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Why the Gears of War board game needs to make its way on to mobile

Where's the heart?

Why the Gears of War board game needs to make its way on to mobile
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| Gears of War

Look, we're never going to get a Gears of War port on mobile. It just isn't going to happen.

But that doesn't mean that you should give up hope of controlling Marcus Fenix on the go, because I reckon there's another Gears of War game that would work brilliantly on mobile.

It's Gears of War the Board Game, and it's a brilliant recreation of the tense firefights and cover-diving madness of the console games.

Dice of war

The physical game sees you setting up scenarios from the Xbox 360 original and its sequel. There's a deck of cards that controls the AI, and you draw one of these each round.

You might get a swarm of monsters coming your way, or you might get a breather. Except you probably won't, it's basically always a swarm of monsters.

Players control their heroes with hands of cards. But these also represent your hit points. So you need to choose between making big attacks and staying alive.

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It's a neat system, and it leads to some incredibly tight scenarios. And the turn-based nature and AI deck makes them perfect for a digital adaptation.

The game even manages to capture the bleeding out aspect of the game. When you're down you can crawl to an ally to try and get them to save you.

All of this would work brilliantly on mobile. You don't have to worry about the controls getting in the way and ruining the fun, you just have to concentrate on the strategic battles. And staying alive.

I don't think it'll ever happen, but this is one board game adaptation I'd love to see landing on the App Store.

Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.