This week saw a massive moment in the world of gaming as one of Xbox’s most iconic exclusive franchises slammed into cover on PlayStation 5. But Gears of War: Reloaded, the second time the game has been remastered since its release 20 years ago, also came to Steam and people are not very happy with it.
The issues are numerous, so let me try and summarise at least a few of the biggest complaints.
Local Co-Op Is Missing In Action
Despite trailers and marketing materials clearly stating that local split-screen multiplayer would be in the game, players have noted that it’s entirely missing from the PC release.
What’s far worse is that the game’s official trailer and its Steam page were edited after release to remove all mentions of local co-op on PC.
People are saying this is false advertising. They’d be right, too. The feature was very clearly part of the marketing, and mention of it was only stripped out after Gears of War: Reloaded launched.
Crashing Issues Everywhere (And A Workaround)
One of the most common complaints on Steam is crashing. First, there seems to be an issue where changing the graphical settings often results in the game crashing harder than Marcus Fenix slamming into cover. But there are also reports of the game crashing when linking a Microsoft account, or when firing up the multiplayer.
So far, the culprit behind most of the crashes seems to be linking a Microsoft account. From what I can tell, the majority of people suffering from crashes when changing the graphical options have also linked their accounts.
Oh, and some people can’t even launch the game without it catching fire. Even Microsoft is aware of this problem, going so far as to suggest a workaround: Players can go to C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\Local\Coalition and then delete the WarGame folder.
The official Gears of War X account has stated that they are aware of crashing issues and are working on patching the game.
Missing Pre-Order Items
A lot of people haven’t got their pre-order items. Again, Microsoft and the Coalition have officially acknowledged this but haven’t provided any estimate on a fix as of yet.
Even More Missing Stuff
Despite this being a remaster of a remaster, some things that were present in the 2007 original are still missing. Specifically, there’s no lobby browsing, no editor, and you still can’t rebind certain controls. Oddly enough, being unable to rebind controls was a problem I had with another recent remaster, Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Definitive Edition.
Low Player Numbers (Maybe?)
At the time of writing, Gears of War: Reloaded has achieved a peak concurrent player count of 4,819. That’s not a lot of players, even if this is just a remaster.
However, Game Pass complicates things massively. Reloaded has launched straight onto Game Pass, and that’s undoubtedly where the vast majority of players are logging on. We’ve seen this before with other Xbox games that have come to PC, the Steam numbers seemingly lagging because everyone is playing via Game Pass instead. It means we can’t really use the Steam numbers as a good gauge for a game’s success.
Right now, we have no idea how well the game is performing on console. It’s going to be especially interesting to see what kind of sales Gears of War: Reloaded can achieve on PlayStation.