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.

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.

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.

If you wanted to get a sense of how the new Gears of War plays out, here's the first 20 minutes to get you started.

The next chapter in the Xbox-exclusive shooter series will be hitting this spring, and players will have to opportunity to sample a multiplayer beta on April 18.

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.