Like a Dino-Rider gone wrong, the lumbering Brumak stalks you throughout the new singleplayer chapters, finally giving you a chance to meet him in person at the end. Each brief encounter with the Brumak isn't much of a battle, but they give you enough of a taste of his unsavory character to have you anticipating the final assault. I made it a personal mission to reach this boss fight before my time with the game expired, and I made it only just in time. I had to take that thing down.

As it turns out, he's not the most difficult boss ever constructed, but he does have a few nasty tricks up his well-armed sleeves. The Brumak's rockets attack in wide arcs, zipping around the cover that usually means safety in Gears. Only with a clever game-plan and plenty of ammo does he become manageable. After a few well-timed sniper shots, he was felled, and the game segued into the next chapter--the original opening of Act 5.

Speaking of segue-ways, one of the minor complaints I had with Gears PC had to do with the load times. Like the Xbox 360 version, each chapter drifts into the next, with the game seamlessly moving from level to level without a single loading screen. Unfortunately, even on Epic's beefy computers, I did notice a few hiccups at times when moving from one area to the next, and not always at the preplanned caching sections. This wouldn't have been an issue if it hadn't sometimes occurred when an enemy was running straight at me. Out of the five chapters I played, this happened maybe three times, but always at the same places.

Still, these load hiccups are a small price to pay for the improved visuals. Gears looks absolutely fantastic in the high resolution of a widescreen monitor. The textures have been improved a good deal from the Xbox 360 version, and at the highest settings with DirectX 10 enabled, every pock-marked face and stony wall looks better than ever. If you're worried about your Quake 3 machine not being up to par, a single core 2.4ghz Intel chip with an nVidia 6600 graphics card and 1GB of RAM was given as a minimum spec. You will surely want more under the hood to have the game at all resembling its former self.

Standing victorious over the Brumak, I had become the first person outside of Epic staff to conquer the new content. Representing Shacknews, I now turned to face my colleagues in four on four multiplayer combat, King of the Hill style.

Hamburger Hill

Three new multiplayer maps ship with Gears of War PC, all supporting the new game mode: King of the Hill, a variation of the Annex mode. King of the Hill unsurprisingly revolves around taking control of a small, single circle on the map. As you stand in the glowing hoop--which changes color based on the controlling team--more points are slowly added to the scoreboard for your side. If an enemy enters the ring, it drops to a neutral color while in limbo. Not the most original of game types, it turned out to be more fun than I had expected.

I have never been a big fan of King of the Hill gameplay, but I have to admit, it works well in the context of Gears. Contrary to the usual Gears mentality, the control point is almost always planted in an area without cover. This exposes those who would dare to take control, thereby making it extremely difficult to stay alive. Respawns are set on 15 second timers, which is just long enough to guarantee the hill changes hands. This makes for an exciting round, but also a cooperative one, as teammates must strike a balance between risking their lives for personal glory and supporting their team in its kingly endeavors.

The new maps lend themselves well to the game type. Courtyard is just that, a large open courtyard set amongst towering ruins. What makes the map interesting are the elevated starting locations. At the beginning of each round, both teams can clearly see eachother across the open space, and can note exactly where their enemies are funneling down into the low-lying choke points. This gives a slight advantage to those who pick their heads up from the firefight long enough to observe their surroundings.

The control points change location from round to round in King of the Hill, and are often nestled away on the higher points of the map. Gold Rush starts the teams at low elevation, but the hill might spawn on the upper or lower sections of the map. Luckily, an icon is included to point you in the direction of the point, although the icon sadly does not denote height, leading to some very confused starts.

The included game editor is a full-featured affair, although little documentation will is provided. Epic hopes that players will take it upon themselves to learn the ropes, share their knowledge on the forums, and create their own single and multiplayer maps. The "Kismet" visual scripting tool will allow editors to create chains of if/thens and other scripting statements, easing the programming requirements for would-be mappers. Players who want to share their finished creations will have to do so outside of the game, however, as auto-downloading is not an included feature due to PC security concerns.

After several rounds of humiliating defeat, our opponents wised up and began to give us a challenge. Much like an online match, just as they were putting up a fierce fight, it was time for me to drop out. Funny how that happens.

Mad World

I never expected to like Gears of War in the first place. It seemed like such a tired cliche from the beginning, with its silly dialogue and overblown action. Giant soldiers shooting alien invaders in a post-apocalyptic city--what a concept. Of course I was wrong in my presumption, as the game turned out to be a textbook example of how to execute a third-person shooter.

And at the end of the day, Gears of War for the PC is close to being a perfect, textbook port.

It takes the original game, retains its unique pacing no matter the control scheme, and adds enough content to reward those who've waited this long to play it. It looks great, it runs under XP or Vista, and it runs well. For those who have played the original, the game probably isn't worth another buy just for the new content, but who was expecting that? For those who haven't yet experienced Gears, even in this busy season of PC releases, it's a no-brainer.

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