Gears of War: Ultimate Edition gets off to a rocky start

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition

We said last week that Gears of War: Ultimate Edition was expected to be out in March. And we were right! Today is March 1, and GoW:UE is now available for purchase on the Windows Store.

Objects in the “new” Gears have been “uprezzed” by ten to 30 percent, The Coalition Technical Director Cam McRae said on the Xbox Wire, while character models have had their poly count doubled. Textures are also much more detailed, which McRae explained is mainly due to DirectX 12, because it “allows developers to more efficiently harness the multiple cores in today's higher-end processors.”

“One of our goals with the PC version was, 'Don't touch the art',” McRae said. “But beyond that, we changed everything.”

In spite of all the improvements, alas, the PC release of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition appears to be plagued with technical issues. A list of problems posted on the Gears forums includes downloads that appear to have stalled, sub-par performance on AMD GPUs, lack of support for Nvidia's G-Sync technology—running with it enabled “will cause significant performance issues”—and a strong recommendation that Ambient Occlusion be disabled on AMD graphics cards until a fix can be released.

On the upside, the Windows update released earlier today fixes the stalled download bar problem.

As we've already established, Gears Ultimate requires Windows 10, among other things, and of course is exclusive to the Windows Store. It will set you back $30.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.