additional Veteran Mode available upon your first completion. Unfortunately, not all activities in Gears Tactics Strategy Game Tactics are created equally. That length is split between main and side missions. Main missions are by far the best with impeccable design that forces players to study the battlefield and make smart decisions. It’s here that the gameplay and design come together to create truly fantastic moments that rival the best encounters in the main series. Boss fights particularly stand out as moments that require players to balance positioning, ability usage and range to stay alive and claim victory. Gears Tactics is at its best when playing these missions.
In addition to these universal options, players can effectively use skills to boost and stretch skill points. Each of the five classes have skills that add much-needed action points. For example, the Sniper’s chain Shot skill will award the shooter AP for hits; the Support can use Empower to grant bonus points to a squad-mate get their own points for reviving a friend with the Encourage passive ability; and the Vanguard’s Breach skill gives a point to any soldier canny enough to bring down a breached enemy. Spend some time exploring the skill trees to suss out what options will generate the most action points without costing on combat skills, and think about this when setting up team composition – it may be worth having a Support who, while not a damage dealer on their own, can keep every other soldier firing that bit longer with bonus AP. More points means more gunfire – keep the heat up and the battle is the player’s to
While getting around is important, it is vital that the player considers not just that they are moving, but where they are moving. Having soldiers sprint around the field at random is more of a risk than anything; chaotic movement just means more opportunities to get caught alone. A solid first use of points is getting some elevated overwatch. Try shifting a soldier into a position that will allow them to watch over the battlefield and throw them into overwatch. Doing so will lower the risk of more mobile soldiers getting surrounded – making the center of the field a danger to cross can make the opponent think twice about getting into a flanking position. For the remaining soldiers, it is worth spending points to form some triangular traps. Use some points to move and create overlapping fields of fire that cover up the enemy deployments before blasting away. This will pay out in forcing enemy movement away from your troops – by threatening multiple sides of a piece of cover, players can force a well defended enemy to displace, often scoring some hits for that well-positioned overwatch soldier. Importantly, save some points to avoid bunching up. While it is entirely possible to take advantage of a good flank with multiple units, be sure to reserve an action point to put some space between the soldiers you have making the hit. More than one solider side by side is a golden opportunity for a grenade, which can be even more catastrophic if the cover itself gets taken out. By using action points to get some overwatch, triangulate on enemy positions, and keep spacey, players can keep a battlefield handily under cont