Teenage boys loved it in 2006, and teenage boys will love it in 2025
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I first played Gears of War when I was 13. I have a distinct memory of my best friend at the time and I trading games — I had Assassin’s Creed, he had Gears — before Microsoft tried, and failed, to prevent that from happening. (He returned my Assassin’s Creed back with a broken case. Jerk.) I remember Gears of War being everything a 13-year-old boy could want at the time, and it stood as an early “must play” for the Xbox 360. Its cover shooting was tight, and the gory kills that came by the way of chainsaw bayonet seemed explicitly designed to appeal to teens like me.
In the latest sign the console wars are over, and perhaps were maybe never really a thing, Gears of War: Reloaded abandons Xbox-console exclusivity as it launches on PlayStation 5 today, alongside Windows PC and Xbox Series X. As a much-older-than-13-year-old adult now, I was curious to try the game that spawned a series with new eyes — and on a new platform. After running through its campaign, Gears of War still rips as a third-person shooter, though it’s not without its warts that date it as a relic of its time.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Gears of War is a hell of a good time. Its campaign is tight, clocking in at around six hours or so, and its five acts shepherd Marcus Fenix and his squadmates from level to level, set piece to set piece. The Reloaded edition’s reduced loading is an appreciated modern touch as there’s never time for a breath in Gears of War; the Locust are coming, and they ain’t stoppin’.
Perhaps most impressive in terms of Gears’s gameplay is its cover system. It offers a range of fluid movement for Fenix, and isn’t clunky like some other games of its time, such as 2007’s Mass Effect. The gunplay is top notch, with a solid variety of weapons available to Fenix, though I stuck mostly with the Lancer assault rifle and Gnasher shotgun combo during the campaign. (If a game gives me a shotgun, I’m not letting go of it.) Using the chainsaw bayonet on a Locust is as entertaining in 2025 as it was in 2006.
In classic fashion, Gears of War has scattered levels that take a detour from the typical hallway or open arena cover-based shooting. Some don’t land, like the stop-and-start nature of an early level that has Fenix alternating between driving and using a UV light against the bat-like Kryll enemies. Others are a blast, like the level where Fenix and crew are shuttled through a mine in carts like they’re on a ride at a post-apocalyptic Disney World.
Reloaded, which acts as an updated port of 2015’s Ultimate Edition, goes a long way in adding some color to the world of Gears of War. Kids nowadays are used to vibrantly rendered environments in their games, but back in my day (I’m officially of an age where I can say this now), games couldn’t launch without a blanket of tan, brown, and gray hues covering their levels. It was a rule.
Dollops of color dot Reloaded’s levels. In some, the gray still shines through as Delta Squad navigates personality-less concrete buildings. A late-game level following Fenix picking off Locust in and outside of his family estate stands out — there’s color on the walls! Greenery outside!
But in revisiting Gears of War, what stands out the most is just how thin its story and characters are. Beyond his of-an-era soul patch, there’s not much to Marcus Fenix. He starts by getting broken out of prison and his trial is alluded to in a “glance at your phone and you’ll miss it” moment, but his circumstances prior to the opening of Gears of War never matter much. He’s out and now tasked with killing Locust, and, dagnabbit, that’s just what he’s going to do.
Fenix and the rest of his squad are your stereotypical, block-headed marines with biceps larger than NFL footballs. They’re all macho men, with the token woman, Anya, making an early appearance before being consigned as only appearing via audio doling out instructions. Like Fenix, there’s not a lot to any of them beyond their gruff military personalities.
Gears of War also veers towards racial stereotypes in the way it portrays Augustus Cole, nicknamed Cole Train, one of its few Black characters. Cole speaks like any other stereotyped Black character plucked from the ’90s or ’00s (“Yeah! Woo! C’mon, sucker. This my kinda shit!”) and sometimes even in the third-person (“C’mon, baby, the Train’s at home on the rails!”). Though Gears is not set on Earth, its world of Sera is essentially our world, and of course the Black character was previously the Sera-equivalent of a football player before the Locust attacked. The lack of depth Cole received was scrutinized during the series’ heyday, though as a young’un it wasn’t something I would have thought about then in the way I do now.
And, sure, players can rightfully want to shut their brains off and shoot some alien monsters. Shooting aliens is great! It’s why I wanted to play Gears again. But remasters provide a great opportunity to look back at the past through a new lens and reflect on this piece of entertainment against the backdrop of its time. Later Gears installments provided more depth to the Human v. Locust conflict at the heart of Gears of War and made strides to be more inclusive, with its fifth entry starring its first female protagonist. Gears 5 stands in sharp contrast to the wafer-thin original Gears.
I’ve changed in many ways since I first played Gears of War on an Xbox 360 (that I was blissfully unaware was about to receive the Red Ring of Death), and the games I play have changed too. I still enjoy shotgunning aliens to the face as much as anyone, as evidenced by the fact that I’m still having a rip-roaring blast with Gears of War in 2025. I just look for a little more depth in my shotgun-to-the-face games now that a younger version of me wouldn’t have cared about. I’d like for characters to have more to say than just, “Woo! Yeah, baby!”
Maybe Reloaded will inspire a new generation of 13-year-olds to view their childhood entertainment through a new, critical lens in the decades to come. Or, at the very least, it’ll give a new generation the joy of shredding a chainsaw through a Locust.
Gears of War: Reloaded is out now on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a prerelease download code provided by Xbox Game Studios. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
