I have not been eyeing on Gears 4 for a while because of other interests and real life. While I did play the beta for a small bit, I have been keeping myself reserved until it comes out. I might come in a bit late at this point but hopefully it's gonna be good.

I just went back to playing Gears of War Ultimate Edition. I beat it around release on, but now in excitement to four, I'm going to finish it up on Insane. The biggest disappointment about Ultimate Edition isn't just that they didn't manage to give it a 60fps on the One (and sometimes can't even manage a steady 30fps, similar to the original game), but I would have loved if they gave the same treatment to the entire trilogy. That said, it's still a great looking, and fun playing games regardless. Insane feels easier in this version though; either because it is factually easier, or because I've played Gears of War enough to know how to play it better. I think it's just easier though. Currently on Act III, Downpour.

I've never been a huge fan for Gears, mostly because the multiplayer has never been my cup of tea. I did love Gears 3 though because Lancers were effective in multiplayer plus it had an awesome horde mode and that mode where you play as locusts. I wasn't even remotely interested in Gears 4 until I saw the recent horde mode and campaign trailers.

It's been long enough, (as I skipped Judgement).

Gimme that Gears.

A few months ago I didn't give a single fuck about Gears of War. Now, though, I'm increasing excited for Gears 4, for reasons that I can't entirely explain.

Judgement aside, I loved all the Gears campaigns, and Horde mode in Gears 3 is responsible for my favourite multiplayer sessions of all time. I am super hyped for this!

Hell yeah, I'm excited. It's been 5 years since the last proper Gears game and I can't really go back to Gears UE's clunky movement. Gears multiplayer scratches an itch like no other for me, namely the gnasher wall bounce gameplay. I'm ready for 4.

Yes, but only for Horde.

I'm tryna play through gears 3 before 4 comes out but i'm also worried that that is gonna burn me out on gears before i even get to 4

I was very much in "I guess I'll play Gears 4" mode for a long time, but after pre-ordering the game in an intoxicated late night shopping spree I've been reading more into the game and have become increasingly enthused.

I would be, and if I can find a "physical" PC copy of it, I'll get it, even if it is just a windows store code, and not an install. Under no circumstance will I give my card details to the windows store, no matter how much I'd like to play it.

@draugen: Why won't you give your card details to the windows store?

It's probably going to be a fine game, but I'm kinda still on this page with the whole Gears 4 thing:

I guess I miss the 360 generation when more new series were debuting, but now we just have so many franchise zombies like Gears, Dead Rising, etc.

You can buy a digital xbox one code off Amazon.com. It's not "physical" but they'll email it to you and you can plug it in. It's cross-buy Xbox/PC so if you plug in the code to your microsoft account I think it unlocks both. I'm not 100% sure on that so you should check with Microsoft support, but I'm pretty confident.

I used to adore the Gears of War games, but I kinda have no interest in 4. We will see, if it reviews really well I might change and get interested.

I feel like this is a little unfair. While I would agree that there was some more experimentation last gen, there have been attempts at new franchises with Titanfall (great game) Sunset Overdrive (great game) and Recore (not so great, apparently.) New games are just more expensive to make and harder to take risks on. There are fewer "big" games in general so fewer new things, but I think there's still interesting, new, creative stuff in the pipeline.

And there were always franchises. I mean Halo was definitely a thing in the 360 era, and there would probably have been more carry over and fewer fresh franchises if more OG xbox games had built an audience. They wanted to make Brute Force 2 and Blinx 3: Hans of Time, but nobody would buy them!

I'm really excited for it. I just really hope that the PC port is good since I don't have an Xbox One.

It looks really great. I haven't played a GoW game since the 2:nd one.

I just watched the 20 minute prologue video. Hype train cometh! I'd recommend not watching it honestly. Lots of fun little nods to the Gears series.

Yes I'm excited. I'm excited to hopefully see old ass Baird bitching about the stupidest thing imaginable and loving every minute of it. If this doesn't happen at some point in the game I will be greatly disappointed.

Much like Judgement this isn't really the story I wanted them to tell. Old Marcus is about the only thing that gets any kind of rise out of me in Gears 4. Other than that it seriously looks like a needless re-hash of what the existing trilogy already did really well. The new developer seemed terrified of doing something different and as a result you get this very samey looking Gears game albeit without a cast of characters to actually care about. This was the perfect chance for a Pendulum Wars trilogy that told the story of Marcus' dad, the locust queen and had a ton of cool looking retro tech - heck maybe even put in a space level or something to show how they put those Hammers of Dawn up there. The part from the trailer where his son says "you saved our armor?" just had me groan out loud like oh.. so they'll even look extremely similar despite this taking place somewhat in the future. I might play it down the road when I get a scorpio and it's probably bundled in but other than that I'm good, not even all that excited for the inevitable QL to be honest.

It's another Gears of War game. I will play it. "Excited" might be a bit strong.

Yeah I felt the same way about Halo 4 and ended up replaying the other games leading up to it. And while It wasnt the step up I was hoping for it wasnt a trash fire either.

Personally (and I know this is an unpopular opinion) I preferred Halo 4 to ODST and Reach and I expect Gears 4 to be better than Judgement but not as good as the others.

I'm interested to see how the PC version turns out but I don't want to play it. It looks like all the other games with only the weather effects making it seem like a step forward. A cover shooter has to do a lot of other things right to catch my interest now.

@dharmabum: Same, I said to myself before I was going to watch it that I'd regret it, because I really don't want to spoil anything, but I couldn't resist, and it actually got me more excited. I feel like them showing that Marcus is in it, and as much as he is was too much for me, but in the end, it all got me more excited.

@humanity: I'm hoping it's more connected than it has looked from the get-go, but the more they show, the more it looks connected. Some of the story bits that some may feel was left out of the games, is actually already covered in the overall story of Gears, like who Myrrah was. I don't necessarily need more of her, or Adam Fenix. While the history in Gears has a lot to offer for games, I don't think we need games upon games to tell those stories, because I would rather have a sequel. Not sure if you saw the 20 minute video, but that has some of the pendulum wars in it. Also, the hammer of dawn is a laser guided satellite, it's more than likely that they just launched it into orbit, so there would be no need to go into space. That said, the pendulum wars has a long history [79 years long], so if they went back to the beginning of it, though it'd have little connection to the current events of even the first Gears of War game, it could be interesting.

I'm sort of interested in it since i never played a GoW game before. That said, i'm not particularly hyped for it, just curious.

Can't wait to see how they fucked up the PC port :'(

@ntm: yah I realize it's a satellite but if they have the ability to launch things into orbit then maybe they sent people up there too. The idea of what a Gears looking astronaut looks like is super intriguing to me.

I don't know where all the info about the queen or his dad was divulged as I remember having quite a few questions about that stuff at the end of Gears 3 even after pouring over collectibles and flavor text. Either way as you mentioned, the Pendulum Wars was a long thing which would be really interesting to explore. Like a moment where maybe 3/4 into the game someone comes up with the idea to strap a chainsaw into a rifle would be real neat. Maybe let you play the game from the perspective of the locust for a few missions. Tons of cool stuff they could have done instead of "hey there are new monster looking guys to kill, oh and now robot looking guys." I dunno maybe it will be great I'm not quite sure myself why I'm so bummed out by Gears 4 but absolutely nothing about it seems the slightest bit captivating to me.

@bigsocrates: I WOULD BUY BRUTE FORCE 2 DAMMIT!

Also, Voodoo Vince

*Edit: and a new Mech Assault

@humanity: Yeah, to fix the satellite's if need be I guess, though that'd be space combat (as in, floating around), if that's what you're talking about. That could be cool. I don't know where that'd fit in. The stuff about Myrrah and Adam Fenix came from comics, novels, and in game stuff. Like Myrrah being a descendant of human scientists in the early parts of the pendulum wars that worked on experiments, which were the Locusts, and for that, the scientists were sent to Mount Kadar. This is actually all in Gears of War 2. You can also read the wiki which covers a lot of ground. I imagine the new enemies are probably the locusts, they just haven't revealed it. I could be wrong, but I think it's more connected than it's letting on.

Split screen co-op is why it gets a buy from me. I may very well have bought it somewhere down the line but the split screen will get me to play it right away.

NVIDIA has released an in-depth PC performance guide:

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/gears-of-war-4-graphics-and-performance-guide

There's also a live stream today and apparently they're giving away 90 copies of the Ultimate Edition.

I rather annoyed after I redeemed my code for the standard edition, there is no option to upgrade to the ultimate edition. Xbox support says they cannot help. :/

I wasn't until i heard Jeff's excitement about certain plot moments on the bombcast, but things i like are often opposite to Jeff so that could be disappointing to me if that's the coolest thing about the game.
My other concern is the Windows Store... I'm going through hell trying to get Forza Horizon 3 on my PC, to the point where this morning i had an MS engineer remote controlling my PC to try and get it to download, my UK broadband means that Forza's 60GB file size should download in 10 hours, so i spent 8 hours today monitoring the download before it decided to restart for no reason.
Fortunately there seems to be a small community making torrents of Windows Store files (requires the license from the store to work), i've yet to see how that works but it's my only method of getting Win10 games and considering Gears 4 is 80 odd gig... it's kind of a problem for me.

Supagangsta approved.

I sort of on the fence for getting it around launch. I sort of want to try and get into the multiplayer but fear the competition online will be far to great for me to handle.

@ohagan: If anything the earlier you get in the better as far as people still learning the game. The early access player base will likely be mostly hardcore competitive people, but the standard release date should be the best time to be matchmade with the largest amount of people around your skill level.

By the way, I made a Tips for Learning Gears thread which I hope will make the multiplayer seem more approachable for people interested in getting into the game. Also there's going to be plenty of PvE modes which have historically been stellar in the Gears series.

I'm so hyped for it. Seriously. Wish I could have gotten it this Friday, but I'm looking forward to embarking on the campaign on Oct 11th!! Woo!!

Apparently I'll get a free copy of this when I buy my 1070. It's hard not to get excited about a free game, right?

I don't know. The last cover shooter I played was...actually it might've been Winback. You know, the first cover shooter. Man, I spent a long time away from video games. Gears seems to've been the genre codifier of cover shooters, and I loved Winback, so I've definitely been thinking about checking out what Gears brought to the table.

Oh, actually I played the Tomb Raider reboot, if that counts. I wasn't a fan of that game, had basically all the same hangups about it as Brad.

Aside: is the PC version of the Gears Ultimate bundle any good? Turns out it doesn't support cross-buy, so I need to be a little judicious about which version I buy.

@draugen: can't you just get one of those gift cards they sell in various shops?

I am! I'm almost done with Gears 3 after replaying 1 and 2, and I'm loving it! Gears 3 is definietly the best in the series so far, and it has me excited for Gears 4!

I want to play it but I only played GoW 1 since it was the only one released for PC. After hearing Jeff saying that one of the best things about it is the "returning character" moments, I feel like I'll be missing out on that stuff. Of course I'll also be missing any reference to the story from 2 and 3...

@dharmabum:Thanks for the advice. I don't know how I missed that thread but I'm going to dig into it and see what you have to say.

Ooh me, I am! It's been long enough since I played judgement (I don't even remember when it came out) so a new Gears game sounds like a good time. The story seems really interesting too, so I'm excited. I'm also really happy it'll be on Pc, as I don't own an Xbone, and probably won't anytime soon; if at all. Thank you Microsoft!

Totally stoked to play Gears 4, plan to play some of the campaign and then dive into then multiplayer before falling asleep tonight.

Approaching the 1 hour mark. Going to play through the campaign on Hardcore first, then dive into that sweet multiplayer goodness.