Gears 5 came out a little over one year ago. Over the past time, The Coalition has been rapidly working on a video game.
Always releasing new media content for her co-op modes. Synchronously - prepared a version of the fifth Gears for the next generation of Xbox consoles. At first it seemed that the creators would only get by with a patch that improves the optimization and performance of the game, however, in fact, The Coalition released, probably, one of the biggest additions in the history of the series: in addition to the next "Operation" (analogous to the Battle Pass), including the pool new maps and characters, the company made a story update for Gears 5 called Hivebusters, which we will talk about for now.
Hivebusters are based on the online "Escape" mode, where three players are required to leave the Swarm's hive. In fact, when The Coalition announced this story add-on for Gears 5, almost everyone agreed that we were just going to have an offline sale of "Escape" with a couple of hastily staged story videos and some semblance of a story. However, everything turned out differently: Hivebusters is a real update, comparable in magnitude to the last of the first 3 acts of the Gears 5 linear campaign.
The events of the DLC open around the warriors of the Scorpion unit - Keegan, Lani and Mack - the protagonists of the Escape mode. This trinity is expected to fulfill the "secret" task of Colonel Victor Hoffman, who is well known to fans of the series, and find a method to crush the hives of the Swarm. And the daughter of another veteran of the series, Cole Turner, is obliged to assist the heroes in this complex process.
Hivebusters plot is considered to be the prehistory of the "Escape" mode. With all this, the update not only knows a new epic, but also expands the world and the universe of Gears. For example, a huge part of the DLC takes place on a mysterious tropical island inhabited by Aboriginal tribes. Why these lands were not attacked by the Locust or the Swarm for a long time, how the local inhabitants dealt with the enemies, and what kind of creature they respect as a deity - the game poses these questions and provides us with accurate answers, offering a look at the whole world of Gears of War under new angle.
The newest setting has also left its mark on the visual image of Hivebusters. Yes, the DLC is still designed in a slightly drawn, grotesque and slightly hypertrophied style of the series, nevertheless, a tropical island with jungles, shrines and aboriginal settlements evokes associations not so much with Gears, but with Uncharted or Avatar. Stunning art along with good technical stuff make Hivebusters one of the best visual gaming experiences of 2020.
As for the gameplay itself, we have the traditional Gears of War. The update is extremely unsophisticated - there are practically no spacious areas with the possibility of exploring here. We are still moving from shelter to shelter, at the same time killing masses of opponents. The only new addition to the co-op mechanic was the unique character abilities that came over from co-op: Keegan's resupply, Lani's electric knife, and Mac's energy shield. And to make it as fun as possible to crush the Swarm, the creators filled the DLC with a mountain of unforgettable game episodes: from riding a large door along lava rivers to controlling a small mech robot. And it's great, yet perfectly staged, valuable, "meat" fighters are getting smaller and smaller every year. So good luck to The Coalition in their endeavors - don't let us down with Gears 6!
