Gears of War: Reloaded

Gears of War is just a cool, fun video game. It was true when it first released, and it’s still true now in its “Reloaded” edition. Selfishly, I do wish they had gone for the “Master Chief Collection” moment with the whole original trilogy brought into one collection, remastered to the same level and access to all the multiplayer and horde modes - I do feel like that would have made a much bigger splash and I would’ve thrown all my money at it. Given this is obviously just the first game, I was content to wait for it to go on sale. But aside from all that, the game is just so good. The gameplay is smooth, violent, and satisfying. The characters are larger-than-life yet endearing. The levels are beautiful and full of spectacle. The pacing is so, so good - never dragging and always hooking you in for what comes next. The world they built is just so impressive, and a joy to wander around and explore. And the remastered face-lift here just brings it all to another level. I do wish more could have been done with the prerendered cutscenes, as they are still capped at 30 FPS and remain at a lower resolution, which can be jarring when swapping from the crisp, HD remastered gameplay. I do hope they move to the next games as well, as Gears 2 was my favourite by far and I would love to be able to play that again on modern hardware. But taking a stroll through Gears 1 was still a great time.