In a gaming swap for the decade, PlayStation and Xbox are each receiving one of the other’s biggest exclusives on the same day. Xbox is getting Arrowhead Studios’ award-winning satirical co-op shooter Helldivers 2, while PlayStation is getting a remaster of one of the most influential games of the last two decades in the original Gears of War. The latter marks the first time Epic Games’ shooter has appeared on a Sony console. And while the game is now old enough to vote in many elections, what made it great 19 years ago remains as compelling as ever, many years after release.
Gears of War is a third-person shooter set in a sci-fi future where humanity resides on a planet called Sera. After humans live thousands of years on this planet, stripping it of a powerful natural resource known as imulsion, a subterranean species emerges from the depths of the planet to put an end to humanity’s reign on the surface for good.
