I have to admit, Microsoft really jumped the gun with Gears of War 4. Having released a full year before the Xbox One X, it was all but forgotten in the minds of gamers. In a time when we have multitudes of triple-A blockbuster games vying for our attention, a year is an eternity, and anything older than that is a dinosaur.

The reason I mention this, is because I just recently played through a different GoW in God of War for the PS4. Even on the base console at 1080p, it was a damn gorgeous game. “The best looking console game ever made,” has often been said when talking about it. And I was inclined to agree. It could only look better on a PS4 Pro, so I mean, sure why not?

But then I went back to Gears of War 4, a game I hadn’t played since it came out over a year ago. Why do I keep stressing how long ago it released? Because the Xbox One X was nothing more than a list of specs on a piece of paper at the time, that’s why. We received a game that played on an Xbox One, at 1080p. We were told that the game was designed with forward compatibility in mind, and that it would “scale” when the Scorpio (as it was known at the time) released. But we had nothing to go on, and the game we were playing at the time was a pretty, and solid, Gears of War game. Nothing spectacular.

Now, almost a year and a half after it released, I played it at 4k resolution with HDR enabled.

And it blew my fucking mind.

Gears of War 4 is not a game with 4k upscaling support patched in, like some of the other games that received “Xbox One X Enhancements.” It’s clear that they made this game with Xbox One X in mind. And after playing through the entirety of this year and a half old game, I honestly think it gives God of War a run for its money. The graphics are very impressive. The HDR lighting is incredible, and the special effects from the windflares (that I originally found underwhelming) were epic. I haven’t gone this screenshot-crazy in a game in a long, long time.

Why do I bring all this up? Because I know the lifespan of a game, and I know that outside of the multiplayer pvp, probably no one is playing this anymore. The reason I think MS jumped the gun is because if they would’ve waited and made it a launch title for the XBX, jaws would’ve been on the floor. Instead they were caught convincing people to go back to a game they’d already played and beat or played and abandoned. Just like I did.

I went back to Gears for the purpose of getting it out of my backlog, and in effect, getting that 100+ GB behemoth of a game file off my hard drive. But I went back to it on my X, and after playing literally 30 seconds on my old save, I ditched it and started over, because I wanted to see everything. The Coalition really deserves a lot of credit in regards to the texture work in the game. While I’m sure there were assets that were re-used throughout the game, rarely do you feel like you are seeing the same stuff over and over. Granted, some of the metal corridors can get a bit repetitive, but even when you’re traversing “interior structure #6” it never feels like they’re just re-hashing everything.

Graphics aside, the game play is classic Gears of War, for better and worse. Enemies are bullet-spongier than ever, and the new “scions” soak up quite a bit before they fall. It’s kind of always been my gripe with the Gears games though, that the enemies get bigger and tougher while the player has to choose between the big gun with little ammo or the little gun with plenty of ammo. Having experienced more than my share of getting stranded with no bullets for my Longshot and Boomer, I usually elect to stick with my Lancer and whatever that little three-shot semi auto pistol is called. Sure it takes 3x longer to kill anything but at least I won’t be left high and dry when a Locust is in my face.

There were a few interesting twists to some of the stages that mixed things up a bit, though they still played it safe for the most part. A few rooms with some giant chains being yanked back and forth made for a cool “now-you-have-it-now-you-don’t” cover mechanic. Another segment of the game has you swinging from a steel cable as you zip upwards out of a mine shaft, dodging falling debris and then swinging back and forth as it gets dragged sideways along the wall. Sadly these little twists on gameplay are few and far between, and the rest of the time you’re dealing with standard Gears “battle rooms” that can be easily spotted due to their randomly placed walls and cover items.

Taking that into account, I should also note that I am a huge advocate of playing Gears on either Easy or Normal (which is honestly like playing on “Very Easy” and “Easy”). It’s long been known by fans of the series that the game doesn’t get proper until you set it to Hardcore, but I stand my ground when I say the game is a hundred times more enjoyable on Normal because one, it doesn’t require nearly as many bullets to bring down a locust, and two, you die less. No shit, right? Right, but when you have targets such as the Locusts that take such a large amount of bullets to kill, higher difficulty settings turn every battle into a chore. Games are supposed to be fun, remember?

I’ll be glad to finally remove this from the backlog, but I feel a bit sad about removing it from the hard drive. Not only because I’d like to think I would want to play through it again one day, but also I’d have to actually re-download the 112 GB file. And that’s enough to make someone feel a little down.