GEARS OF WAR: ULTIMATE EDITION

“I remember you owe me 20 bucks…”

“Oh yeah? See me after the war.”

Sometimes remastered games are a good thing. Given my, and many others’ experiences with Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, that’s not something I say easily. That being said, it appears Epic Games, the developers of Gears of War, know what the term ‘remastered’ means. Apparently, it means making a game that’s ten years old look and feel like it came out yesterday.

Having never played any of the games in the series before, but knowing many who had, I had a general idea of what the series was about, and why people like it so much. Now, I understand both. Gears of War centres around Delta Squad, led by the gruff voiced and bloody massive Marcus Fenix, as the attempt to repel the army of Locust that have waged a decades-long war on the Earth-like planet Sera. While the story might be confusing at times for newbies like myself, it’s not hard to come to terms with, nd that probably due to the games excellent dialogue. Yes, a lot is exposition, but it’s done in a way that means it doesn’t get boring.

And that’s one thing the game excels at: It never drags on and feels boring. Yes, there are a few parts that might not be needed, but compared to other games, Gears is lacking in these parts, and that’s a good thing. The game takes place over five chapters of story which are each divided up into several sub-sections. Doing this instead of having ten-or-so levels means the game can delve into deeper story telling than most other titles can. It also means you can spend more time chain-sawing through Locust’s heads.

On the face of it, Gears is a cover based third person shooter. Yes, you can run and shoot if you want to, but Gears adds enough difficulty to let you experiment. There are some moments when staying in cover is best, and other moments where you need to move and keep moving. Gears shakes this up on a semi-regular basis, and it helps the game feel fresh, even in areas which lack colour or manoeuvrability.

One thing I really enjoyed about the game was the enemy designs. Yes, some are used far more than others, but more combat scenarios are not lacking in diverse enemies. Some are only vulnerable to a single weapon, and others won’t be afraid to run at you if it suits them. The boss battles are fun for the most part, and the payoff is usually very rewarding, but the final boss battle, for me at least, needed to be brought down a peg or two. It’s a simple concept, but too much was going on to focus on what was important.

Of course, we now come to the graphics. They’re good. Really good. I wasn’t lying when I said this game looks like it came out yesterday. For once, a remastered game looks not only remastered, but amped up to a whole new level. The colour palette, while mostly grey and brown, looks damn good because everything looks damn good.

The old and the new. How time changes...

The only thing I didn’t really like about the game, and this is mostly a nit-pick, was the pace of the story. Maybe it was because I didn’t play the game over the course of a day or two, but there were times when I wanted to get to the next stage not because that’s where the game was leading me, but because I was getting tired of what was going on in that moment.

While the game does use team based combat well, making the other Delta Squad members either AIs or your co-op partner, playing on my own meant they were AIs, and often they felt useless in battle. They were good for distractions, but little else. Plus, you spend too much time with only one other team-mate, not all three. Some characters that could’ve easily been great were just scraping good.

On the whole, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was one of those games I bought on a whim because I knew a lot of people who loved it, and I can see why. Putting graphics aside for a moment, the story is simple enough, but filled with interesting, and more importantly, badass characters who shine in every cutscene, even if they spend most of the game as just a voice in my ear. While I can’t compare the feel of the original to this remastered version, picture and videos of gameplay I’ve seen paint a good enough picture. The graphics make the game come alive in ways that most remastered games haven’t done for me so far, and that helps a lot when you’re playing a new game. Do I feel like I need to go back and play the original? No. Am I thinking about buying the second and third games because this one was awesome? Yes. Awesome. That’s this game in a nutshell. Badass characters going round and chain-sawing enemies in the head and looking awesome doing it.

100% Badass.