Having been a strong supporter of the Gears of War franchise for nearly a decade, you can imagine the exuberation felt by me and millions of other fans when the game was released early for owners of the Xbox Ultimate Game Pass. the game pass offers a plethora of amazing games that allow the owners to play for a monthly fee. And with the release of Gears of War V, the game pass was having a fire sale where it was being sold in a bundle of two monthly subscriptions covered for the low cost $1.99.

The game will take up a hefty amount of memory on your Xbox console however (about 50 GB). Though if your a glass half full kind of person, the memory needed doesn’t come without reprieve. The graphics that are displayed and the smoothness of the motion is definitely worth the sacrifice of a few extra gigabytes of storage.

Gears of War V already is busting out content to feed the players’ addiction to new content to the game and the new content is stunning to say the least.  There is downloadable content based off of the Halo and Terminator franchises and they each got two playable multiplayer character skins to the game. There are also  two weapon sprays and two character marks for each of the franchises.

Arguably one of the best features added to the game was the new keyboard and mouse input being allowed. This was my personal favorite feature. If you don’t like playing with a controller just grab your USB keyboard and mouse and plug it into Xbox console’s USB slots and click away. The motion and movement is so smooth with a keyboard and mouse and it doesn’t provide an unfair advantage to the gamers still playing on controller.

The game still however stood strong to its original four games in the Gears of War franchise, unlike the ugly duckling, Gears of War: Judgement, that absolutely flopped due to their shoddy replication of the widely popular Call of Duty games.

Like most of the Gears of War games, new weapons and character customization were added, however they kept many of the games anchor points, which some may find repetitive, however I find it one of the many aspects of a game that keep it strong and loyal to its original fan base.

The game also has an incredibly long shelf life, so now clear your weekends and get ready to immerse yourself in the world of Gears of War V.