Gears of War PC Review

Epic's Gears of War port is probably going to go unnoticed by a lot of PC gamers this holiday season. With a record number of solid FPS titles to choose from--including the technically impressive Crysis, the multiplayer king Team Fortress 2, and the just-released juggernaut that is Call of Duty 4--heading back to last year's widely-named Game of the Year seems a bit like buying old news.

And that's too bad, because Gears of War still probably would have won plenty of awards had it been released this year. It's a deeply satisfying action game--one that I never expected to like, but that ended up keeping my attention to the very last mission, a real rarity these days. It really does set a new standard for third person shooters. The reason Gears works so well is its laser focus on basic elements of gameplay--namely controls and level design. It is a textbook example of how clever designers can lay out a vast set of seemingly simple blocks and boundaries, that when painted over with the impressive Unreal Engine 3, feel fun to run through as a lumbering marine for hours on end. The control scheme that allows for the visceral, duck-and-cover gunfights never gets boring, and in its transition to the PC, the game's intense action loses none of its pop. But what does the PC version add to the package? For starters, you've got five new single-player chapters, wedged into the beginning of Act 5, serving as a lead-in to the train sequence of the original. Like Christopher Lee in The Return of the King, the dinosaur-like Brumak played an insignificant role in the first iteration of Gears, but makes an appearance in this extended cut to provide a decent boss-fight. The levels leading up to this confrontation consist of more wide-open enemy encounters and close-quartered battles with wall-crawling aliens--nothing particularly fresh for the series, but all fitting seamlessly into the original scope of the game. All in all, this new content isn't worth another purchase for Gears 360 owners, but it is a great incentive for prospective PC players looking to take the plunge. In making the shift from gamepad to keyboard and mouse, the big question was whether Gears' controls would retain their natural feeling. The short answer is that they do. If you're using a keyboard, the run-and-gun, scoot-and-chainsaw actions are easily achieved with either a double tap of the "W" key, or a single tap of the spacebar key. Using both in tandem is almost more intuitive than the original "A for all" setup on the 360. Compensating for the increased accuracy of a mouse pointer, Epic has added a good deal of kickback to the weapons, which makes keeping your aim hovering on an enemy's face more of a task. Though it might sound like a somewhat crude solution to gameplay balance, it doesn't feel at all out of place or bothersome. And if you're not fond of the changes, you can always just plug a PC-compatible Xbox 360 controller into your box. The game will actually detect the connection of a controller on the fly, and disable the added recoil immediately. The combat feels more or less the same regardless of your preferred implement for serving up destruction. Sure, sniping is a little easier on the PC, and machineguns a little more unwieldy, but neither of these changes affect the experience in any meaningful way. It's still all about outflanking the enemy for that bloody chainsaw kill, or vectoring a grenade to land straight onto a sniper's lap. Gears looks great on the PC, but not leaps and bounds ahead of its Xbox 360 incarnation. Under the highest settings possible, you won't be pin-pointing any significant differences between the two, although the textures certainly seem to look sharper than ever. Performance on a high-end system is very smooth, with only a few hiccups here and there as the game accesses a texture in advance. Minimum system requirements clock in at a 2.4Ghz Intel chip, 1GB of RAM, and an Nvidia 6600 graphics card. Unfortunately, the DirectX 10 support has turned out to be a bit of a bust, with almost no graphical improvement over DirectX 9. This is compounded by the rather annoying fact that anti-aliasing can only be enabled when in DirectX 10 mode. And those turned off by the out-of-game presentation in Epic's Unreal Tournament 3 won't find any solace here--the menus are a direct copy of Gears' console screens. Another problem can be found in the game's method of serving up online action. Gears has a very strong multiplayer component, enhanced in the PC version by the new gametype "King of the Hill," and the addition of three maps. Along with the standard multiplayer modes, both online cooperative play and LAN networking are available to Gears PC players, and none of these requires you to pay a fee--the game only asks that you sign up for a Games for Windows Live account. While this process is pretty painless--GFW Live resembles the intuitive Xbox Live, and in fact those with Xbox Live accounts are already signed up for the service--you will need to pay for a Gold account in order to use any online matchmaking functions. This subscribers-only restriction to online matchmaking is somewhat understandable when you consider that the same service on the Xbox 360 also requires a Gold account. However, those not shelling out for a monthly subscription on the PC will have only a basic list of matches to choose from, a list which glaringly lacks a column for displaying your ping to each game. And though a Live Gold account is easily justifiable on the Xbox 360--required in order to play multiplayer at all--the same can't be said for PC-only gamers. Because the only major incentive to a GFW Live Gold account is matchmaking, this seriously reduces the value of the service in comparison to Xbox Live, forcing Gears-hungry consumers into a conundrum. The solution is undoubtedly a simple one--most will not pay for the service, thus somewhat crippling the multiplayer component in comparison to the 360 version. It's a strange situation, and hardly ideal. Even considering these gripes, Gears multiplayer is still a great time. King of the Hill is a bit like the Annex gametype, and sees two teams racing to stand in the middle of a small circle, usually spawned in the middle of a map. The longer one team occupies the ring, the more points they accumulate. Because the edge of the ring is typically just outside of cover, players will need to balance between standing in the open and covering teammates from outside. And because the ring is such a hot-spot, plenty of carnage ensues in the battle over the tiny piece of territory. If you haven't played Gears, and you're interested enough to have read this far, do yourself a favor and pick it up. Despite the less-than-perfect multiplayer solution, everything from the original game is more or less intact, and the new content adds up to a very well-rounded package. While the single-player component will be a great ride for a weekend, the multiplayer matches will likely keep you entertained for at least a month, which is far longer than most games can boast. With the included level editor being released to the modding hounds, one would hope the game's life will extend even further.