Gears of War 2 — native PC port (unofficial)

Website: santiquiroz.github.io/gears-of-war-2-pc-port

Retail Xbox 360 Gears of War 2 statically recompiled from the player's own default.xex to native x64 code with the ReXGlue SDK. This is not emulation. Players must own the game. An earlier fan port ("Hollow") was built from a leaked 2008 development build; this one runs the complete retail game.

The project's short name, gow2-recomp, names the release zip; the repository is gears-of-war-2-pc-port.

Leer en español: README.es.md

Screenshots

Act 1 with 4K internal rendering (resolution_scale = 3).

Original 720p rendering (left) vs 4K internal rendering (right).

Status

See ROADMAP.md for the full plan.

Download and play

Nothing of the game is included in the release. You need your own retail Xbox 360 copy of Gears of War 2 (title ID 4D53082D): a disc image (.iso) of it, or a folder that has default.xex and the GearGame folder, which you can still make by extracting your ISO with xdvdfs:

xdvdfs unpack "Gears of War 2.iso" C:\Games\GoW2

The port was recompiled from the US retail disc (its default.xex); other releases such as the European disc are untested and can crash, and the log says at start which one you have (XEX default.xex ...).

Do not pirate the game.

PC

Requirements: Windows 10/11 x64 and a DirectX 12 GPU, or a Vulkan GPU for the experimental Vulkan option (developed on an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT).

Download gow2-recomp-<version>-win64.zip from the latest release (the .apk is the Android build).
Unzip it anywhere and run gow2.exe. The exe is not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": choose More info, then Run anyway.
The first launch asks for your .iso, or for default.xex in an extracted game folder (one that also has GearGame), and remembers the game folder in gow2_game_path.txt next to the exe. With an .iso it extracts it once into a game folder next to gow2.exe, which needs about 8 GB free on that drive; you can delete the .iso afterwards if you want. To pick another folder later, delete gow2_game_path.txt.

It does not ask when the game folder is inside the exe's folder or right next to it, when the exe's folder is inside the game folder, or when you pass the folder yourself (--game_data_root also takes the .iso):

gow2.exe --game_data_root="C:\Games\GoW2"

The first time you play System Link co-op, Windows asks whether gow2.exe may use the network: allow it, or the other players will not find your game.

The first start, and the first start after an update that changes the graphics, compiles the shaders again: the window can sit on the title screen for a few minutes and Windows may call it "Not responding", and the first level takes a little longer to load. Leave it running; later starts use the saved shaders.

Android (experimental)

Requirements: an arm64 phone with Android 10 or newer and Vulkan, and free space for a full copy of the game files.

Download gow2-recomp-<version>-android-arm64.apk from the latest release and install it (Android asks you to allow installing apps from your browser or file manager).
Copy your extracted game folder, or the .iso of your disc, to the phone.
Open the app and tap Choose game folder (and pick that folder) or Choose .iso file (the app extracts the image itself; plain, XGD2 and XGD3 images work). The app copies the files into its own storage, which needs as much free space as the game takes, because the game cannot read files through the folder picker. With the folder from step 2 that is two copies; delete yours once the app has finished.

Instead of steps 2-3 you can copy the folder over USB from a PC, so that default.xex ends up in Android/data/com.santiquiroz.gow2recomp/files/game/, then tap Check again.

The settings menu is called Device Options on Android (the gear in the top-right corner). If the game closes unexpectedly, the next launch opens Launch options first: a few settings, a GPU driver choice (on Adreno, a Turnip .zip made for AdrenoTools in place of the phone's driver), Safe mode (no sparse GPU memory, 1x resolution, bilinear filter, the phone's driver), Reset settings and Share last log. To open it on purpose, long-press the app icon and choose Launch options. Status and known limits: docs/ANDROID.md. In Device Options, drag a finger over the list to scroll it (0.3.8).

Controls

Action	Key
Move	W / A / S / D
Look	Mouse (or arrow keys)
Fire	Left mouse
Aim	Right mouse
Cover / roadie run / roll	Space
Melee / chainsaw (hold)	F or V
Use / pick up / revive	E
Point of interest	Q
Reload	R
Tactical display	G
Zoom	Middle mouse or Z
Weapons	1–4
Pause	Enter or Esc
Back	Tab
PC Options menu	F10

A controller works at the same time. Its buttons can be remapped in PC Options > Controls > Controller buttons (every controller SDL knows, Xbox included; saved as pad_map_*). All bindings are in gow2.toml.

Settings

Everything here can be changed in game from Options > PC Options (or F10, or Back+Start); see docs/PC_OPTIONS.md. On Windows PC Options also opens before the game loads, with a Play button (turn it off in System > Show options at start). gow2.toml sits next to the exe. It is read at start-up; command-line flags (--name=value) override it. Main keys:

The Graphics tab includes Game quality: Low / Medium / High (retail) presets and 24 individual engine quality controls, all applied after a restart. High restores retail quality; Auto keeps platform defaults (retail on PC, which is already the highest choice in every row; Android turns object shadows off). See the key inventory and presets.

Voices (English, Latin American Spanish or French; gow2_voice_language) and subtitles and text (9 languages; user_language) are chosen separately in PC Options > System and apply after a restart.

fullscreen — run fullscreen or windowed.
resolution_scale — internal render resolution as a multiple of 720p: 1 = 720p, 2 = 1440p, 3 = 4K.
present_effect — final image scaling: bilinear, fsr (AMD FSR 1 with sharpening, from a lower resolution_scale) or cas (sharpening only).
vsync — vertical sync.
gow2_native_renderer — auto (native on AMD, NVIDIA and Android), on or off (emulated EDRAM).
gpu_backend — any (Direct3D 12), d3d12 or vulkan (experimental); needs a restart.
gow2_native_frontend — draw source: auto (console commands on PC and Mali phones, Direct3D calls on other phones), on or off.
gow2_skip_intro_movies — skips the Epic Games and Microsoft Game Studios logo videos at start.
gow2_launcher — Windows: opens PC Options before the game loads, with a Play button (false goes straight into the game).
gow2_texture_pack — Windows: the texture pack folder under texture_packs next to the exe, textures for the old textures folder, off, or empty to follow texture_replace; needs a restart.
gow2_texture_build_scale, gow2_texture_build_quality — Windows: Build texture pack's scale (2 or 4) and format (disc keeps each texture's own, bc7).
present_letterbox — Android: false fills a wider screen (cropped up to 10 % at the top and bottom, stretched sideways for the rest).
gow2_unlock_fps — lifts the game's 30 fps cap.
gow2_fps_cap — frame rate limit while unlocked (0 = no limit).
gow2_show_fps — shows the game's frames per second and frame time in a corner.
gow2_audio_volume — master volume in percent.
gow2_black_shading_fix — correct character lighting.
gow2_texture_streaming_fix — bigger texture pool, less pop-in.
gow2_aniso16 — 16x anisotropic filtering.
gow2_ao_upscaling_fix — ambient occlusion without artifacts when scaled.
gow2_dof_upscaling_fix — depth of field without artifacts when scaled.
gow2_temporal, gow2_upscaler — temporal upscaling: gow2_temporal = true with gow2_upscaler = "fsr4" (Radeon RX 7000/9000) or "fsr3"; off by default (Direct3D 12 only).
mnk_sensitivity — mouse sensitivity.
gow2_save_dir — folder for saves, profile settings and achievements; point it at a OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox folder to keep the campaign in the cloud (docs/SAVES.md).

The community patches come from xenia-canary/game-patches (authors illusion and boma); the patched sites and values for this XEX are applied to the generated code, each behind its gow2_* setting.

On Windows, the game checks GitHub for a new release at most twice a day and sends nothing else. Turn this off in PC Options > System, or set gow2_update_check = false in gow2.toml.

Performance

Chapter 2 hospital, frame rate unlocked: about 260 fps at 1440p internal on a Ryzen 9 7900X3D + Radeon RX 7800 XT with the native renderer (0.3.8; 0.3.3-0.3.7 ran at about 150 because the native front end was on by default); 60 fps (the limit) with the GPU at about 55 % on a GTX 1070; about 46-53 fps from a cool start on a Galaxy S25 Ultra at 720p. Where the frame time goes on PC and Android, why the port needs more GPU than "Hollow", and the ranked plan to cut it: docs/PERFORMANCE.md. For bug reports, gow2_frame_log = true logs FRAMESTATS frame times every 5 s and d3d12_stats_log = true logs D3D12 counters.

Modern enhancements

Native resolution via resolution_scale (see Settings).
FSR: the release runtime is built with AMD FidelityFX. present_effect = "fsr" renders at a lower resolution_scale and upscales with FSR 1 plus sharpening; "cas" only sharpens. Measured with resolution_scale = 1 and FSR 1 to 1440p: about 85 fps in Act 1.
Temporal upscaling: FSR 4.1 on Radeon RX 7000/9000 and FSR 3.1 on other GPUs, through AMD's signed FidelityFX SDK 2.3 DLLs, ported from the Gears of War: Judgment recompilation. Off by default: choose it in PC Options > Graphics > Upscaler (or set gow2_temporal = true and gow2_upscaler = "fsr4" or "fsr3"), and lower resolution_scale so the upscaler has room to work. FSR 4 was checked in game on a Radeon RX 7800 XT (1280x704 upscaled to 2560x1408).
No DLSS in the release: NVIDIA's DLSS SDK license does not allow it in an open-source release (see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md). Only builds made from source with your own copy of NVIDIA's DLSS SDK can use it. To use it with the release gow2.exe, build the SDK DLLs with scripts/build-sdk.ps1 (without -NoDlss) and copy rexruntime.dll, rexgpu-xenos.dll and nvngx_dlss.dll next to it; the PC Options menu then offers DLSS. Confirmed on an RTX 5060 Ti (issue #18).
Texture packs: see the next section. Tested with a texture replaced by a version twice its size:

Texture packs

The easy way on Windows: dump with PC Options → Graphics → Texture pack set to Off, then Build texture pack upscales your dump with Real-ESRGAN on your GPU and writes a pack you pick in Texture pack. See docs/TEXTURE_PACKS.md for the steps and the video memory it costs. The steps below make a pack by hand.

Replace game textures with higher-resolution versions (for example upscaled 4x) for your own use. Each player builds packs from their own copy. An upscaled or recoloured texture is still derived from the game's copyrighted art, so do not share packs made from the game's textures; this project does not host or link them.

Set texture_dump = true in gow2.toml and play. Dumps land in textures\4D53082D\dump next to gow2.exe, one .dds file per unique texture, named <hash>_<format>_<width>x<height>.dds. Videos and other textures that change every frame are skipped.
Convert the dumps to PNG with tools\texpack.py (included in the release; needs Python 3 and Pillow, pip install pillow): python tools\texpack.py to-png textures\4D53082D\dump work converts the whole folder.
Upscale the PNG with any tool (Upflow on AMD GPUs, chaiNNer, Upscayl).
Convert back with a full mip chain: python tools\texpack.py from-png work textures\4D53082D\replace. File names are kept; the game matches each file by the hash at the start of its name. This writes uncompressed DDS; for files about 4x smaller compress with Microsoft texconv instead: texconv -f BC7_UNORM -m 0 file.dds.
Set texture_replace = true in gow2.toml and play. Before upscaling everything, check that replacement works with a solid color: python tools/texpack.py tint <dump.dds> <replace.dds> and look for the tinted texture in game.

A replacement is picked up when it has at least as many mip levels as the game texture (a full chain down to 1x1, which from-png writes), keeps the same aspect ratio, and is at least as large as the original.

System Link

Campaign co-op over System Link works between PCs and between several copies on one PC; an Android build joined a PC for two-player co-op. It is off by default: set net_link_active = true in gow2.toml (or pass --net_link_active=true) on every player's copy, and use the same build everywhere; gow2_coop_players 3 or more turns it on by itself. The game's UDP port 1000 becomes 41000 on every platform (net_port_offset, because Android cannot bind ports below 1024) and the System Link beacon uses UDP 14001, so a PC that hosts needs a Windows Firewall rule for those two ports. system_link_trace = true logs every network and session call the game makes ([netlink] lines).

docs/NETWORK_PLAY.md: a PC and a phone on one network, the settings, several copies on one PC, troubleshooting.
docs/COOP_N_PLAYERS.md: Stage 2 co-op with more than two players covers chapter changes, deaths, leave/rejoin, checkpoints and cinematics; what is still missing includes co-op splits, vehicle exit, the Ride-Reaver section and four PCs over the internet.
docs/ONLINE.md: playing over the internet. From the repository (not in the release zip), scripts/host-online.ps1 -Start opens UDP 14001 and 41000 through UPnP on every router between the PC and the internet, with a lease (6 h by default, 24 h at most), and schedules an automatic -Stop for the end of the lease; -Stop closes them. Run -Stop after every session: some routers ignore the lease. Without UPnP: forward by hand; with no open ports: Tailscale or ZeroTier. Verified on 2026-10-15: a phone on mobile data joined a PC host behind two routers in a row.

Versus works over System Link: in Multiplayer set Match Type to System Link, create the party on one copy and join it from the System Link Browser on the others (two copies on one PC played Warzone on 2026-10-22). Horde works the same way from the Horde menu (two copies played wave 1 on 2026-10-22). See ROADMAP.md.

Known issues

"Bad Image ... rexruntime.dll ... 0xc0e90002" on Windows 11. That is Smart App Control blocking the release's DLLs because they are not code-signed yet; the files are not damaged. Turning Smart App Control off (Windows Security → App & browser control) lets the game start, but Windows cannot turn it back on without a reinstall, so decide with that in mind. Signing the releases is being looked into.
Mouse aim changed in 0.1.1. In 0.1.0 the mouse was turned into a right-stick movement, and the game ignored any stick deflection under 30% (its DeadZone=0.3 binding). Now the mouse goes through the game's own PC mouse axes (gow2_mouse_aim), with no dead zone, while controllers keep the game's own aiming. Keys still pass through an emulated controller. Reports of how it feels are welcome in an issue.
Hints show Xbox button pictures. Menu prompts follow the device you used last, switching live: keyboard keys ([Space], [E]...) after keyboard or mouse input, the Xbox buttons after an Xbox controller, PlayStation buttons (PS4: Share/Options, PS5: Create/Options) after a DualShock or DualSense (gow2_prompts = auto; keyboard, controller and playstation fix one choice at launch; on Android the choice is still made at launch and there is no playstation). PlayStation controllers are now detected through SDL (before, only XInput pads counted); their buttons come from the keycap pack, so rebuild it with Build keycap pack.cmd (without a 0.3.5 pack they show Xbox buttons). Idea and SDK patch from @Flippage's Gears of War 3 recompilation (issue #25). A menu already on screen changes the next time it opens; the tutorial hint pictures have their Xbox button circles removed while keyboard prompts show (the hint text names your key), and any other art with buttons painted in still shows Xbox buttons. Gameplay prompts (pick up, reload, take cover) draw the button straight from the game's button font (issue #21): with the keycap pack they show your keys (confirmed in game in #21 with v0.3.4), and with text labels they keep the Xbox buttons (docs/PROMPTS_GAMEPLAY_FINDINGS.md).
Green-looking lighting has been reported on skin, lights and the menu flames; it has not been reproduced on the development PC yet. Screenshots are welcome in an issue.
Co-op with three or four players is new. Stage 2 has been tested with four copies on one PC: players 3 and 4 keep their bodies and weapons through chapter changes and travel, respawn, leave and rejoin, return after checkpoint loads, hide during cinematics, stay unharmed on foot while a hero rides, and are moved next to Marcus or Dom by the host when left far behind. Co-op splits, getting out of a vehicle, the Ride-Reaver section, joining during a cinematic, long real combat, four PCs over a LAN or the internet, and Android with 3+ players have not been tried (docs/COOP_N_PLAYERS.md).
Every player needs the same release. Everyone must run the same version; with three or more players, campaigns with different co-op hashes stay hidden, and two-player co-op has no check, so mixed versions can crash.
Only Act 1 has been played through. On 2026-10-22 scripts/chapter-sweep.ps1 travelled to each of the 29 chapters and played a minute of scripted movement and fire in each with no missing-function crash; one run hit a GPU timeout (TDR) in chapter 23 that three later runs did not repeat. Playing acts 2-5 start to finish is still open (issue #8).
Native renderer on some AMD cards: on a Radeon RX 7900 XT, blocky dark patches can show on the floor where characters cast shadows (issue #26); Graphics > Renderer > Emulated (EDRAM) avoids them while it is investigated.

Building from source

See BUILDING.md. The main scripts are scripts/build.ps1, scripts/build-sdk.ps1 (optional — adds FidelityFX/FSR, temporal upscalers and system link tracing) and scripts/package.ps1.

Finding the functions codegen misses

tools/harvest_hints.py scans the decrypted image (exported from Ghidra with tools/ghidra/ExportImage.java) against a baseline codegen without hints (scripts/codegen-baseline.sh) and emits hints/harvested.toml: adjustor thunks, .pdata entries, code pointers stored in .rdata/.data and addresses built in code with lis+addi/ori. Hints that split an existing function are detected from the codegen log by tools/hint_fixpoint.py and kept out through hints/denylist.txt. Anything still missing is found at runtime by scripts/run-harvest-loop.sh (boot, read the "unregistered function" FATAL, add it to hints/runtime.toml, rebuild). scripts/chapter-sweep.ps1 does the same for all 29 chapters in one pass by travelling to each (see docs/TEST_TOOLING.md).

Contributing

Contributions are welcome through pull requests on GitHub, one pull request per feature or fix. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the rules. Bug reports go through issues with the newest gow2_*.log attached (on Android: Launch options > Share last log).

Credits

ReXGlue SDK (BSD-3-Clause, derived from Xenia) — runtime and code generator.
OverkillLabs3/gears-judgement-recomp (Gears of War: Judgment on ReXGlue, BSD-3-Clause) — this repo copies tools/patch_switch_traps.py and tools/check_objects_fresh.py from it and adapts scripts/build.ps1 from its scripts/build.ps1. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
XenonRecomp (hedge-dev).
Xenia.
AMD FidelityFX SDK: FSR 1 and CAS (MIT). The FSR 4 and FSR 3.1 DLLs in the release are AMD's signed binaries, redistributed under AMD's license, not MIT (see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md).
NVIDIA DLSS SDK (builds from source only; not in the release).
PresentMon (used for measurements).

Legal

Unofficial project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft, Xbox Game Studios, The Coalition, or Epic Games. All trademarks belong to their owners. This repository's own code is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause License — see LICENSE.

The screenshots (docs/screenshots, the docs/assets/img files other than icon-320.webp, docs/assets/og-image*.jpg and assets/icon/og-image*.png) show Gears of War 2 content, © Microsoft Corporation (originally © 2008 Epic Games, Inc.), captured from the game running in this port. They are not covered by the BSD-3-Clause license. The release zip also carries AMD and Microsoft runtime DLLs under their own licenses (THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md).

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README.md

README.md

Gears of War 2 — native PC port (unofficial)

Screenshots

Status

Download and play

PC

Android (experimental)

Controls

Settings

Performance

Modern enhancements

Texture packs

System Link

Known issues

Building from source

Finding the functions codegen misses

Contributing

Credits

Legal

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Gears of War 2 — native PC port (unofficial)

Screenshots

Status

Download and play

PC

Android (experimental)

Controls

Settings

Performance

Modern enhancements

Texture packs

System Link

Known issues

Building from source

Finding the functions codegen misses

Contributing

Credits

Legal