Gears 5 on Xbox Series X - Review

Gears 5 is one of those games when it released never really grabbed me I enjoyed my time with it but once I was done with the campaign I never went back. Now that the game has come back optimised for Xbox Series X, this was my chance to revisit it and see if maybe my impressions about the story had improved along with the graphics.

This is not going to be a full review because I've already done that if you want to read that click here, what this is more about are the enhancements to the game, above the original release for console. Gears 5 initially looked impressive there's no denying that fact, however now on Series X the game looks so good that booting it up on a One X, it looks pretty bad in comparison. Now you'll hear people talking about how it runs at a faster frame rate or you know the world is more dynamic than it was previously, both valid points, but not the thing you need to care about. What is really impressive with Gears 5 is that it is smoother overall, from the visuals and yes of course that includes the frame rate but playing the game and of course the load times are a lot shorter, which all comes together to provide a smoother overall experience.

Load times obviously are a bit of a harder thing to quantify because they would not that lengthy on the initial console release, at least once you were in game, the menus though is where things were the opposite. While the initial load into the menu is still a bit long, it is far shorter then it was and once you're in you don't have to wait for other elements to load for you and by that I mean textures and such. That is probably one of the bigger improvements that you may not even be aware of, the gears series has always had this load effect way it will load in the world and then over the course of the next 10 seconds or so, it loads in the more detailed textures. If you look at any footage from the original games you can spot that happening a mile off, it's very prominent on the old games and even on Gears 4 and now 5, on the Xbox One it was still happening. In the nearly five hours that I put into the campaign again I didn't see that once and that makes it a big improvement.

The multiplayer is the same in terms of gameplay as it was in the original release but that higher frame rate does make a difference here, not only does the game feel more visceral it feels that every action I was doing was instant. For a great many people multiplayer is not a big deal, where for the rest it is a massive deal and having matches that were smooth, that managed to keep the flow going, I honestly wasn't sure it would be such a big improvement, but it really was.

The question remains, will these improvements make you want to come back to Gears 5 if you are not all in on the multiplayer and I can say for certain yes they will. The game is smoother, it loads faster and it provides a more a satisfying feeling whilst playing it, knowing that anytime I died, it was due to my actions, not the game stuttering or anything. If you've already sunk all this time into the campaign and don't feel like replaying it you can of course now swap out Marcus Fenix for Dave Batista, in terms of character model and voice and it is a surreal experience but I don't know if it's worth re-playing the entire campaign for. Given that all multiplayer progress carries across, playing Gears 5 on Xbox Series X is likely to keep the community alive, that might be enough for some, but for those got their fill when the game first released, a sample might be all they need.

The Score

9.0

Review code provided by Xbox

The Pros

+Somehow manages to look even better than it did before

+Swapping out Marcus for Dave Batista is a fun addition

The Cons

-Nothing new to the game, just performence boosts

-Still centers around Kait