In Gears 5 Even a Newbie Can Be Useful with JACK; Watch Him in Action in Horde Mode Gameplay

The Gears of War series can be a bit challenging for those who aren’t used to cover shooters, but Gears 5 has an ace hidden in its sleeve, JACK.

If you know me, you probably know that I’m really bad at shooters. It’s not that I don’t like them, but I’m not getting any younger and my eyes aren’t what they used to be. 

It normally takes me a long time to get used to a new shooter before I can show a decent performance, which means that I dread going hands-on with new iterations of the genre for the very first time while having to record the gameplay for an article. 

Luckily, I managed to get my hands on a demo station with JACK at Gamescom, and the beloved returning healbot finally made playable is a Godsend for newbies like me. 

You can check out 25 minutes of gameplay below, recorded on PC with all the bells and whistles.

Mind you, it’s still me at the controls, so please don’t expect great feats of shooting, but at the very least I wasn’t hindering the team (well… At least not more than the player that sat motionless in a corner for the whole match).

The best is that inexperienced players can not only be useful to their team but also have fun.

While it’s true that you don’t need to pay as much attention to your survival and aiming, but you still have plenty to do.

You can heal and revive your companions, repair equipment, carry wepons to place them in convenient locations for the other players, and even take control of enemies to wreak havoc within their ranks.

The most relevant skill required to play JACK is likely situational awareness. Pretty much like a healer in a MMORPG, keeping track of the status and positions of the rest of the team is likely to make the biggest difference. 

If you want to learn more, you can read a comment by Multiplayer Design Director Ryan Cleven, who explained the idea behind JACK.

If you’re interested in seeing more of Gears 5, we got plenty of reveals at Microsoft’s E3 press briefing including a cinematic trailer, the introduction of the Escape mode, and the reveal of the Terminator Dark Fate pack.

Speaking of Escape, we also got more videos showcasing its diverse characters, while a cinematic cutscene from the story introduced Fahz.

On the other hand, we also saw another trailer introducing the Escalation mode, one showcasing the boot camp, and another showing the Map Builder.

Last, but certainly not least, you can enjoy yesterday’s trailer focusing on th story campaign.

 Gears 5 is coming on September 10 for Xbox One and PC. Those who have a subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will get to play the game four days early.

About the author

Giuseppe Nelva

Proud weeb hailing from sunny (not as much as people think) Italy and long-standing gamer since the age of Mattel Intellivision and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Definitely a multi-platform gamer, he still holds the old dear PC nearest to his heart, while not disregarding any console on the market. RPGs (of any nationality), MMORPGs, and visual novels are his daily bread, but he enjoys almost every other genre, prominently racing simulators, action and sandbox games. He is also one of the few surviving fans on Earth of the flight simulator genre.

More Stories by Giuseppe Nelva