Tactical-o-banana-rama

"I Got a tactic for you.  It's called
a Rocket Propelled Grenade."

Lately Ive been watching clips for Gears Tactics and its gotten me super pumped for it.  There are so many things about it that are just Pro Gamer and just super fun about it.

I love Gears games, the simple fun of running between cover and snapping over to pummel someone with Lancer Rounds before rushing in to curbstomp them.  Even better is the satisfaction of using a Torque Bow and getting a headshot, which is an instant kill on most enemies, but then to penetrate and hit someone else with the explosive bolt is amazing.

For the longest time though I'm thinking to myself that this would make a great tactics game.  The movement between cover, the layouts of all the levels, the different methods of attack each enemy has... it's basically a tactics game in itself.

Gladly someone somewhere has the same mindset.  They've kept the majority of the game the same, giving you the same sort of feeling of overwhelming power and fear on equal measure.

The game is set 10 years before the first Gears game, throwing back to a point where the grubs are really getting a roll and bringing out their bigger and better monstrosities.  Urdak is the boss and he is making things like Brumaks mounted with gigantic machine guns and rocket salvos, and Corpsers with armour plating over their several limbs, both familiar enemies and big pains in the arses.

The interesting things come from their own innovations.  Compared to a game like XCOM, Gears Tactics changes things by dropping the "one shot a turn" for "shoot for each action you have".  Then you have an extra action to go with that which makes your options become exponential, especially if you want to run in for an execution which provides the whole squad an additional action.

Then quality of life improvements are great, particularly the Locust "practically instant turn", where they all kinda move and shoot at the same time, staggering out some actions just so that you can track what's happened and how it affects you.

After that, it sounds like a tonne of fun and I can't wait to get my hands on it once it comes to console.

"My Soldier has no nose."
"How does he smell?"
"Terrible."

Speaking of XCOM, they just announced their own spinoff game: Chimera Squad.

What's funny is that I've been brainstorming a very similar idea over the last few months, having a small cast of characters that the player can follow and fight with over the course of a series of story missions.

I had characters based on different classes, with cameos from all sources.  My favourite character was Damien Santiago, a character based on the survivor of the XCOM: Enemy Unknown Tutorial.  He would appear as a Heavy Soldier who lives out his days on a Resistance base and joins the main characters on their journey.  He would be wearing his old XCOM uniform, worn and torn after years of use, and his old squads Dog Tags sewn into the opposite breast, though he has to recollect the dog tags throughout the game.

He even had his own mission where he has a flashback of Operation Devils Moon, recreating that mission and then expanding it out into a longer term story, telling more of a canon experience of when his boots his the ground and started that fight in Germany, and how his team worked their way through town fending off aliens.

Chimera Squad is a bit more free form like the mainline games, having a more diverse cast of alien hybrid characters, and a gameplay more similar to a police raid than stealth ambush.  Largely the game seems to be a reboot of XCOM: Apocalypse, kinda the direction that they were leaning towards with the Multicultural Cityscape, just with a pared down cast of characters.  Though I thought I heard there was room for a Character Pool, so there may be room for my own characters as well.

A pig and a rock lady start walking out of a restaurant.
They turn to the duck and say "He's got the bill."

Part of my inspiration came from another game, Mutant Year Zero.  A very good game about a post apocalyptic setting where your main characters are Stalkers, soldier-like characters who traverse the local area to scavenge for materials, and cull down threats to the Ark, a society full of people trying to survive.

You play the Mutant Stalkers who learn all sorts of different abilities that the player can take advantage of, from sprouting wings to gain a height advantage, to being able to ram into someone and knocking them flat on their arse for a turn or two while everyone pumps ammunition into them.

The parts I really liked was the stealth mechanic.  You don't move everyone individually turn after turn.  You choose a leader and tell your team of 3 to follow you around the map as you explore, scavenge, and choose a starting point for your ambush.  You pick off enemies with your silenced weapon, and once you feel like you're down to a managable point you can go loud and hose down the boss of the level.  Given the different abilities you earn and the limited number of them that you can equip, you can have great fun just working your way through the game.

"I can't see my face when I'm with you"

The developers created a second game using the same mechanics with a different setting, telling a story about a divided United States and countering a group using highly Augmented Anonymous Soldiers, an aspect that kinda lets the game down.

Everything else about it was really good, using the same combat mechanics as Mutant Year Zero with a few minor tweaks allowing the troopers to be modified to the players preference and creating some good combinations for combat.

But aside from that, the story feels a little flat and your place in it is rather... inconsequential.  You perform all these missions, saving VIP's and Infiltrating outposts all over, while the story kinda happens around you and the consequences of your actions really affecting you.   So if the developers create an expansion for Corruption 2029, I'm hoping they really kick up the gears and focus on their story and motives.

That's neither here or there.  I'm talking inspiration here.  And with all these really good, really entertaining tactics games roaming about, I'm hoping that a certain other company with a video game based from their tabletop game actually take some notes and start making their own Video Game RPG.

I'm talking Iron Kingdoms here, guys.  I know they have a Warmachine Tactics Video game, but to see a story drawn out from that RPG with all that gorgeous art and styling, it'd be fantastic, especially with a Cameo or two here and there.

As it stands though, I'm very excited to see Gears Tactics and XCOM: Chimera Squad to come to consoles.  They're coming to PC at the end of the month but likely going to Console by the end of the year, and that's what I'm really keen on.  The only question is how long can I wait before I start watching playthroughs and spoiling the game for myself?

Can't wait, won't wait, probably ruining it for myself.