A native Windows build of Gears of War: Judgment (Xbox 360, People Can Fly, 2013), made by statically recompiling the original game code to x64 and running it on an emulated Xbox 360 graphics and system layer (the ReXGlue SDK).
It is not an emulator running the game code: the game's PowerPC program is translated to C++ ahead of time and compiled into a normal Windows executable. On top of that this project adds a keyboard and mouse scheme with proper mouse look, an unlockable frame rate, SMAA and FSR image processing, automatic quality selection and a number of fixes. See docs/FEATURES.md.
This repository and its releases contain no game data. You need your own copy of Gears of War: Judgment for the Xbox 360. Nothing here is affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft, Epic Games or People Can Fly.
Status: early release. The single-player campaign boots and plays, but testing so far has mostly covered the early part of it. Multiplayer and online features are not supported. Please read Known issues before reporting a problem.
- Open the Releases page of this repository and download the latest
GearsOfWarJudgment-PC-<version>.zip. - Unzip it into a folder you can write to (not
Program Files). It contains two programs:GearsOfWarJudgment.exe: the game, one self-contained file.Graphics Settings.exe: a settings window; keep it next to the game.
- Have your game files ready: the folder from your own disc that contains
default.xexand theGearGamefolder. Only the retail version is supported (title ID4D530A26). - Double-click
GearsOfWarJudgment.exe. The first time, a window asks for that game folder. It is remembered, so you are only asked once. (If you put the game exe inside the game folder, or the game folder next to it, nothing is asked.)
That is all: no installer, nothing else to download, no extra runtime. The first start takes a few
seconds longer because the exe unpacks its files into %LOCALAPPDATA%\GearsOfWarJudgmentPC\bin.
Your settings, saves and logs are kept in the folder you put the exe in.
To change graphics settings before playing, start Graphics Settings.exe. It has quality level,
internal resolution, texture filtering, anti-aliasing, FSR, frame limit, mouse sensitivity and more,
and a Play button. The same settings are in the game under F4.
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
- A DirectX 12 graphics card. The quality is chosen from your card automatically (see Quality). It was developed and tested on an NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti and nothing else; AMD, Intel and handheld GPUs use the same code but are untested.
- 8 GB of RAM or more (the game itself uses about 3 to 4 GB). The game files are roughly 7 GB; the cache adds a few hundred MB.
- A reasonably fast CPU. The game is limited by the processor, not the graphics card (see Known issues).
| Keyboard and mouse | Full keyboard and mouse controls with raw mouse look: no smoothing, no acceleration, no "sliding", frame-rate independent. Menus work with the mouse. Xbox and other controllers work too. |
| Frame limiter and unlock | Default 60 fps with evenly spaced frames. Set Frame limit: Unlocked in the settings window for a fully unlocked frame rate (it also turns vsync off). F8 switches the limiter off and on in game. The game's own 62 fps cap is lifted when unlocked. |
| FPS counter | F9 shows fps, frame time, 1% low and the current quality level. |
| Settings menu | F4 opens the settings menu: every option below can be changed in game and is saved. |
| SMAA + FSR | SMAA anti-aliasing and AMD FSR 1.0 upscaling/sharpening of the final image, each switchable. |
| Automatic quality | Low / Medium / High chosen from your GPU, lowered for the next launch if 60 fps is not held. |
| Shader and pipeline cache | Compiled graphics pipelines are remembered on disk, so each area stutters only the first time. |
| Cleaner image | Film grain, motion blur and the game's own FXAA are off by default; community resolution-scaling fix applied. |
| Saves | Checkpoint saving and loading across restarts works. |
Everything is explained in detail, with every setting name, in docs/FEATURES.md.
The game was made for a gamepad, so every keyboard and mouse input below drives one gamepad button or stick. A controller still works too (Xbox pads, and anything SDL recognises).
| Gamepad | Keyboard / mouse | What it does in the game |
|---|---|---|
| Left stick | W A S D | Move; move along cover |
| Right stick | Mouse movement | Look and aim |
| Right trigger (RT) | Left mouse button | Fire |
| Left trigger (LT) | Right mouse button | Aim down the sights (hold) |
| A | Space, E or Enter | The context button: take cover, interact, use, pick up weapons and ammo, revive a teammate; Enter also accepts in menus |
| B | Ctrl (hold), V | Crouch (hold Ctrl); execute a downed enemy (V) |
| X | R | Reload; hold to rev the chainsaw |
| Y | Mouse wheel (scroll either way) | Swap between your weapons |
| Left bumper (LB) | Q | Spot and mark enemies and objects |
| Right bumper (RB) | F | Melee; vault over cover |
| Left stick click (L3) | Z | Walk (slow movement) |
| Right stick click (R3) | not assigned | |
| D-pad | Arrow keys | Menu navigation |
| Start | Escape | Pause menu |
| Back | Tab | Objectives and scoreboard |
| Guide | not assigned |
Not available on the keyboard because the console game has no gamepad button for them: weapon slots 1 to 4, the scope toggle (middle mouse), push-to-talk and chat. Weapon swapping is the mouse wheel only.
In menus the game has no cursor, so the mouse drives the selection: scroll the wheel to move up and down, move the mouse to step in that direction, left click to accept (A) and right click to go back (B). Enter accepts and Escape is Start.
Every key above can be changed in the F4 menu or in config/gowj.toml, for example
keybind_x = "R" or keybind_a = "Space,E,Return" (several keys can share one button).
The setting names are keybind_a, keybind_b, keybind_x, keybind_y,
keybind_left_shoulder, keybind_right_shoulder, keybind_left_trigger, keybind_right_trigger,
keybind_lstick_press, keybind_rstick_press, keybind_lstick_up (and down, left, right),
keybind_dpad_up (and down, left, right), keybind_start, keybind_back.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| F4 | Settings menu. The backtick key (`) opens the console |
| F8 | Frame limiter: switch between unlocked and the limit (60 fps by default) |
| F9 | FPS counter on/off |
| F11 / F12 | Mouse sensitivity down / up by 20% (the new value is written to the log) |
| Insert or F1 | Release / capture the mouse pointer |
| F3 | Performance overlay |
- Only tested on one PC (Ryzen 7 5800X3D, RTX 5070 Ti, Windows 11). AMD and Intel graphics and handheld PCs are untested. They should pick lower quality settings automatically, but expect rough edges and please report what you see.
- CPU limited. About 90 to 110 fps unlocked on a Ryzen 7 5800X3D; a slower CPU gives less.
- For an unlocked frame rate, set Frame limit to Unlocked in Graphics Settings.exe. F8 in game does not turn off vsync, so it may stay at half your monitor's refresh rate.
- Unlocked can stutter or tear without a G-Sync or FreeSync monitor. Use the 60 fps limit if so.
- Short freezes the first time you enter an area. Graphics pipelines are compiled on first use
(a fraction of a second, occasionally a little more). They are saved, so the same area is
smooth afterwards. The cache lives in
%LOCALAPPDATA%\GearsOfWarJudgmentPC\cacheand can be several hundred MB. - Small hitches in busy scenes, about one frame in 200.
- Single-player campaign only. Multiplayer and Xbox Live features are not available.
- Menus have no mouse cursor. The game was not designed for one; the mouse moves the selection.
- The settings menu (F4) pauses SMAA/FSR while it is open, so the picture looks softer until you close it.
- Thin, distant geometry (antennas, wires) can shimmer, because there is no temporal anti-aliasing.
- Internal resolution above 2x (2560x1440) is not supported and breaks the picture.
- Windows only.
See BUILDING.md for the full steps. In short, you provide two things:
default.xexfrom your own copy of the game (the retail Xbox 360 disc version, title ID4D530A26), placed atgame/default.xexin the repository folder- the ReXGlue SDK (Windows x64, version 0.10.0.9-dev)
then run scripts\build.ps1 -Sdk <sdk folder>. The recompiled game code is generated on your machine
from your default.xex and is not part of this repository.
Open an issue and attach the newest file from the logs folder next to the program (and
gowj_crash.log if there is one). Say which graphics card and Windows version you use.
The source code in this repository is under the BSD 3-Clause license (LICENSE). Third-party components keep their own licenses (THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt). The license does not cover the game itself, which belongs to its owners and is not included.
- ReXGlue SDK, the runtime this builds on, which is derived from the Xenia project.
- XenonRecomp for the idea and the recompilation approach.
- AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1.0 and SMAA (Jimenez et al.), see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt.
- The xenia-canary community patch set for this title (film grain, FXAA and resolution-scaling fixes), re-implemented here as switchable settings.