You can call it a tough market, a crowded gaming climate, or just plain ol' nerdvana, but Epic Games picked a brutal launch window to deliver the highly acclaimed Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War to PC gamers. Surrounded by huge AAA titles like Call of Duty 4, The Orange Box, Unreal Tournament 3, and Crysis, poor Gears ran the risk of being overlooked and underappreciated. But before you shed any tears for this fantastic third-person shooter, you'll be relieved to know it doesn't need your sympathies. It's every single bit as fun it was on the 360, and even surpasses the original version in a few ways.

PC gamers who toughed out the wait have been rewarded with five new chapters in the single-player campaign (Impasse, Comedy of Errors, Window Shopping, Powers That Be, and Jurassic Proportions). These new chapters add about 15% more gameplay and story in between Chapters 4 and 5, and focus on your team's race to a train station, pursued by the gigantic Locust horror, the Brumak. (The Locust are Gears's bad-guys.) While these chapters make that portion of the story stretch a bit uncomfortably, the showdown between yourself and the "big ugly" is tense, exciting, and difficult - and it was well worth the wait, especially for the hands-on chance to experience what 360 owners could only watch.

In addition to these new chapters, Gears comes with 3 new multi-player maps; "King of the Hill", an entirely new game mode; and finally, all the previously released downloadable content from the 360 version. The new maps seem true to the style of the old, and the new multiplayer mode, while not creative, is still a nice twist from the normal duck-n-cover blast-fests of Gears's original game types. Your job is to remain in a specific "Hill" area for as long as possible without letting any enemies in. You acquire points for time spent in this zone, and 120 points win the match.

The biggest differences between the two versions, graphics and controls, are the areas where the PC version outshines its predecessor. Playing Gears at 1900x1200 with everything set to high (only on a high-end gaming PC, of course) shows off GoW's war-weary soldiers in ultra-detailed awesomeness. While it's still disappointing that you can't use anti-aliasing without DX10, it's still an appreciable improvement over the console version.

But all the pretty pictures in the world wouldn't mean squat, if the game controlled clumsily. Fortunately the mouse and keyboard adapt very well to Gears's cover-based combat system. The biggest adjustment for most FPS players will be the usage of the spacebar for moving into cover or running, rather than the usual jumping. The game's nifty timed reloading mini-game is also a bit tricky to pull-off in combat, as it's linked to the "R" key. The key's not unusual in itself, but with everything else you have to manage, and the fact that a poor reload can kill you, it gets a bit dicey. Thankfully, all the controls can be remapped in the Options screen. And if you find that the PC controls just don't cut the mustard, you can plug in a 360 controller and play. The game will automatically register the gamepad and adjust recoil, auto-aim, and bullet spread to better suit the controller.

On that note, the only concession Epic has made for the precision of the mouse/keyboard combo is to ramp up bullet spread and weapon recoil. While it feels a bit overdone, it works to balance the gameplay and keep things challenging. Unfortunately, 360 players won't be able to test their mettle against PC gamers, but you can try your hand against other PC gamers who have opted to use controllers.

It's ironic, then, that the level of challenge itself is one of the game's disappointing issues. There seems to be no happy medium between (far-too-easy) Casual mode and Hardcore (which can be overly difficult in places). This is further compounded by the game's use of traditional console-style save checkpoints, which are too spread out in some cases. You'll replay several brutal firefights over and over until you achieve success and reach the arbitrarily placed checkpoint. Considering that hard-drive space is hardly ever an issue on the PC, it seems like an antiquated design decision.

Two other slight issues mar what is otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable experience with Gears of War: the rather sparse server browser for those not using Games for Windows Live Gold memberships (no ping data, for example), and a weird initial patching issue with GFW Live, where the game won't recognize the update. Fortunately, it works on restarting, but you'd think that a Live bug as important as this would have been caught and fixed before release.

Issues aside, Gears of War's entry into this vast pool of high-quality shooters wasn't done toe-first but with a huge, whomping belly-flop, straight into the fray like the brutal combat it presents. It offers amazing Unreal Engine 3.0-powered graphics at higher resolutions than the 360, the opportunity to use a more precise control scheme, and a large chunk of new content, while remaining true to its core gameplay. Oh, and did we forget to mention that, at $50, the PC version cost a whole ten dollars less than the Xbox 360's version? This is raw, edge-of-your seat shoot-em-up action and it doesn't get much finer than this.

Nov 12, 2007 | 0 comments
Tony DuLac