The Outerhaven’s Gears 5: Hivebusters Review

Gears 5: Hivebusters is perhaps the best Gears experience I’ve had in quite some time. Adding to the fact that Hivebusters isn’t a full game, but a bite-sized portion speaks volumes. If you’re a fan of the series, you owe it to yourself to check out this little slice of heaven.

Game Name: Gears 5: Hivebuster DLC
Platform(s): PC (reviewed), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Publisher(s): Microsoft
Developer(s): The Coalition
Release Date: December 15th, 2020
Price: $19.99 / Included with Xbox Game Pass

A $20 DLC campaign (Or free if you have Xbox Game Pass) that puts players right smack in the middle of yet another planet-saving mission. Except for this time, we’re not playing with familiar characters from the Gears universe. Instead, you play as the three newcomers; Keegan, Lahni, and Mac. These three are affectionally known as “Scorpio Squad,” they’re some of the best additions to the Gears universe thus far. They also happen to be the same three characters you play in Gears 5: Escape and Hivebusters serves as a prologue to this mode; origins so to speak.

One thing is for sure, after playing this and looking back at the original Gears 5 release, it’s clear that The Coalition has stepped up its game. In the visuals, sound, storytelling, and performance departments.  Hivebusters is one of those games that can be played on both the Xbox platform and Windows 10, and I took advantage of this to see how the console version compared versus the PC. Playing parts of the campaign in my living room on the Xbox Series X while doing the same on my HTPC. And to be honest, I couldn’t tell the difference – and that blows my mind. This is the benefit that Microsoft and Xbox talked about so much, leading up to this merger of the console/PC ecosystems, and it shows that Xbox (at least in this instance) has a very bright future.

But let’s talk about the performance and visuals, as those are key here. As I mentioned, I played this on the Xbox Series X, which benefited from the PC version’s enhancements. Then The Coalition tossed in some Xbox Series X enhancements with made for some very sexy eye candy. The HDR implementation was easily some of the best I’ve seen on the Xbox Series X, and the performance was perfect – not a stutter or dropped frame that I could see. Moving on to the PC version, it was just as good.

This isn’t to discredit the Xbox Series X, not at all. It’s a fantastic machine; I can’t wait to see more games available that take advantage of it. But when it comes to the PC, we all know it’s a task to make games scalable, as not everyone has the same gear or has a high-powered PC. Yet, The Coalition has shown that they’re masters of the Unreal Engine, and it shows. For example, the PC used for this review was equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processor, Nvidia RTX 2080 Super, and 32GB DDR4, which handled the game like a champ. Even when I cranked up the resolution to 1440p & 4K and ultra graphics, the game didn’t skip a beat. Though I did have to enable the games’ dynamic scaling offering when playing at 4K, I couldn’t tell the difference.

Hivebusters is a graphical tour de force, no matter what platform you play it on.

Another thing I really enjoyed is that this can be completed in just one sitting. Unlike Gears 5, which I’ve felt at times overstayed its visit, Hivebusters is a nice 3-4 hour romp that’s completely self-contained. It’s here that The Coalition has to be commended in terms of the storytelling because they knocked it out of the park.

Different but Still the Same

I feel that perhaps there was some slight tweaking to the gunplay. It felt tighter than it did in Gears 5, more responsive. Nothing too drastic, and Gears fans will be able to pick up the game and jump in with no adjustment period needed.  However, I enjoyed some slight differences, and I’m hopeful that they make it into the eventual Gears 6. The game is more linear than Gears 5 open-world areas, more classic Gears than anything else – but that’s needed to keep the narrative here focused on the main objective. Then there are the completely off-the-wall segments, like riding a giant metal door down a molten lava river, complete with the massive amounts of enemies mercilessly tracking you down. You literally have to experience those types of moments to really appreciate them – screenshots don’t do it justice. It’s also a nice change of pace, as we’re removed from the industrial areas that frequent mode Gears games, and are now traversing a lush tropical island. Complete with its own story, and including tieing into the backstory of Lahni, who happens to come from the descendants of this island.

But don’t you worry about the action because there’s plenty of it here. Yep, definitely, plenty of action to be found.

With previous Gears games, you’d have a bot who would accompany you and use various situations. That’s all gone in Hivebusters. Instead,  your 3-man wrecking crew is bestowed with what is referred to as Ultimate Abilities. Keegan can drop ammo crates and get you back in the action if you’re running low, Mac can act as a tank and raise shields on himself to take the heat off you, while Lahni can utilize crowd-control tactics. Each of these is on a cooldown period so that you can’t spam them, but when used in the right situation, especially those “Oh Shit” moments, you come to appreciate them more than you ever did when depending on a silly bot. 

But more than anything, Hivebusters does something that no other game has; it made me wonder if I’d win these damned battles. Throughout the campaign, there are moments where the game tells you to “hold on,” and you’re tasked with surviving the incoming onslaught of enemies. This conveyed a feeling of hopelessness as I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to beat this segment. Then right as I’m about to get hammered, the game introduces some escape, and suddenly it’s over – with sweat dripping from my brow. 

The Future of Gears

It was refreshing to play with a new cast of supporting characters, and it feels like The Coalition took a page from Bungie’s playbook when they did the same for Halo 3: ODST and Halo Reach. Giving us new stories within the same universe, allowing us to experience the same great gameplay but from a different perspective, was a great way to shake things up. I hope we get to see them again in some other capacity outside of this DLC. 

Everything that I’ve experienced in Hivebusters has me excited for what’s to come. Not only has it been shown that you don’t need a 10+ hour campaign to tell a gripping story, but this bite-sized wonder shows just how far The Coalition has come with mastery of the Unreal Engine, the Xbox Series X|S, and the PC. The wait for Gears 6, or whatever else emerges next from the Gears universe, just got a little bit harder.

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