The best advice I was given for playing Escape, the Gears 5’s new co-op game mode, was to crank it up to the highest unlocked difficulty and work backward from there. I pride myself on being able to adapt to gaming challenges quickly, so I figured I could get a quick victory – plus I was playing with two people who worked on the mode.

Gears 5 Escape Mode Is Like a Puzzle

“ Escape’s challenge is alluring; it’s like solving a puzzle.

Gears 5: Escape Mode E3 Trailer Screenshots 18 IMAGES

Unlike Horde’s pressure to defend, Escape asks you to, well, escape. And quickly. In it, a group of up to three players (online or local co-op!) must make their way through a maze-like Hive as their own deadly venom bomb trails behind while plenty of Swarm wait ahead. Even knowing new enemies and weapons awaited, I figured my special companions and I could handle it.It turns out “handling it” meant trying and failing several times before we finally figured out a strategy for the Hive’s last treacherous room. Our close encounter with yet another failure ended in a spectacular battle where my last remaining ally and I nearly ran out of ammo trying to take down a tornado of disgusting Swarm leeches. It was, frankly, awesome. I felt like we deserved a reward for finally completing it, only to realize we gained a new modifier to amp up the difficulty further.I was rather gung-ho on the difficulty of Escape, but I appreciate that it allows everyone to customize the kind of challenge they get from Escape every time they play. If it feels too challenging, your team can change the modifiers or even unequip them all and just learn the basics of the map. Escape offers plenty of good tools to deal with its challenges, though.

Gears 5 Escape Mode Characters and Abilities

Gears 5 Safe Rooms

“ With Gears 5, they want to bring Gears gunplay up to modern standards.

Escape stars three class-based characters, and they each come with their own passive and active abilities that are essential for clearing the mode. There’s Lahni, a scout whose active ability grants her an electroblade that stuns and damages enemies she strikes. It’s particularly effective against big enemies. Then there’s Keegan, a support character whose active makes a small area where allies can regenerate ammo for a short time. Rounding out the new characters is Mac, a tank who can hold a rather wide invulnerable shield for a short amount of time. Using their chargeable abilities at the right time is crucial if you’re playing with multiple modifiers. Each character also has their own XP and equippable skill cards that can be upgraded to increase their benefits. Unequipping skill cards can also make a run more challenging if you’re into that.Lahni, Keegan, and Mac are Hivebusters, a new group within the Gears universe who are determined to go on these suicide missions to eliminate Hives. We’ll have more on their backstory and how it ties to Gears 5 on June 18, but know that these three characters won’t be the only characters you can play. Eventually, other Gears characters like Kait will make their way to Escape with their own classes and special abilities. The character abilities will also be in Horde, but not in the Versus modes.Another major tool that I could see helping keep me determined while multiple modifiers are on – or even none – is the Safe Room. This room is a sort of benchmark between sections of Escape that allows your team to take a quick breather, grab a drink, run to the bathroom, reply to a text… whatever you need to do before you’re ready to take on the rest of the map – not unlike Left 4 Dead’s safehouses. It’s also a save point. Yes, if you fail, you don’t have to start all over. You return here. While that can be good, if you missed an enemy room that dropped something you needed or ran out of time to explore a safe room filled with ammo, grenades, or even a Boomshot, you may just want to start over or drastically change your tactics. We opted for the latter when we failed to find me a Markza on one run. We had been relying on my headshots, which made our next attempts a little more challenging.Speaking of headshots, if you’ve checked out the Gears 5 gameplay footage, you should notice that the gunplay looks quite a bit different. There are damage numbers (and yes, they can be turned off), the hit reticle changes colors depending on how you shoot an enemy, and weapons have recoil that creates bullet patterns rather than letting the bullets bloom as a player fires longer. Additionally, the iconic Crimson Omen no longer blocks the middle of the screen. It has evolved into the Inverse Omen, allowing players to better see their attacker (if you see them) when their health is low. Studio Head of The Coalition, Rod Fergusson, said that with Gears 4, they wanted to prove they knew how to make a Gears. With Gears 5, they want to add their own touches to the franchise and challenge expectations, including bringing Gears gunplay up to modern standards. The Coalition worked with pro players to test their gunplay upgrades, and as a fan of shooters, I’d say these changes are all for the better.The Coalition Hives won’t be the only ones you can play. Escape comes with a neat map builder which allows players to easily make their own Hives and challenge friends and the greater Gears community to play their creations. I’m excited to unleash my own design disasters into the world, provided that I can beat it before I’m allowed to publish it. I’m thinking at least twelve snipers by the exit and an overly aggressive Flock. Good luck, future self.We now know that Gears 5's release date is September 10, 2019 -- and it there's a pretty crazy Gears 5 Collector's Edition , too. IGN has even more Gears 5 Escape content on the way. Be sure to stay tuned all June long for details on Escape’s story, more on the map builder, and plenty of other Gears news.

Miranda Sanchez is an executive editor at IGN. Catch her weekly on Podcast Unlocked and on Twitter and Instagram.