Gears of War has always been built around its cover system, with almost 15 years experience when it comes to squeezing its muscled heroes behind bits of wall, or whatever's at hand, as they exchange fire with their equally muscled, subterrestrial counterparts. Once slotted into place, it's then been up to the player to figure out how to gain the upper hand, perhaps lobbing a grenade to push enemies out of cover, or rushing forward to take advantage of an exposed flank. When described in these sorts of terms, it makes sense that the Gears series would eventually dip its considerable toes into the world of turn-based strategy, but how well does it actually translate?
Eager to answer that question for us, Tactics is very quick to reintroduce another Gears of War staple: executions. Things may be a little slower paced here, but look, you can still chainsaw people in half! Downing an enemy will occasionally see them drop to their knees, allowing one of your bulky lads to jog over and bash their head in with a pistol, or gut them with a bayonet. As a visual spectacle, I'm a little less excited about this than I might have been in 2006, but as a game mechanic, let me tell you, executions allow for some brilliant decision making. That's a very odd sentence to have typed out. Let me explain.
In Gears Tactics, each soldier in your squad has a handful of action points to spend per turn, whether that's through moving, taking shots or using abilities. Once everyone's out of actions, the bad guys get their go. It's standard stuff. Landing an execution, however, changes things. Once you've finished beating the poor Locust to death with their own limbs, your entire squad (aside from the one performing the execution) is rewarded with an additional action point. There are even times where you'll be able to chain a string of executions together and essentially double the number of actions you were meant to take that turn. This alters the game in a pretty significant way.
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