Gears of War: Ultimate Edition (Xbox One) Review

Gears of War was always a decent looking, if colourless game. In fact, the complete lack of colour could sometimes make it visually exhausting, putting a strain on the eyeballs. Thankfully, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition rectifies the shortcomings of the original art direction by giving this remaster a completely overhauled set of visuals, to the point where it almost looks like a brand new release. It must be said that this remaster is utterly gorgeous and is very fluid with a constant 60 frames per second (sometimes dipping in split-screen co-operative play, though) and has very few instances of texture loading, which was always a problem in the Gears franchise.

Ultimate Edition ranges a wide gamut of striking visuals in the environments, from the dusty bombed-out cities, slums lit by lanterns, and the rain-slick yellow neon factory that is being bombarded by a raging storm; the atmosphere can be pretty palpable and thanks to the new technology of the Xbox One, this title that is more than a decade old, looks every bit as good as a current gen developed product. Other than the texture overhaul, the cut-scenes have received a lot of new animations, with much more expressive characters, and even some new little surprises that happen on-screen that liven up the action a bit. The Unreal Engine 3 may not have been the greatest engine, but The Coalition and Epic Games (the builders of the engine) truly do know how to play with their toys and even manage visuals that approach near movie quality levels of CGI.

The mechanics have remained the same as they were in 2006, which is more than acceptable since they were great for the most part: characters snapped to cover quickly and the weapons handled impressively. What is disappointing is that the developers did not take the chance to include some of the features and flourishes that were perfected in the sequels, especially since some of these features added much needed depth to what is admittedly a very simplistic action romp. Things like crawling while downed in co-operative mode, or even the chainsaw duels, are features that feel like they are missing in what is supposed to be the definitive edition of Gears of War, and an option to toggle them would have been a fair compromise. Other annoyances are moments when the game's scripted sequences forces the lead to a walking speed for story-related dialogues and the fact that there will be many instances where there is nothing to do but to walk through empty environments until the heroes reach the next arena full of chest-high walls.

As a cover shooter, Gears of War's gameplay relies on gamers being able to take cover and move around the battlefield to flank the enemy, and while this was totally novel in 2006, the overall core gameplay can get stale really fast nowadays. This is not a long experience, either, but it feels longer than it is due to the strict structure of the game ushering Marcus Fenix to the next arena full of conveniently placed structures to take cover behind. There is just nothing unique or special about cover shooting now, with it being done so many times before, to an even better degree now that the original of this enhanced release is over a decade old. Some of the more interesting moments involve being on a raft and turning a valve to cross a river while being assaulted by enemies on the other side, or having to stay in lit areas only to avoid a deadly swarm of monsters that insta-kill.

Nobody can deny that Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is a technical marvel, although artistically some designs seem highly questionable. Obviously, the Gears games have a stylised look to the characters, in the same vein something like Bayonetta does, but in the case of Gears of War, some of the design choices are baffling. Specifically, character design is a weak point here because as colourful as this remaster is, many of the Delta Squad can be indistinguishable from the enemy monsters in an intense fire-fight. Many do not have distinct silhouettes and when the dust gets kicked up and the lighting conditions aren't desirable, the colour-coded design philosophy is unable to do its job (blue for friend, red for foe). Aside from a few exceptions, like the heavy monsters that have grenade launchers and the smaller impish creatures that scurry around on four legs, generally Gears of War's basic foe has the same bulky frame and muscular physique as the main heroes.

Possibly the most egregious design choice is the absurd shaky-cam effect that happens while sprinting. The effect aims to achieve a war-documentary aesthetic and the idea is slightly cool, but there should have been an option to toggle it off because the outrageous levels at which the camera shakes during sprinting is headache inducing. The weapons are much more distinct and have a much wider variety of designs than the cast of 'roided-up' genetic freaks that make up this story. The classic lancer automatic machine gun with series iconic chainsaw bayonet is a powerful image and sets the tone for this super over-the-top macho title, full of big men doing big things. The design of the grenades is also interesting, with them being made to resemble a medieval spiked flail, which is a beautiful way to illustrate the brutality of these characters.

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition has solid gameplay. Even if the overall design and creativity is lacking, it would be hard to find a more polished or better looking action game on the Xbox One. That being said, the developer should stick to programming code because the narrative and story is an incoherent and embarrassing mess of plot holes and tonal inconsistencies. The character of Marcus Fenix, on paper, logically would make sense for an ideal protagonist for this story since he was in prison for 14 years and would be the character to ask questions that the audience would ask. Unfortunately, Marcus pretty much knows everything the supporting cast knows and information the audience needs is never told. Those that feel it was "explained in the novelisation," should realise that ancillary media, like comic books or wikis, are not part of the core experience, and having to rely on those only goes to further show that the way Gears of War tells its story is the worst imaginable way. Not only is the story told with the coherency of a dazed Mike Tyson, but it is also heavily reliant on a MacGuffin that is ultimately pointless and wastes a lot of time.

The tone is inconsistent, too, where the writers gleefully kill off red-shirts and characters act like it is no big deal, but suddenly the game tries to get emotional late in the story and the effect just doesn't work, mostly because the tone early on is established that Gears of War is a raucous balls-to-the-wall, buddy-action title with no regard for human safety. It makes it very hard to get invested seriously in anything with so many stereotypical wise-cracking, one-liner type action heroes filling the cast and then try to act like a war drama later, while these guys are holding chainsaw guns. Gears of War's strength is when it is engaging in cheeky fun, not try-hard drama.