Gears of War: Ultimate Edition has gotten off to a shaky start on PC, partly due to the erratic performance on a wide range of systems, causing frame rate drops and other glitches; basically the same as every other game launch these days. Then there’s the fact I’ve yet to know anyone who actually bought it anyway, so there’s some food for thought.
So what’s this game really got to offer anyway? Well, it’s got massively improved graphics vs the original release and that’s certainly no bad thing for those who have yet to play the original, or even just for those keen to revisit the classic first entry in the franchise. PC gaming is known for being able to push great graphics, but how do the graphics settings fair when they’re dialed all the way down to their lowest, vs how they look at their maximum? That’s what these screenshots aim to capture.
The images are ordered max/low, max/low, etc throughout.
Some fairly mixed results here, on minimum the game somehow manages to have worse textures that the original, which managed to run great on modern hardware, with high frame rates and even a mid range GPU can push it to 1440P and 4K without breaking into a sweat. However, the new one seems really muddy to me, although admittedly the maximum images do look great, they don’t seem to really change much more than a few textures. The lighting, decals, detailing and more seem fairly locked down in this images.
Overall, it’s still a great improvement on maximum from the original game, but perhaps not the big upgrade people were expecting, nor does the PC version offer any visual advantages over the Xbox One release; short of higher frame rates, but with the current state of the engine, they’re not guaranteed either.
