Remasters aren’t a rare thing in the industry nowadays, however the quality of some may be hit and miss when it comes to the work involved with refining the titles in question for current generation hardware. Gears of War is one of the next titles to enter this generation with a fresh coat of paint, though our session with Gears of War’s refined campaign opened up the blinds, revealing more of the inner workings of The Coalition’s reworking of this classic Xbox 360 title.
For its Xbox One counterpart Gears of War’s assets have been completely re-done for the current generation, replacing much (if not all) of the basis of the original, providing higher quality models, refined animations, redone cutscenes and a tweaked control scheme that takes notes from the sequels when it comes to controller layouts and responsiveness.
What was up next lead us to the action-packed part of the sessions, which was also a section of the game that was previously only available to PC players of the first game. The X1’s newly added chapter: Powers That Be, is one of the parts of the Ultimate Edition’s 90 minutes of newly added gameplay, which puts players in another industrial setting where they are met with multiple enemy encounters. Again our sessions was split into groups of two (albeit due to a technical error sessions were mismatched) and we set on our offensive against the Locust in this small, but impressive taster of what The Coalition has done to improve the game.
But of course, performance is one thing, but how does Gears of War Ultimate compare when it comes to actually playing it? That’s a pretty cool story, as The Coalition didn’t just port the game and touch up the graphics, but they also took feedback from the community and previous titles to enhance the control scheme to essentially make the experience a best of both worlds when it comes to usability and responsiveness.
Players of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition will receive backward compatible copies of Gears of War 1, 2 3 and Judgement, along with access to the exclusive Gears of War 4 beta. Gears of War: Ultimate Edition will also be available on PC at a later date.