I’ve actually had quite a few classic gnasher strafing shotgun battles so far. Something that was sorely missing from gears 4.
Gears 4 was a ridiculous bouncing like a lunatic fest and it was just way over the top with it. I like that they’ve toned down the bouncing in 5.
You can still do a bounce or two to get the upper hand when fighting multiple enemies by yourself, but it’s not the only damn thing people are using now, which is a return to classic gears play 1>3.
I know this will be an unpopular opinion for all the maniac wall bouncers from gears 4, but that was never what made gears, gears. Gears was always about skillful strafing shotgun battles.
Onto gripes… My problems with 5s multiplayer are:
- delay before you can fire after coming out of a roadie run has gotten me killed more times than I can count. I can’t get used to the delay and never expect to have a full second delay before I can shoot the gnasher.
- some games are lancer fests. I enjoy a good lancer battle from time to time, but when the enemy team is doing nothing but lancering and you’re getting crossed from every conceivable direction, it’s very frustrating.
- footsteps are broken. You only hear the enemy when they’re like one step away from gib range. It really needs fixing.
So whilst there are issues, I feel like this game has the potential to give us the classic gears gnasher battles (from gears 1>3, when the game wasn’t just bouncing all over the place and spinning the camera like a madman).
The strafing battles take skill and are really rewarding. The thing that is making them a bit rare right now is the new verticality to the levels, which results in you getting lancered down whilst trying to have a gnasher battle.