Gears of War: Reloaded is out now and works well on Linux and Steam Deck
Gears of War: Reloaded has been officially released so now we can experience the beginning on Linux / SteamOS and Steam Deck. Note: personal purchase.
Surprisingly, it does work rather nicely out of the box on the Steam Deck and seems like it does actually deserve the Steam Deck Verified rating. Naturally, on a more powerful Linux desktop, it’s even better. It also uses Easy Anti-Cheat, which is thankfully enabled for Linux platforms as noted on our anti-cheat page.
With this new edition powered by Unreal Engine you get all post-launch content for the original including a bonus campaign act, multiplayer maps, characters and cosmetics. The controls have also been updated to be a bit more modern feeling. It adds in 4K assets, remastered textures, lighting, shadows and reflections. Along with ultrawide support, HDR, a benchmark mod, VRR, mouse and keyboard support, AMD FSR 3.1 and DLSS3.5 Super Resolution.
Some nice accessibility settings included in this release too including multiple screen narration options, flash reduction, changing between tapping and holding for button tap challenges and more.
An issue I did encounter on Steam Deck is trying to link my Microsoft account, which is required for cross-platform online play. It just repeatedly failed to contact the servers when entering the code on my PC or phone. You can still play online with other PC players without it though. However, doing a full proper restart of the Steam Deck did eventually allow the linking connection to succeed.
The same issue with account linking I saw on my Linux Desktop too, it just always gave an error about the connection. I tried many times, through many reloads and it just refused. However, adding this Steam launch option for it did enable it to actually work eventually on Desktop Linux:
SteamDeck=1 %command%
Here’s the results when running the built-in benchmark mode on a Steam Deck LCD (SteamOS Beta – Proton 9.0-4), with the default graphics settings where it does actually look pretty good:
And for my Desktop Linux (Kubuntu 25.04 – Proton 9.0-4) running Ryzen 5800x and Radeon 6800 XT at 2560×1440 here’s what performance you might expect:
One important thing I will touch on here though are the reports about split-screen co-op from negative reviews and forum posts. It was actually originally advertised as having it on PC, but it does not. 15 days ago they removed the tags from Steam (thanks SteamDB) without a word, and a previous trailer on Steam noted it that has since been edited to remove it. Not a good look overall and not surprising players aren’t happy about that.
Now we just need the sequels to get remasters so we can play through them all properly on PC. For now, we’ll have to settle for the prequel in Gears of War: E-Day that will arrive eventually (no date yet).
Overall, if you’re after an action-packed experience this is a great game to pick up. I hadn’t played it since the original edition of the game on Xbox 360 so this
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
