Gears of War: Ultimate Edition

When it's hitting the highs you expect from a PC Port, Gears of War Ultimate Edition is simply the best way to experience Delta Squad's first mission. But its unavoidable lows keep it from being an easy recommendation.Gears of War: Ultimate Windows 10...

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for Windows 10 takes a great title and makes it even better. Despite a few small oversights, the updated mechanics and visuals produce the best way to experience the original Gears game—if you have an Nvidia video...

I remember the first time I played Gears of War. I was late to the party because right around when it was initially released I had sold my Xbox 360 never to return to the platform. But I had heard such amazing things about the game and one Christmas...

Editor's Note: Six months after its Xbox One release, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition has come to PC for Windows 10. And although the game's core is intact, complete with controls and level design that raised the bar for third-person shooters in 2006,...

Gears of War Ultimate edition released late last year on the Xbox One exclusively, and I previously reviewed it, thinking very highly of it. I thought it was a great new addition to the select few remade games that stands to go above and beyond a simple...

Despite the outward familiarity of Ultimate Edition's control scheme and visual language (there are chest-high walls everywhere), it's a surprisingly unique...

The Coalition has done this remake right, with attention to detail and an eye toward fan desires. Gameplay feels dated in both campaign and versus, but in many ways that’s a testament to the excellence of the original and that it’s held up as well as it has. New and old players alike should feel no hesitation about seeing this as the definitive way to play the opening story of the Gears epic. The new edition doesn’t remake the cog, but it certainly makes it shiny again.

Gears of War's campaign has some small particulars that could derail a worse game, and its flaws are more clear now than they were nine years ago. but Gears of War's bonafides as a shooter classic feel less in dispute than ever — and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is easily the best way to understand why that is.

In returning to the game that sparked one of Microsoft's more prevalent franchises, members of the Coalition kicked down their own proverbial childhood door. The return trip might have revealed a few more cracks than we remembered, but it also serves as a shield for our nostalgia. And as remakes go, that's worth the journey home.

Some folks will be telling you that Gears isn’t as good as you remember, but this Ultimate Edition proves that they’re talking nonsense. Don’t blame Epic’s blockbuster for the dumb, dudebro sci-fi action games that followed; it’s a lean, superbly-paced action game with slick mechanics, stunning aesthetics and some fantastic set-pieces, all of which work as well now as they did back in 2006.

Damn near essential if you've yet to experience the horror that followed Emergence Day, and very heartily recommended to those who've forgotten just what a special time that...