In anticipation of the upcoming reveal of Gears of War: E-Day, I finally played through Gears of War: Reloaded. This is the third way I’ve played through the Gears 1 campaign, and while it looks and runs great, it has some issues, like the Ultimate Edition before it (especially on PC).
First of all, I love Gears. I’ve finished every one of the numbered games (and the underrated Judgement). I bought the original Gears of War on day one (I still have my collector’s edition). While the sequels would add mechanics and spectacle, this first game gets so much right. There’s so much cool and innovative stuff here from active reload to the cover system to the roadie run. The story and world checks so many boxes for me with elements of horror and my favorite 80s action movies. Plus, the Lancer (and its chainsaw bayonet) is my favorite video game weapon since Squall’s Gunblade in Final Fantasy VIII.
I could go on about things that rule about Gears 1 (the music! the boss fights!), but the key point is that all of these elements are present in Reloaded. Unfortunately, so are some technical issues. I played through the first half of the game on PC and ran into bugs ranging from silly (characters clipping through textures) to jarring (my character “teleporting”) to annoying (AI squadmates not going where they are supposed to) to game-breaking (frequent freezes and crashes). After the third crash I switched to the console version on my Series X (thanks to Play Anywhere).
The game fared better on console, and I finished it with only minor technical issues. But at the end of the day, I can’t help but wonder why did this game, once the pinnacle of Xbox technical proficiency, release in such a janky state? And why has nothing been done since the release a year ago to improve it?
While I still adored all the mechanical and aesthetic highs of Gears in Reloaded, the technical issues are a concern. Maybe this is just a side effect of having three developers on this remaster; I definitely did not experience tech problems on this scale in The Coalition’s Gears 5.
Despite everything, I still enjoyed replaying the original Gears campaign. The moment to moment gameplay remains satisfying and I really do love these characters and the world. I’m cautiously optimistic about E-Day; here’s hoping The Coalition manages to capture what makes Gears so good, and deliver it without major tech issues.
PC screenshots captured on AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 Super, 1440p resolution.
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