Before the race for better graphics ruined innovation in video games, there was a time when games needed to add new gameplay mechanics to separate them from their peers. As a game developer, this was the only way to separate yourself from the competition at one point. The Golden Era (or the 1990s as some call it) was filled with games trying to do something new, we saw this in the original Elite, Rollcage, Road Rash and god knows how many others, all of them doing their best to add something new and exciting to an already existing formula. One of the last of these was Gears of War, which introduced sticking to walls as a gameplay mechanic. Out of all the mechanics that came before it who would have thought that this would be the one to stick.

Gears of War: the propagator of the cover shooter. If you ever wanted to blame a game for slow gameplay this is it! Gears of War is the reason that every alternate game is a cover shooter, why so many games make you run from cover to cover instead of being Rambo and why so many games are just so slow. Don’t get me wrong, the cover shooter is great in stealth games like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid but it ruins the action in shooters. For this reason alone, don’t expect this review to go well for Gears of War.

Story:

Marcus Fenix is busted out of jail by his friend Dom to rejoin the fight against the Locust, an alien invasion force. Marcus is added to Delta squad who are attempting to get hold of a device called the resonator. The resonator when deployed in the Locust tunnel network will map out the tunnels giving humanity a shot at destroying the network while dealing a crushing blow to the Locusts.

That is all I’m giving away about the story since most people can guess how the rest goes. The story is incredibly tiny but gets dragged out repeatedly to extend the time of the game. It is extremely cookie cutter and delivered in the normal cutscenes and radio chatter. It is an average story at best, they should have merged the story of Gears of War and Gears of War 2 into one game for this remaster. Most players will be done with the story in about 6 hours which is way too little.

Sound:

I honestly can’t remember the sound of the original Gears but god damn, the sound in the remaster is a class above. The background music fits a warzone, it doesn’t play outside of combat but the second you hear it starting you know that war is coming. It is loud but not loud enough to drown out everything else that is going on, which permits it to add to the flow of the game rather than being a side piece.

The character sounds and special effects are loud too. The character sounds should be loud because of how huge all the characters look in their armour. The most obvious of the weight in the sound is Marcus’ footsteps, in most games that sound would make you think a boss is coming to rip you a new one but here it is just Marcus going for a stroll. The character sounds keep going as characters run across areas, force themselves into cover or just shout at each other over the battlefield. Don’t think for a second that the character sound effects are restricted just to the heroes, the enemies sound just as loud and badass as the heroes do.

The special effects and weapons sound amazing as well. The weapons sound much bigger than they are, this is a case of the bark being much worse than the bite. You would expect the weapons to take down anything and everything with a shot or two but in reality they never do that… except the shottie… as always.

The only weak point in the sound is the voice acting which shows Marcus and his team as robots. There are times when they show some sort of expression but those are few and far apart. Marcus himself is an expressionless bore.

Graphics:

A remaster’s job is to upgrade the graphics of the original which the Ultimate Edition does brilliantly well. It doesn’t do a half-arsed job like the recent Hot Pursuit remaster. It upgrades the graphics API to DirectX 12. It upgrades the world from alright to great… or as great as it could. The world is upgraded from the original but it’s hard to notice because the brown hue isn’t reduced enough. Don’t get me wrong, it is reduced but it is still a bit too much. The overlay has a habit of hiding some great graphical upgrades that you will not notice unless you go looking for it.

The character models are a step up from the original, every scar on Marcus’ face is visible. Enemies look great, they look straight out of Mad Max and can be easily told apart most of the time. The most noticeable of the graphic upgrades to the enemies is when they are cut up by the chainsaw; the blood splatter and breaking up of the model is great to look at.

The upgrades shine a bit more in the special effects since they can actually shine. The brown might be bad to show off the world’s textures but the special effects colour the world so you do get to see their colour change the world from brown to whatever colour they like. The special effects are not overly loud, they are well balanced while presenting themselves perfectly. The effects are not overly loud, nor are they unnecessarily subtle, they somehow manage the perfect balance for a warzone making them just right.

Gameplay:

Let’s start with the weapons in Gears of War. Because the name of the game is Gears of War and it takes part in the future, you would expect the weapons to be badass. They are not, most of them are quite dull. There is the default rifle which is quite good because it has a chainsaw attached to it while being fully automatic, there is another burst rifle that is dropped by enemies but has no value over the default rifle. After the chainsaw on the assault rifle, there is nothing really to talk about, all the other weapons can be guessed: sniper rifles are a tool for long-range jobs, shotguns feel great, rocket launchers are pointless because their area of effect is low and the pistols are just bad. There is a special weapon but the condition that needs to be fulfilled to use it is annoying; the sky needs to be visible and there need to be satellites overhead. Since the satellite availability is game dependent it becomes a contextual weapon rather than a special weapon. Yeah… the weapons aren’t special and feel run of the mill.

The enemies’ arsenal is not worth talking about, they have a very standard variation of being melee, ranged and specially equipped. I would like to say that the enemies are cannon fodder but I cannot say that without mentioning that your compatriots are cannon fodder as well. The AI that handles both the enemies and friendlies makes them find the shortest route to their targets without thinking about their survival. This is alright for enemies as it keeps the player engaged but it is really stupid for squadmates since they end up dead more often than not. The same is true for firing at opposing forces; the opposing forces and your squadmates are equally likely to kill each other, this is just bad AI since you control an elite squad who should be able to hold their own. In most firefights; you as Marcus Fenix will get 90% of the kills while your squadmates will divide the last 10% up between the 3 of them which is just plain stupid, they should be doing more but instead of doing their jobs they will be lying in pain waiting for you to save them. This gets even more frustrating since your death is game over. This is obvious if you go for the hard or above difficulty where the enemies become bullet sponges while your squadmates stay the same. The difficulties above normal do one hell of a job of being annoying by making your squadmates completely useless and the fights exceptionally boring.

The levels are what take Gears of War from being lacklustre to being an enjoyable game. They have tons of open areas with things to hide behind but that is what you would expect from any modern shooter. Gears of War’s levels separate themselves from the pack by being subtly diverse in each area and smartly positioning their cover items while at the same time not destroying the aesthetic of the level as a whole. There are also tons of great set pieces like huge monsters and frantic corridor shoot outs spread throughout the levels. However, all is not great in the level design. The enemy placements are great but the enemy spawn points are complete and utter horse shit at times. You can move across a level like a badass while wiping out the oppressive hoards only to find an asshole with a grenade launcher breaking down the door behind you before giving you a one-way ticket to the moon.

Alright, I’ve been putting this off for long enough now; it is about time we discussed the elephant in the room: the mechanics that Gears of War started which bored many gamers to death across tons of games with slow gameplay, contextual positioning and lacklustre cameras: The cover shooting. I would like to bitch about the cover shooting in Gears of War but I can’t. The cover shooting is well done, while being a core mechanic, it doesn’t act like one. You can always skip it and go full-on combat mode but it does make life much easier. Every wall is a place to hide behind from which you can either blind fire or take the risk to aim and shoot. The hiding points are a dime a dozen and you can run comfortably between them making them tactical points. The speed at which you pop in and out of cover is fast making it completely acceptable. The idea is to get to a point, drop an enemy or two before running to the next. This is great fun as it makes you feel like some kind of a tactical badass. It could fall flat on its face but the great level design and speed prevent it from doing so. It shows why the original implementation was copied but at the same time makes me wonder why the copy cats got it so wrong. If this was the standard of cover shooting, I would hardly ever complain about it.

Conclusion:

I wasn’t expecting to like Gears of War, I really wasn’t but it was a fun albeit short ride. The well thought out levels, the quick cover combat coupled with great graphics and sound hooked me easily into a great world. The shortcomings aren’t noticeable till halfway through the game where they show up in rage forcing you to slog your way through the later battles. They go from bad to worse before getting to be flat out frustrating which is sad.

I honestly think they should have done a ground-up remake of the first two games and packaged it as the Ultimate Edition, it would have been a much more value for money proposition and would have been at least 10 hours of gameplay.

Pros	Cons
Well upgraded graphics	Brown tint
Amazing sound	Sound makes the weapons seem better than they are
Great level design	Stupid enemy spawn points
Great combat mechanics	Poor partner AI
Great special weapons	Special weapons are context specific