Right, just a minute ago, the official Gears of War Twitter account was actively sharing news about a specially curated Spotify playlist, and now we’re here. At 4:59 PM, I would have been exhausted and depleted of motivation to engage in anything productive, aside from mindlessly scrolling through my feed. In a perfect world, at 5:00 sharp, I’d put down my phone, pick up my headphones, and immerse myself in adrenaline-fueled, foot-stomping music while releasing the tension of the day. Instead, I receive the word “LET’S GO” written in capital letters, marked by a flame emoji and a devilish face, as the shared Spotify link burns. Oh… the replies. Each reply is devoid of any enthusiasm and as if it is telling an entirely different story.
Right away, the Gears community starts whining about how terrible Gears E-Day is. The moment people started paying attention, the comment section was filled with complaints. For a little more background, NHL_Groyper dropped the hottest take of them all by saying “Coalition is the most incompetent development team of all time,” which is just YIKES! For at least a little bit of good news, he coughed up the hot take that the remaster, lumps of slop, and everything about the matchmaking being full garbage was also true—which plenty of other people were willing to back him up on.
A lot of the community is unable to play the game. Budakenji’s version of “if only I could hear it in the game too bad i cant launch it! haha!” is just flat out sad as hell, and Tyler verifying that “I can’t even play the game” adds to the hopelessness. For the crossplay woes, Daredevil3010 chimed in “Increíble full party crossplay on amd can’t find a match,” which is just unfortunate.
Let’s not forget the whole gnasher debate. Oh man, the gnasher. Francisco said “I forgot how ass the gnasher is in this game compared to the others 😭” and AIZEN blew up over one-shot downs. One of the posts he made was a tweet ranting “The gnasher should not be downing opponents in 1 shot from mid-range” and “completely destroys the intricate QCQ dynamic that made GoW1 so great & competitive,” since he also said, “1 shot down is for noobs that have no movement or tech skill….remove it, make the game competitive again.” That’s just… a lot.
But ‘there’s more.’ Features are missing, too. Simpson121314 was questioning the absence of hordemode: “U guys didn’t add a hordemode…how hard would it be for u lazy people to add smth new to the game.” RadDashy wanted campaign co-op for randoms, which led him to say, “playing with randoms is awesome and you didn’t think of that once in 2 decades?”
Methodikul took the “Fix the game!” approach, which is arguably a perfect summary of the majority of the comments, while Jacob Franklin took the “NERF THE GNASHERS NOW!!” approach. The most positive comments were Albert, who said “Music to my ears,” and Jake Brown, who said “Let’s, DO THIS!!!!” which is a happy sentiment but drowned by the negative comments.
Even the playlist drew some criticism. LG___1998 said “Id rather listen to better OST’s 😭” and PepperAlligatr wanted the Gears of War playlist to be updated, “You’re missing one, where is Cole Trains rap at the end of Gears of War,” which is honestly a valid point, that song goes hard.
The technical difficulties appear to be more common as well. John-Luke Bacon requested, “Fix online service on steam” and DocZ was complaining about ultrawide support, saying “so are you going to fix ultrawide 32:9 support ever?!” and even threatening to just play Battlefield 6 instead. Klaus wanted King of the Hill in competitive, J wanted annex mode added… the list goes on.
The way a simple playlist announcement became community feedback about every issue in the game is somewhat strange. Most likely, the Gears community team intended to share some good music for the players to enjoy, but instead they were bombarded with a laundry list of player’s issues like matchmaking issues, weapon balance complaints, missing features, technical problems, the list goes on in the replies.
While the playlist hype was dropped, users were unable to play the game, so drop the hype playlist as a ‘soundtrack’ to a ‘buffering movie,’ it seems to have some enthusiasm but the execution feels off.
Even with all the negativity, the people truly care about the state of Gears. If they didn’t care about the title, they wouldn’t have anything strong to say about the gnasher mechanics or game modes. They do want improvements. It should aim to resurrect the glory of the original game. The playlist is fine, but this begs the question… Can the developers fix the game for once?
In any case, here’s the Spotify link if you want it. Let’s hope the game is in a better condition when you listen to it. Other than that, it is unfortunate-cool that you will be playing a game while listening to music for the game you are unable to enjoy.
