Gears of War it is undoubtedly the longest-running and profitable Microsoft IP. The first chapter saw the debut way back in 2006, thirteen years ago, both on Xbox 360 and PC. It was one of the first games to use Microsoft's new libraries, DirectX 10. After a long time, Microsoft tries again, and during the E3 2019 conference, held at the Microsoft Theater, Phil Spencer announced what will be the fifth chapter of this timeless saga, that is Gears 5.
Microsoft has released the tech test for the highly anticipated fifth chapter of the Gears Of War saga, out on 10 September of this year, only for Xbox Game Pass subscribers or pre-ordered users. The tech demo is available on both Xbox One and PC, and we've tried both of them to understand the differences.
The tech test, both on PC and Xbox One, has a total weight of about 11 GB, so nothing expensive and difficult to download. The final version of the game will obviously be much more consistent, we remind you that Gears of War 4 on PC occupied about 120 GB, and this fifth one will certainly not be outdone.
The engine on which Gears 5 is developed is the same one used for the fourth chapter, that is Unreal Engine 4. This graphics engine is able to return an excellent visual rendering while lying at the same time an excellent framerate, almost always stable and without excessive drops even during the most excited scenes.
Before putting our hand to Verus mode, the pivotal PVP mode of the entire saga, the tech test will offer us a short training in which we will learn all the game mechanics.
The Coalition, or the developers of Gears 5, have tried to make the multiplayer mode accessible to everyone, in order to please the eSport community and, at the same time, not to disappoint all the other fans of the saga who play online only as a pastime.
As soon as we enter the Versus sector we will find ourselves in front of two proposals: an Arcade dedicated to casual players and a classified one. Arcade mode is very reminiscent of the classics Team Deathmatch, where two groups of people face each other across the map in trying to get to 50 kills first, in order to win the game. This type of game is extremely fast and fun, because there is no combat tactic, no points to conquer or defend: just run along the map, kill every opponent that comes in front of you and try to survive as long as possible. In this mode, each available character will have different weapons and characteristics. The teams will consist of 5 players each, for a total of 10, and the first team to reach fifty kills will win the match. During the game, each elimination that we perform will allow us to collect skulls, to be used to unlock a new weapon during the game.
The ranked mode, in this tech test, is divided into two types of games: King Of The Hill and Escalation.
The first is the fastest and a bit more hectic. On the battlefield, strategic points will materialize that we will have to either defend or conquer, in order to accumulate the points necessary for the final victory. Each game is played best of three rounds and the duration is not extremely excessive.
Escalation is instead a mode designed more for eSports and offers a more tactical and reasoned gameplay than Re Della Collina. Three areas of interest will be generated on the map which, depending on the role our team plays, we will have to defend or conquer. If we conquer all three zones, it will be possible to completely annihilate the team by ending the game. The escalation match will last well 7 round, and at every interlude both teams will be able to place additional weapons or explosives at specific points on the map, in order to have an advantage over the opponents. The matches on Esclation are quite long, in fact a game can easily last more than 40 minutes. Getting to the end while keeping your nerve will be a difficult undertaking.
In ranked mode there will be no more classes like in arcade mode, and each character will have the basic equipment which includes: Lancer as the main weapon and Gnasher as equipment for close combat. All the other weapons will be conquered during the course of the game, using and spending the skulls that we will acquire following each kill.
District and Training Ground are the two maps in which we can delight in this Gears 5 Tech Test. Both are unpublished and never seen before, presented a certain care in level design and stylistic. Both of the game maps offer a large number of shelters and covers that will allow us to outwit the enemy in order to catch him from behind to kill him. We encountered huge problems during the respawn phases: our character will often regenerate in the midst of crossfire or near the enemy team, with a quite frustrating result.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, we tried Gears 5 on both Xbox One X and PC. The technical sector of the new title of The Coalition is truly amazing, presenting well-kept environments rich in details. The animations are really well done and give a very convincing sense of immersion. The characters are well defined and cared for in every aspect. Both Xbox One and PC have full support for the HDR 10 standard, in order to have even more defined images, rich in details and with a much higher contrast and brightness peaks, in order to make the gaming experience even closer to reality. On Xbox One, the game runs smoothly at 60 frames per second, but that's not all that glitters now. To keep this high, the developers of Gears 5 used dynamic resolution. Depending on the scene we are in and the load that the game will have on our console, the graphics engine will vary the resolution in order to always have a constant 60 FPS. The resolution range varies from 1440P up to 2160P. When the resolution is below 4K, the engine will perform an upscaling in real time to reach 2160P.
On PC, the visual rendering of Gears 5 is not very far from what we have been able to admire on Xbox One X. The image is much cleaner and sharper and, unlike what happens on the Microsoft home console, we can choose whether to activate or deactivate dynamic resolution. We tested Gears 5 with a machine consisting of:
- AMD Ryzen 3700X;
- ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero;
- 4 x 8GB Corsair Vengeane LED 3200 Mhz;
- Asus Turbo Geforce RTX 2080Ti;
- Samsung 970 Evo 512 GB.
The title turns out to be quite heavy even for a Geforce RTX 2080 Ti, but it is still well optimized, presenting lots of graphics options in order to make the game extremely scalable and adaptable to every machine. For our tests we used the integrated benchmark, which simulates a short mission at the foot of a snowy mountain, setting all Settings to ultra. In the benchmark there are many collisions and particle effects in order to make the video card suffer as much as possible and give us a result as truthful as possible. At 2160P, or 4K, we scored an average of 52 FPS with our Geforce RTX 2080 Ti, while in 1440P we reached 96 FPS; in FullHD, finally, we reached 111. In 4K the title manages to undermine even the flagship door of nvidia, but still manages to maintain a framerate that makes our experience playable. With a few small tricks, however, we manage to get to the much sought-after 60 FPS. At first glance Gears 5 looks extremely heavy, but the multiplayer side isn't that resource hungry. The two maps in the tech test, despite being rich in details, have small dimensions and therefore contain a mass of data that is not so heavy to process. Compared to what we could see in the benchmark, the versus mode contains a much more limited number of visual effects, so as to favor a much higher number of frames per second.
In both platforms, the Gears 5 game servers, even if they had some connection problems in the first phase, have a 60 Hz tick rate, in order to solve the problems related to the impact of the blows towards our opponents.
This Gears 5 tech test gave us a nice taste of what multiplayer will be for the new title of The Coalition. The game has been structured with both esports and casual players in mind. This is demonstrated by the introduction of the arcade mode, a type of game intended for those who want to enjoy the title without feeling the weight of ranked games. On Gears 5, King of the Hill is back in great vogue, a mode already present in the fourth chapter, flanked by Escalation, a classified competitive mode designed specifically for eSports. Technically the title, both on Xbox One and PC, shows an excellent level of detail while always maintaining a high number of frames per second. The Microsoft home console manages to maintain 60 FPS thanks to the adoption of dynamic resolution, which varies from 1440P to 2160P. The PC version is very well optimized and offers many options in order to make the title as scalable as possible and adapt it as best as possible to any machine. We remind you that Gears 5 will be available from 10 September of the current year for PC and Xbox One.
► Gears 5 is a Shooter type game developed by The Coalition and published by Microsoft Studios for PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X, the video game was released on 10/09/2019
Gears 5 is a beautiful game that cannot be missing from your collection: we have decided to evaluate it with a 90%, if you are interested in learning more you can read the Gears 5 review
