Gears of War: Reloaded's Beta Shows Lots Of Promise For Steam Deck

If you haven't yet, follow us on X (Twitter), Mastodon, or Bluesky to know when we post new articles, and join our Reddit or Subscribe to us on YouTube to check out our content and interact with our awesome community. Thank you for supporting us!

Gears of War: Reloaded Beta access was provided by Xbox. Thank you!

Gears of War was such a prominent game for me growing up, so seeing them bring it back with a remaster makes me so happy. With the game releasing soon, Xbox has hosted a couple of multiplayer betas to try the game out and test their servers. Thanks to Xbox, we got access to the final beta to test it and see how it's running on the Steam Deck, giving us a window to see how it will perform for portable play. And so far, it looks like it will be a perfect game to play on the Steam Deck.

The beta is only for multiplayer matches, in Team Deathmatch across multiple different maps, and throughout each one, I was getting a stable 90 FPS on my Steam Deck OLED. It felt amazing to use the gamepad and run through matches on my Deck, and while I was terrible and died constantly, it was only because of my lack of skill and not the game's or the device's fault.

It actually baffled me a little, because the game looks incredible on the screen. Looking at the settings, we are at the Medium default settings with FSR 3.1 upscaling on Balanced. It's surprising how great the game looks, and I could barely tell the game was being upscaled as I was playing and the action was unfolding. I actually expected it to run and look worse, maybe going for 45 FPS on lower settings, but hitting Medium at 90 FPS without hitting the maximum battery drain is just incredible.

While this is only a beta, it shows a ton of promise for the full game's performance. Looking at the game's system requirements, I initially thought it was going to need more compromises since the CPU and GPU requirements are on the high end of the Steam Deck performance spectrum, but the optimization they mentioned in the game's description on the Steam store is not just for show, and I couldn't be happier. August 26th can't come soon enough!

Honestly, there isn't much more to say. Gears of War: Reloaded seems like it's going to be an amazing experience on the Steam Deck, and hitting 90 FPS with Medium settings is just wonderful. With the game getting all of the post-launch content, a bonus campaign act, full multiplayer, and a more refined controller layout, this is going to be the definitive version of the game, and I couldn't be more excited for its release.

Gears of War: Reloaded can be pre-purchased for $39.99 ahead of its August 26th release, and it's already Steam Deck Verified.

If you enjoyed this article, check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that will help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got you covered!