Gears of War Ultimate Edition - Maxi-Geek Review
Gears of War was a game that I loved when it first came out,
the game was just so different from anything else at the time, it really cut a
path forward for itself and countless other games have since attempted to
follow, which is why it is a shame that Ultimate Edition feels like its behind
the original.
The story of Gears gets very complicated from the end of the
third game, but thankfully where it starts off its very simple to follow, it
starts with Marcus Fenix in prison for crimes that are only mentioned in
passing, before Dom comes to bust him out and from here the pair head out on a
seemingly impossible mission. Along the way the characters of Baird, Cole and
Anya help round out the stable of character archetypes and with them all
involved they set out to stop the decimation of the human race at the hands of
creatures known as Locusts.
Their reason for declaring war upon the surface is not
explained, but that helps add to their mysterious nature, with only Raam
standing out as someone who has no mysterious side, his introduction in Ultimate
Edition has been refined from the original release, so he now has a real sense
of danger to him, rather than the surprise attack that happened before. There
is also a voice that helps explain some events, but meeting that character won’t
take place until the second game, but the calm tone that is used is very
creepy, in a we are going to kill you all, then have lunch kind of way. The
story is of course the same as it was in the original release and while it was
not something spectacular then, it still holds up today.
Gameplay is what sold the Gears of War title back in 2006,
cover based shooters were nothing at the time, but Gears changed that, entering
cover and moving between cover just worked and the game felt really good
because of it. With Ultimate Edition it still feels as nice as ever, but the
characters look weightier so it is even more impressive. The active reload
system is back and is a really wonderful little way of reloading, you can hit
the button to reload and let it play out, or you can hit again and if you are
in the sweet spot your reload will finish and the new rounds added to the gun
will deal more damage, of course if you get it wrong, the reload will fail and
you will need to wait a few more seconds for the gun to become functional
again, meaning getting that right in combat is going to be crucial.
Sadly, it is with the Gameplay that Ultimate Edition falls
down as I found a lot of bugs and issues that caused a lot of grief, things
like characters taking cover against a pillar, but then being popped a good
meter off the pillar, but still in cover is humorous if anything, but it’s when
characters who have to open doors disappear and you spend minutes walking
around hoping they will come back, all the while they are telling you to hurry
up and just frustrating. The AI also showed a lack of awareness as I had
enemies ignoring me as I flanked, even when I was shooting them, my own squad
mates would get stuck on door frames, or as Dom did quite often, run out into
the middle of a firefight only to be brought down and then me having to save
him.
There was also another instance of Dom being a little to
Gung Ho for his own good and it involved the Krill, he ran out in the darkness
and was attacked and downed, the game revived him, to which I was grateful and
then he was downed again and this process repeated 4 more times, before the
game gave me a failed objective notification and prompted me to restart from
the last checkpoint, because he was unable to get back to safety before he was
attacked again and I could not reach him without dying. There were other
issues, like the squad just standing around as I pressed forward, Dom disappearing
during my fight with the Corpser and enemies just spawning right in front of me
causing some very rage inducing deaths.
There is an upside to the gameplay, with the PC exclusive chapter
now making its way to Xbox for the first time, which if you have played on PC,
will be nothing new for you, but Xbox gamers will be surprised. The best part
is that it fits into the story really well, keeping the games flow and momentum
going and for those new to the story, nothing will seem a miss. However, that
is not the only new content to appear in the game, modes from the later games
online modes has made it in as well, providing players with even more choices
to explore. Sadly, being pre-release, there was a very limited number of people
for me to play online with, so the match making was not working great, but
there were a few games to try out and they proved to be fun. The game ran
smooth, I noticed no lag, which was very common on the original release and
even with a few people being chainsawed in half had no issues with the performance
of the game.
The one are the game has improved on is the presentation,
the audial changes are minor if any, the guns sound as nice as they did 9 years
ago, the chainsaw bayonet is still a blast to rev up and the locusts provide
some nice out of the world battle cries. The visuals are the big area of improvement
and not just talking about how things look as a whole, the characters and world
all look nicer with the added power of Xbox One, but the game now loads right,
which means there is no longer a series of muddy textures all over the place
that are slowly replaced by the proper ones. When a level or cutscene loads,
everything is ready to go and looks great.
Some characters have been tweaked, like the Locusts as a
whole, they are now slightly paler, to help sell the fact that they have lived
without sunlight for ages, even Carmine looks nicer as a whole, but perhaps the
biggest change was to Raam himself, that first scene where you meet him is a
better introduction to the character, but now he looks like he is a real
menacing threat. From the original release to Ultimate Edition, Raam has had
the most change, but the entire game looks better overall, from an art design
perspective as well.
Gears of War Ultimate Edition is strange, they have taken a
lot of time to adjust things that were of concern to players of the original,
even beefing up some characters to help them look better, but thanks to the
constant issues with AI, characters appearing and disappearing at will and even
the player being zoomed around the maps, it feels like it needed more time
before it was ready for release.
Thanks to Xbox Australia for supplying the game for review.
Luke Henderson