Format: Windows 10
Genre: Third-Person Shooter
Developer: The Coalition
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios

"Gears of War 4" had its photogenic moments to be sure, but this latest entry in the series-- with the "of War" bizarrely removed from its title, incidentally-- really amps things up to eleven: the real-time snow and sand tessellation has to be seen to be believed, while the fiery explosions at the tail-end of the first act are astonishing. This is Unreal Engine 4 pushed to its limits! It's too bad then that the game's HDR implementation is somewhat lackluster, and the engine seems to have memory leak and asset loading issues, resulting in frequent "hitching". This reviewer even had to back down an Nvidia driver revision just to make the game playable in this regard!

The same guy-- "Ramin Djawadi"-- who did the previous game's soundtrack has returned, and the music what you would expect from someone who makes Hollywood movie music for a living. Some of the motifs are kind of interesting, but what happened to all of those classically trained geniuses from the industry's earlier days? The game's voice acting is pretty good, although the most talented of the bunch by a mile is still John DiMaggio, who has been the voice of "Marcus" from the very first game.

There are a few somewhat radical series departures in this "Gears" iteration: first, a couple of the acts have their action segregated by "Metro Exodus" pseudo-open world areas. These zones are pretty small, but are tastefully implemented to give just enough breather without boredom. Second, a skill-upgradable robot companion follows the player, and it can be used to stun enemies or grab otherwise unreachable items. Finally, a new "Left 4 Dead"-like mode has been added, where a three-player team tries to escape from an ever-encroaching fog of lethal gas. "Gears 5" plays things very safe so as not to upset the chads-- but the core gameplay formula still works. What's more, the entire campaign can be played in co-op or even split-screen, from start to finish!

The game's stellar art direction and straight-up engine prowess puts this release very near to the bleeding edge of contemporary game technology. Awesome! Unfortunately, technical issues both on Windows and on the dedicated Xbox hardware are somewhat widespread. At one point, the game wouldn't run on this reviewer's machine without a mandatory patch, and the patch wouldn't install due to a "Windows Store" error! Welcome to your digital future, today. Thankfully, the game itself is pretty fabulous, with phenomenal graphics, an interesting story, a plethora of modes, and rock-solid mechanics.