Slop.

I'll be honest. The lights do not sell me the setting very well. The first one actually sells the setting better.

I think a lot of these remakes get by on "slap some ccoooooool lighting in there to show off our graphics and they'll love that slop" instead of actually considering whether it enhances or improves the original idea.

I basically don't see any necessary difference between the second two versions. Reloaded may as well not exist.

You absolutely could remake the original and do it in a dark and horror game aesthetic style, it would work better. Instead they went for a boring style that is basically the same as every other game ever. What you have to remember is that the original stood out because it was aesthetically unique. Over time I think the unique aesthetic has been subsumed into corporate action slop.

If you want to reboot this franchise, long periods of horror and high tension in between long action battles featuring desperate shooting and barely surviving situations is the way to go. This however requires some element of creativity and willingness to take risk with the franchise and the executives never ever want to do that with anything, they want the team to tick the list of checkboxes for what's currently popular from their market research.

I don't even like Gears but I can see what you need to do with it to stop it being dead repetitive schlock nobody is happy with.

It's not even like horror isn't popular, that genre does serious numbers because Twitch streamers love it for reaction content with their audiences getting off on seeing the streamer mentally torture themselves.