Gears V: The gift that keeps on, er, exploding

Gears V is a cinematic experience, a video game blockbuster with surprisingly deep feelings about genré.

For years I suspected a number of things about the Gears of War franchise: that it contained loads of very cool guns, a cheesy cast of bad-ass Marine types, and the sense (overall) that it was really you saving the earth from an outright alien invasion. Gears V, the fifth in a series that’s roughly the same age as your last-born, is blockbuster entertainment at its best. When you aim fire or sprint towards combat, the camera drops into a documentary-style perspective that helps immerse you in its intergalactic war to end all intergalactic wars. Alien technology shakes your grip, every time you take a geezer’s head off. The music knows when to kick in, and our heroes know how to strike a pose when they dive or duck or maim for dear life.

It’s possible to know these things from watching review footage, for a basic idea of just how artfully Gears moves; but this fifth entry more than once pushes the power of the Xbox One to its absolute limit. Gears V will come to symbolize a fitting end to this console generation, surely, as a new wave of machines promises improvements in processing power, visual wonder, and online play.

More than once, I have cheered at my television screen after making what can only be deemed miraculous progress - even on ‘intermediate’ difficulty. I thought I’d compile a shortlist of highlights of all the times Gears V overcompensates, adorably, just because it’s gone and convinced itself it’s a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. (If Jerry Bruckheimer had timing, and also the common decency to pepper his flicks with a monster or two.)

5.

A training simulation begins by getting you acquainted with the run, feint, cover movement that will define your rapid movement across the Gears galaxy. You shoot at robots and things, and you get to test several delightful weapons before diving headfirst into all the action. The whole time, an amiable instructor busts your balls like an old roommate from college.

4.

After a skirmish or two on neutral land, we’re told the Swarm (or is it the Horde?) have launched an attack on our capital, a city set in the not-too-distant future. Bodybuilding zombie types have overwhelmed a town square, mounting gun turrets and unleashing giant locusts that happen to spit (yes) bullets. The Gears engine (again, nothing new) helpfully highlights ammo and guns and collectibles you can claim when you hover over them. I was about to die an umpteenth time, the sky raining blood, when I bumped into a colleague and accidentally traded guns with him. We seemed to nod at each other before swapping sides to give the enemy some freshly squeezed hell.

3.

There is a long-ish and menacing-ish cave in Gears V’s opening chapter. It’s extremely dark, with water up to knee-level. Out of nowhere, gangly flesh-eaters emerge to bite your nose off or worse. You stay composed - your guys are with you. Each time you pull the trigger, torch or no, your rapid-fire lights up the scene and shines a subtle light on yet more hostiles. Part of the excellence of Gears, as a franchise and a story, is how deftly it shifts genré. One minute it’s Independence Day; the next it’s one of those Fast & Furious elephants; then somehow it’s also Evil Dead.

2.

The Swarm has taken over a theatre house. You and your people clear the building out methodically, mostly aiming shells at the CPUs of corrupted androids. Eventually, you’re backstage. The pull of a lever yanks the curtains, activates some campy music and the whole place turns into a war-zone as produced by Andrew Lloyd Weber. It’s a jarring, eerie sequence of events, which captures perfectly the pregnancy of intrusion: the way the air just waits to break.

1.

You’re on a mountain top in a glacial hellscape. It’s freezing and you’ve been riding shotgun on a skiff for miles, breezing across the ice. There’s a crack in the scenery somewhere. You thunder past the enemy’s flag to investigate it, reporting back to base over a crackly intercom. You slip and fall, sliding right into the palm of hostiles who open fire immediately. Whilst sliding, you realize this isn’t a cut scene; you lift your weapon and you aim it at those extraterrestrial bastards, hurtling at full speed. Inject this feeling, I beseech you, into my veins.

Gears V is available to play on the Xbox One and PC, with a ‘free’ download on Xbox Game Pass.