Marcus and the gang are back for a remastered version of the Xbox 360 classic.
What Is It? Marcus Fenix is in jail while the world crumbles outside. A horde of mutant bugs emerged from Earth’s code and are inexplicitly fully armed and armoured. For reasons unknown, Marcus has been confined to jail before the war got to the point of all prisoners receiving a blanket pardon. A soldier named Dom releases him, tosses him a gun, and off to fight the mutants they go.
The game is a remaster of the 2006 Xbox 360 title. The original was a pioneer in the third person cover-shooter genre and this Reloaded version provides the same gameplay. You will spend pretty much the entire game fighting or running to the next fight with only brief cutscenes in between the action. Combat areas are laid out with a bunch of waist-high barriers to be used for cover. You and your enemies will take cover, peek out to shoot, then return to reload. The game leans heavily into the cover system as running out into the open is a good way to die quickly as some of the strong enemy guns will take you out in just a shot or two.
You will be accompanied by a companion most of the game, you can give some combat direction to them if you’d like, but on normal difficulty this is entirely optional. You will find yourself needing to revive them a few times when they get knocked down.
Enemies are armed mutants who make decent use of the cover system. Flanking is an overpowered strategy in this game when it is available, but if you get caught you might hit the Game Over screen. The game occasionally introduces a nice level of verticality as you will attack, or be attacked, from above which can change tactics quite a bit from a standard fight.
Weapons can be picked from downed enemies and range from automatic rifles, pistols, shotguns, and sniper rifles, with a few minor variations within. One of the most memorable aspects of the original was the chainsaw melee kills and those are still here. Charge up your rifle’s handy chainsaw and find an enemy to saw them in half. Good, gory, fun.
There is never a terribly long stretch of game without having a unique segment or boss fight. There’s the classic “massive blind enemy you have to bait into bursting through a locked door” part, a giant boss you can’t take on but have to focus on destroying its guns first, and so on. Nothing groundbreaking from the 2025 view, but it is all well done and good fun.
Beyond the single player campaign, the game offers co-op campaigns (couch and online) as well as online 8 player PvP modes. Gears of War is a classic co-op game, there is certainly a lot of fun to be had tackling this game on higher difficulty settings with a friend.
The Best Part: Pure, streamlined shooter fun. Sometimes you just need a game which allows you to mindlessly blast away monsters for a few hours. Gears of War Reloaded can be beaten in under eight hours and you’ll likely be smiling the entire time. Yes, you can play online, co-op, or up the difficulty if you want more of this game, but in many respects this is the perfect GamePass title if you want to try it, enjoy it, beat it, and forget it. Not every game needs a 40+ hour playtime, and Gears is quite short if you want it to be.
The Worst Part: The small parts which weren’t given quality of life upgrades. You should be able to run at an obstacle and hurdle it on the go rather than needing to use it as cover and then hurdle as two separate actions. You should not have to see/hear any dialogue as you approach a boss fight after you’ve already died and are now retrying (more bizarre is that you can skip some of these, but not all). When you can clearly see an enemy’s back sticking out from behind cover and shoot it, the hit should register instead of ignoring it because the enemy is behind cover and, therefore, not hit-able from your angle. These are relics of the era from the original game and should have been cleaned up for this remaster.
The Verdict: Gears of War Reloaded is a good looking game that is a lot of fun to play. There are a variety of gameplay modes from single player, co-op, and online. Cross-platform play with the extremely strange to see PlayStation version should help ensure full lobbies.
The game itself mostly plays quite well. There is an extended section where you cannot step into the darkness without being swarmed by bugs for near instant-death. The game has you shooting propane tanks to create light, using a spotlight as a mounted attack weapon, and guiding your partner through a street using a spotlight from above. This is a really fun take on a trope that I feel like I’ve seen dozens of times in video games. It feels fresh, not from a nearly 20 year old game. Not everything in the game holds up that well, but very few parts feel 20 years old. The overall experience is still fun and the fresh coat of paint Reloaded provides is welcome and worth playing in 2025.
How to Play: Xbox Series*, PlayStation 5, PC
*console played on for this review
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