Gears 5: How to Wall Bounce

If you play Gears 5 multiplayer for long enough you’ll inevitably run into someone that is wall bouncing.  It might look they are glitching or even cheating, but it’s actually just a manipulation of the cover mechanics and the cancel feature that’s been in many of the Gears of War games.  In this guide we’ll explain what wall bouncing is, and how to do it.

What is wall bouncing in Gears 5

Wall bouncing in Gears 5 works almost exactly as it did in Gears of War 4.  It basically allows you to bounce between two walls that are close enough together that you can use the slide mechanic to reach both, allowing you to manipulate the slide to cover feature in the game.  For example, when you get into cover you don’t always have to be right next to a wall.  You can press the A button on the controller and you will slide from a pretty good distance.

If you just press the button, your character will slide into cover and lock into place.  This is the first step that you need to learn for wall bouncing, but everyone knows this, it’s one of the main features of the game.  The next step is the cancel.  The majority of casual Gears 5 players likely won’t realize that you can cancel this slide animation by pressing back on the left stick while sliding to cover.  This cancel move allows you to stop mid-slide.

The wall bounce is actually changing direction to another wall at the same time you are cancelling.  So you are pressing A to slide, then back on the left stick to cancel, and then aiming towards another wall pressing A to slide into the new wall.  The chaining of the cancels is the wall bounce, this can be chained for as long as you have two covers to transfer back and forth from.

Basically this type of movement makes you tough to hit.  Good wall bounce players will be able to close distance on your quickly, taking minimal damage, and when they get to you they usually shotgun you.

There are multiple types of wall bounce movements, in terms of different angles and spaces that the move can be used.  In this guide we’re going to stick to the basics, and then we will encourage you to practice these yourself on the maps of Gears 5.  Even once you understand the mechanics of wall bouncing, it might be pretty hard to pull off until you’ve practiced it a bit.

How to Wall Bounce in Gears 5

So as you can see in the basic wall-bounce gif above, there are three different slides to cover. The first to the initial ledge, the cancel and then slide to the right cover, then the cancel and slide to the left cover with the gnasher shot at the end. This was done against a bot opponent, but it’s to show what the basic wall bounce is and how to do it.

So there are some things to look out for when you’re learning to Wall Bounce in Gears 5. If you mess up a wall bounce, you’re almost certainly going to go into a roll animation. Once you do, you’re more than likely going to put yourself into a bad position. The way to combat this is to practice. You’ll need to get familiar with the maps and the areas within them that can be used to wall bounce because sometimes walls are just too far away to use this move.

To really get the hang of wall bouncing now that you have the basics is finding a nice section of a map that has multiple pieces of cover that you can practice bouncing between.  Set bots to 1 and on a low difficulty and you should be wall bouncing in Gears 5 in no time.