Gears of War

PAX 2007 Preview

When Epic’s Gears of War released on Xbox 360 last year, many gamers were unsure if it would live up to the hype. To be sure, it certainly had its work cut out for it. One of the first titles announced to use Epic’s bar-raising Unreal Engine 3, the game was certainly beautiful, as most could surmise from screenshots and video of the gameplay. However, could the brains match its beauty? As it turned out, Gears of War was not only great looking, but great playing. The game was extremely exciting, and the “stop and pop” mechanic was quite easy to grasp, even for the twitchiest players out there. Gears of War cleaned a fair amount of house, quashing the doubts that many had about the Xbox 360’s staying power as well as earning a fair amount of Game of the Year awards from many publications.

Now, the game is readying phase two of its assault, with the upcoming launch of Gears of War for the PC. The game is slated to release with tons more content, including new boss battles and levels, than was featured in the 360 predecessor. The online element was on display at this year’s PAX, and while it didn’t really show off the new in-game features, it did offer a taste of what to expect with Gears of War hits the PC.

As far as online goes, the gameplay was largely the same as it was on the Xbox 360. The keyboard and mouse scheme worked extremely well, utilizing the WASD controls as well as any first person shooter. One unfortunate side effect when porting a console game to the PC is that the auto-aim elements sully the precision of the mouse-keyboard configuration. However, this isn’t the case in Gears of War, as there is no auto-aim system when using the mouse and keyboard, just pure and accurate blasting. Of course, being a Games for Windows title, Gears of War allows you to use the Xbox 360 Controller for Windows, which feels just as it was on the Xbox 360.

Graphically, the game is coming along very nicely. The game moved at a very smooth clip, and the character models and environments boasted a great amount of detail, and look just as good as they did on the Xbox 360. The lighting was very dark in some sections and needs work, a fact duly noted by a line of text on the demo’s screen.

Gears of War is looking to be one fine PC game, giving fans of the platform a extended “director’s cut” of sorts while avoiding many of the trappings found in a console-to-PC port.