Ten years ago, Gears of War helped define an age of blockbuster multiplayer games. Now, it’s the status quo.

I’ve been playing Gears of War 4 for a few dozen hours now and a good portion of that time has been spent waiting for the game to find someone to play with.

Earlier this year Microsoft released the DX12-powered Gears of War: Ultimate Edition on PC, and it was a stuttering mess. Looks like Microsoft and developer The Coalition learned a lot from that debacle, because the Windows 10 version of Gears of War 4 runs like a proper PC release should.

One of the most surprising things about Gears of War 4 for me was the discovery that, after all these years, shooting wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies could still be really fun.

I have not raged as hard at a video game this year as I have Gears of War: Ultimate Edition—and it’s all because of the horribly inconsistent shotgun. Thankfully, the source of my anger is about to improve.

It’s been almost a decade since the first Gears of War came out on Xbox 360. During that time, many games borrowed Gears’ best ideas, and the series became one of the most influential of the last generation.