Playing Gears of War on a PlayStation console, DualSense's Impulse Triggers whirring underfinger as a Lancer Chainsaw Bayonet churns through flesh and bone, is a surreal experience. But joining a friend who is on Xbox Series X for a cross-platform co-op session? Quite honestly, it's quietly revolutionary.
When Gears made its debut two decades ago, the idea that players across rival console ecosystems would one day be able to play cooperatively and competitively together online was implausible. Cross-platform play may be ubiquitous today, but it has only been eight years since companies like Epic, Psyonix, and Xbox fought to change the status quo. And as for the idea that Gears of War, a flagship Xbox exclusive, would ever appear on PlayStation wasn't just implausible, it was laughable.
What's old is new again
Having now sampled Gears of War: Reloaded on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, and the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally X handheld, I have to say that I'm impressed by the quality of remaster developer The Coalition (in partnership with studios Sumo Digital and Disbelief) has put together here. 4K assets, remastered textures, and HDR support underpin a transformed campaign experience which runs at an impossibly smooth 60fps on all platforms. Both the original Gears and the 2015 Ultimate Edition remaster, which underpins Reload's design, were locked to 30fps. You've never experienced this adventure quite like this.
"Gears has always been a visual and technical showcase. It was important for us to carry on that tradition with Reloaded," says Kate Rayner, technical director at The Coalition. "It's running in 4K. We've doubled the framerate of the campaign, and doubled the framerate of the multiplayer up-to 120 frames per-second. It's now a native HDR game. There are augmentations to the lighting quality, the shadows, and the reflections. We're doing things with Reloaded that just weren't possible on the Xbox 360 or the Xbox One, and so there's this extra level of fidelity beyond higher pixel counts and framerates."
I haven't played the original Gears of War campaign since 2006 – my experience with Ultimate Edition limited to multiplayer sessions. What really surprised me about getting hands-on with Gears of War: Reloaded is just how well that campaign holds up. "It's got good bones," as Rayner would put it. For those of you reading who weren't there for it at the time, it's difficult to overstate just how important Gears was when it launched. The best looking video game on Xbox 360, yes, but one which took the movement model pioneered by Resident Evil 4 and revolutionized it – third-person shooters have been defined by their waist-high cover bona fides ever since.
"We're doing things with Reloaded that just weren't possible on the Xbox 360 or the Xbox One"
The setup The Coalition has put together for me here sees an online co-op session with the televisions hooked up side-by-side. There's another player sitting beside me – one of us with an Xbox Wireless Controller in hand, the other a DualSense – it isn't long before we're locked into a nostalgia trip. We're sliding between cover and eviscerating Locust with overtorqued shots, closing E-holes with grenades and picking each other up. 2006 has never looked, or felt this good. This session highlighted just how exceptional of a co-op game Gears can be.
While I certainly remember Gears of War being a 'bro game', in retrospect it really is exceptionally silly. Within minutes we were repeating character barks and laughing at outrageous objective conditions over voice chat. While there are still a lot of questions surrounding Microsoft Gaming's decision to bring its most iconic franchises to PlayStation, I do like the idea that a generation of PS3 and PS4 owners could be about to experience something that they've never been able to access. And that Xbox Series X players can be right there with them to guide the way.
You know, fun is a difficult thing to define. For every individual player, a video game either is or it isn't. But cooperative Gears of War (online or in splitscreen, both of which Reloaded supports) is objectively fun. That was true in 2006. It was still true in 2015. And it remains true in 2025. Very few franchises have stood the test of time in this way, even fewer with a first installment so enjoyable to play 20 years later. That's those good bones for you, sure, but also a reflection of the exceptional work The Coalition has put into these remastered efforts. And with multiplayer beta weekends set to kick off on June 13, I'm excited to spoil some fun for others if my wallbouncing muscle memory will kick back into gear.
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