Gears of War: Ultimate Edition Beta Review

One of the things I like most about E3 is on the fly announcements. Basically the whole “ hey we just made it available! Go buy or download now!” It makes the day for those not attending or at home so much better.This year we got a little gift from the Coalition (previously Black Tusk) in the form of the first look at the new remake of the first Gears of War. Back in 2006 this game was revolutionary, the cover mechanics weren’t new, but Epic learned to perfect it create a fantastic balance between cover and gunplay. First and foremost this is not a simple remaster, the game has been overhauled quite a bit, from a huge change in the lighting to the models and texture patterns. In an age where a simple bump in resolution and frame-rate equate to $50-$60 purchases, its great to see a full on remake from the original. While much can’t be said about the SP, the MP is still phenomenal. Whats great to see is that the game’s core mechanics don’t feel dated one bit. The cover system is still top par, the active reload mechanic still tenses the game and lets not forget the brutal shotgun that can tear you in half. In terms of content the Beta was split between 3 rotating maps, Courtyard, Gridlock and Canals. The game-modes were standard team death match in the social playlist and King of the Hill in the ranked playlist. There isn’t anything dramatically new in terms of the content, most of this is stuff we have seen in the original Gears, though Courtyard was a PC exclusive Gears of War map and now has been fully remade and brought to Gears Ultimate, like every other PC exclusive content. The gameplay is silky smooth at 60 FPS and Fergusson’s team has done a marvel of a job with the net-code as only once in this week long Beta, did I find myself having issues. Overall there isn’t much to get from this review, we have only had a sneak peek and so far its held true to the core vision, which is really simple GEARS IS BACK BABY!

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is set to release on Xbox One on August 25, 2015

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