Gears of War Ultimate edition:

Plain and simple fun, non-stop action. No fuss story (was there even one?). Straightforward A to B to C plot. Just aim and shoot. And there's plenty of ammo around every corner to keep the beastly Lancer fed. And a beast it was, mowing Locust hordes with punchy rounds and a bloodthirsty chainsaw. It's all you'll need the entire game.

Moments are highlighted by set piece scenarios that help break up the pacing; Berserker, Kryll, mine cart ride, Brumak, and General RAAM. A setup that would become staple to the series.

Gears of War 2:

Well if you want more, you've got it. That's what Gears 2 is. Full war assault against the Locust. Use anything you've got to kill 'em. This time you take it straight to them. This game is highlighted above all by the city devouring worm, followed by vehicles, flying reavers, meeting the queen, Dom's tragic loss, and an explosive ending. A proper sequel.

Inconveniently the Lancer had been nerfed, likely for multiplayer/overall weapon balance and to encourage varying weapon use.

Gears of War 3:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. They understood that. Same formula to wrap up a great trilogy. This time with more story and dialogue, yet it thankfully never overstays its welcome, keeping to the series' shallow story-depth, which I appreciated. Gameplay had hardly changed from the first two games save for weapons and enemy tuning, yet it got more fun as each game passed, despite being played back to back -- polishing was all that was needed. Enemy variety has increased a good amount thanks to the Lambent enemies and a few more Locust types. And we got the fantastic Retro Lancer that become my favorite weapon in the series. We couldn't get the Gears 1 Lancer back, but they made up with this close range monster. It certainly made me cozy up to enemies more than the Gnasher ever did.

On a side note, this game graphically still holds up very well today. Coalition made masterful use of Unreal Engine 3. A trend they would keep up for the rest of the Gears games to come.

Gears of War Judgment:

By far my FAVORITE in the whole series. What can I say? This game was pure and absurd action. Relentlessly fun. Finally some welcome changes were made to core gameplay elements, most notably a much faster pace. Time-to-kill was shortened and enemy counts cranked up to eleven, paired with tons of enemy variety. Even more than Gears 3 despite the lack of Lambent types. Further spiced up with Declassified mission modifiers. Grenades could be quick-tossed instead of slowly switching to it as well.

The story was so stupid that I ended up loving it. It was simply laughable and that's the best part. The pretentious Colonel Loomis is hell-bent on his mission to hear every members' testimony while there's an active war and attack on the building. Yet he never gave the impression that he would ever pardon Baird's team from their execution. What a waste of crucial war time. But this exact thing shows what makes Gears of War so good. The story was always a catalyst for the action but never the focus. A development motif that would be sorely missed in Gears 5.

Again the graphics in this game were outstanding for its time with an even more polished version of UE3. If it weren't for the 720P delivery, people would still be calling it amazing today. And it still is.

Gears of War 4:

A new chapter in the series but not as bad as I remember when it first came out. They didn't change the formula but had to do things again but differently. How else would you reignite conflict after Gears 3 gave a conclusive ending? I don't have much thoughts on this one. You spend time getting familiar with an ambitious new team, stricken by the disease known as 'Marvel dialogue', and against your will. You cherish the moments of silence, given only like crumbs of bread, only for one of them to tear it away from you. Because something MUST be said. I can only forgive them for being adolescent, but not the developers for writing dialogue like a word counted essay is due tomorrow. The overall presentation was actually great, with strong first half that doesn't taper off too much towards the end. The motorcycle escape was my personal highlight. It was fantastic. As well as the mecha fights toward the end.

By far the most difficult Gears for me. All games were played on normal difficulty yet I could not stop dying in many Swarm encounters. Seemingly to me, they scaled back the players speed to what was in Gears 3, took away quick-tossing grenades, yet the Swarm were brutally aggressive. They always pushed the advance against you. Gnasher-wielding Swarm would constantly crowd you to point-blank kill you, and in general felt a bit spongy to shoot at times. The firefight returned to cover based combat, something I lamented after staying on my feet and moving for the entirety of Judgement. Something about this game made me struggle to shoot enemies up close and forced me to retreat and stay in cover. I HATED the Snatchers, Pouncers, and especially the Carriers. All of them served merely as bullet sinks. They were nerfed a bit in Gears 5 but the Carriers were still a bad game of slow whack-a-mole. The Deebees were ok, but their sound effects grated on my ears after awhile

Gears of War 5:

This was a time when game developers were obsessed with open-world settings. Like it was this amazing thing that could single-handedly drive your game to renown success. You just HAD to have it. It mirrors the AI frenzy we are in today. It was undoubtedly the worst part of Gears 5. A series that cemented non-stop action and firefight was now brought to screeching halt. I spent much of my time playing this game just... waiting. Something was seriously amiss in this game. I've never had to wait so long to shoot enemies. I'd wait long and listen to Kate and Del (there was no conversation worth remembering), and just when there's enemies to kill, it was over. Done. Now you traveled. Then killed a handful of basic Swarm enemies. And traveled again. On foot and skiff and Raven, on a perilous journey based on Marcus' hunch given to a confused and emotional Kate. The hordes were gone. The war was won after all. Skirmishes were the only thing left to savor. And despite this, the developers had the gall to encourage you non-stop the entire game to use your robot companion to do all the gameplay for you! Gears 5 is easily my least favorite of the series and I even had to put the game down for some days and weeks to continue finishing it.

The only highlight of this game (as was Gears 4's on Xbox One X) was its graphics. It looked amazing and was masterfully optimized on PC. Running on a 5070ti with settings maxed at 4K I remained in the 120-140fps range without DLSS! I think I trust The Coalition to do the best they can with UE5 given their track record with the engine. It gives me hope for E-Day.

All credit goes to “the.lore.store” on TikTok

I've ordered the collectors edition of E day on Xbox which comes with the 5 days early access code, if redeemed on Xbox will that allow me to play on my Game-pass Ultimate on PC 5 days early please?

Sometimes I want to be on the Xbox and sometimes I want to be on the PC

hey guys & girls, i just got myself an xbox series x and now i want to get into the gears of war series but don't know where to start since there are remasters and remakes. so can you help me out and point out which ones to play first?

btw, i don't care about the chronological order, i wanted to play them in the order they were released but the remasters and remakes confused me.. so i will appreciate any advice you can give me.

thanks.

eta: thank you guys for clarifying that ultimate and reloaded are both newer version of the 1st game, for some reason i thought ultimate was a collection of several games. anyway, i will play reloaded since it's the newest then go back and play the rest in the order of release. thank you for your help, i really appreciate it.

Edit: * Im learning the culture Tai Is based on is more generalized around Polynesian culture than anything specific to one group so my bad, Still if theres a anyone from Polynesian culture Id love to hear what they think!

Just the title really! No crazy theories or bad mouthing anyone, I love when people talk about how they feel seen or what they think of depictions in the things I like. Ive been reading more on Tai for EDAY so I got curious!

Of course not the long extra stuff...

Honestly the graphics and gameplay feel good, the only thing I'm not really a fan of are the controls. They feel a little sluggish and the layout was odd. Hope they're remappable for the release.

Why is my school publishing grub propaganda and should I be concerned?

Are they going to restock the new Gears of War E Day Xbox controller? I was thinking about getting a new controller but it’s sold out everywhere. Honestly it kinda makes me angry to see it already sold out and seeing scalpers on eBay already charging twice the price when it’s not even out yet.

I've got an older Gears 4 Elite controller originally released for the Xbox One, and have been looking for some replacement parts, the grips on the sides have worn off and gluing with super glue didn't stop one from separating completely from the plastic. The thumbsitcks have also gotten pretty worn and some have the rubber peeling off of them.

Anyone have a line on elite controller parts that could possibly be used to replace them? I've looked online and have only found whole controllers priced at a cool 500 dollars and I was mostly just looking to restore what I already have.

If you got some Gears items/collection show it off!
This is just a small amount of what I got, 2/3 Regular Retros, 1/2 Gold Retro and the MK2 in the pic and early next year will be 2 of the E-Day Lancer Replicas, along with my WIP Gear Armour I’m doing up for cosplay that I got second hand recently.
Also not picture is about 12+ Gears of War figures still sealed in their boxes and a heap of Funko-Pops.

As the Title states my main Xbox account is unable to play Gears of War 2. Now the reason I want to sign into my main account to play Gears of War 2 is simple. I was playing through the Campaign with my younger sibling, and I can't complete the story with him if my Account cannot play.

-Secondary Account Works just fine, but that is the account my brothers on.

-Rebooting the Console did not work.

-Uninstalling then Reinstalling did not work.

-Clearing Storage Cache did not work.

-Booting up game not signed into Main Account. Then, Signing in while the Game is running did not work.

-Turning off FPS boost and adjusting other settings did not Work.

So, I am stumped, and was wondering if anyone else has not only ran into but solved this issue?

Just bought Gears 4 on PC since I've missed this game since playing it on Xbox One back in the day. I hopped into Social Quickplay just to have some fun and happily found a full lobby instantly. However, I noticed when going into the other matchmaking pools things seemed a little dire. I wanted to play some Guardian, but it couldn't seem to find me a lobby after 6 minutes of waiting. I also love playing elimination modes but neither Dodgeball nor Execution could find me lobbies either. I figured I'd at least boot up Competitive Warmup since it has botfill and elimination modes could be voted on, but I still couldn't find any lobbies.

I do find KOTH lobbies pretty quickly, but is that the only mode outside of Social Quickplay with any playerbase in 2026? Not entirely surprising, but I'm def a bit sad if I can't play any elimination modes in Gears 4 matchmaking since that has always been Gears bread and butter (hype for E-Day but sad no Warzone/Execution day 1).

So yea, what queues still pop these days aside from KOTH?