Gears of War Ultimate Edition is a remaster of a game that came out 9 years ago, that said it holds up really well; while the graphics have obviously seen a huge upgrade, the game's sound is almost identical, with the original music that I personally love in the game, the weapons that still sound mean and meaty after 9 years; with the exception of the Hammer of Dawn, which sounds noticably different, and is by far the most mean sounding weapon in the game, really earning it's name. The Locust still sound like monsters, and Boomers still growl "BOOM" before firing their weapon, always loved. The gameplay is unchanged, and it still plays really well, but more on the later. What I absolutely adored is in addition to upgrading the graphics, developer the Coalition completely re-did all the cutscenes, and they are stunning, not Halo 2 Blur cutscenes good but still absolutely amazing, and even though I'd seen them all before, it was awesome to watch these new re-done cutscenes. Also something of note is that the upgraded graphics also look really nice, I personally didn't find them jaw dropping, but they are still very high end graphics. Admitely some things let it down, little details that you'll only notice when you look really close, but if you really have to dig for them, that's hardly a serious criticism. Something new to this remaster is content previously unavailable on the xbox 360 version was included in the singleplayer, adding a few more chapters of story and gameplay, that's hard to complain about, and it too has been touched up with the new graphics and cutscenes, it blends in very nicely.
Gears of War tells the story of a band of friends who save the day and kill countless monsters, obviously there's more going on, but if you have played Gears before you know this already and if you don't I'd rather not spoil it, don't expect a story like Bioshock Infinite or The Last of Us that will leave you emotionally exhausted or pondering the meaning of it all, but expect a narrative that will have you gripped from start to finish over this campaign that will take between 8 and 12 hours to beat. What I actually forgot, having not played Gears since Judgement came out was how much I love the characters in this game, Marcus and Dom have really enjoyable dialogue together, and the 4 characters have some really entertaining back and forth with each other, there is a believable friendship with them. But the 2 characters I like most are Cole and Baird, Cole is a former sports star who is a great example of how gleefully dumb and big and loud this game can be, and Baird is very open with his opinion and actually a bit of a wimp, he always says the funniest thing that can be said in the situation. Something that the game has is an absence of a real antagonist, there's technically a bad guy with General Ramm, who appears in the first act only to make a very brief appearance later on and be the game's big final boss at the end, and the game is narrated at times by the Locust queen, who never appears in the story, making a very brief appearance at the end that I personally thought the game didn't need, just keep her as the narrator, she'll become the bad guy later. This game's style has to be mentioned, because it does not hold back; Marcus and his squad are the most manliest men who ever lived, with arms like tree trunks and bulky armour that looks as heavy as they are. Their guns have chainsaws on them that tear most enemies into bloody chunks, heads explode in glorious sprays of meat and blood and bodies are blown apart into red puddles and the odd surviving lump of flesh. This game isn't for a family audience, it is insane, and that is a huge piece of it's charm, there's nothing more hilariously violent than watching a Locust's head take off like a rocket after hitting him with the torque bow, or blasting him out of existence with the gnasher at point blank range.
Gameplay holds up really well after 9 years, shooting and aiming is still smooth, melee attacks with the lancer are awesome when you pull them off, and though the game isn't nightmarishly hard, it's not forgiving either, thanks to it's competent enemy AI. The Locust come in many forms, from the tiny and annoying Wretch to the lumbering and intimidating Brumak and anything in between, but the majority of what you fight are standard foot soldiers, these guys are tactical, taking up opportunities to flank you, taking cover to avoid your attacks, and sometimes just charging straight at you, this unpredictable nature forces you to stay on your toes, and this game's firefights do tend to benefit from a more tactical approach. While in combat you have a wheel of 4 weapon options; 2 primaries, 1 side arm and grenades, all the guns have a clever little active reload system, meaning if you tap the reload button at the right time, you can drastically speed up reloading or even get a damage boost, though it does get easy to memorise when to hit the active reload, taking away the challenge of successfully pulling it off, and making you really hate yourself when you mess up and jam your gun. The campaign has some very interesting sequences that mix up the standard shooting gameplay, example, there's a level at night where you have to stay in the light or be torn apart by a swarm of flying monsters, there are boss fights where the boss can only be hurt by the Hammer of Dawn, and making too much noise causes it to go into a rage and charge at you, there's a section where enemies explode after death. These sections again force you to try new tactics, and they mix up the shooting sections very well. Unfortunately here's where I have some issues, I encountered bugs frequently in my campaign, some minor and somewhat funny like the team mate AI walking in circles in a corner, others forced me to reload the checkpoint, for example one instance during a vehicle section when the vehicle just stopped and froze on the spot, or when the team mate AI somehow managed to kill itself, which happened a few times during the first boss fight. Also there were a few occasions where the enemy AI just seemed to turn off and I had to search the level for a few minutes to find the last enemy, who had usually taken cover somewhere and just sat there doing nothing. These bugs really are bad, but they weren't frequent enough to ruin my experience, but it annoyed me a great deal when I didn't know what to do and I wasn't sure if I was the one messing up or the game, and I was forced to restart from the checkpoint because I just didn't know.
Gears of War ultimate Edition is a solid game, for fans of the original game there's enough new stuff and fancy upgrades to warrant the reasonable asking price of just £30, and if you've never played the first Gears, this is a good way to experience it for the first time, I say good and not great because the game has a few really bothersome bugs from time to time, but get past them and you've got a very excellent game that is definitely worth trying out.
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