I realize Gears of War is the darling of the gaming industry, and there's some great reasons why the X-Box version of Gears of War deserves that acclaim. For the PC, however, the customer truly gets the shaft. Most of the problems with Gears of War for the PC have been a complete showstopper for many, many users out there. I put the game away for a year. When I re-installed it last weekend, it was because I had hoped the last round of patches would make things better. It amazes me that here we are, years later, and still this game is plagued with problems.
What problems?
1) Installation may take 2 hours or more. Something in the system (signs point to DRM) throttles back installation of the product. I have no idea why it does this, but I've witnessed it on more than one machine. This same issue may be what causes the game to take 2-3 minutes to launch every time I go to run it.
2) After installtion, the game will not be able to launch without patching. It will accuse you of having tampered with the code and tell you to re-install the game. Don't bother reinstalling, because that won't change anything. Instead you have to patch the game. There was a server certificate issue that Epic/Microsoft fixed after it broke a lot of users' installations. The workaround involved moving your PC's calendar to a date/time before the problem (which, by the way, can cause other bad things to happen with other programs). I ended up rolling my clock back, patching, then rolling forward and rebooting to properly get the job done.
3) And speaking of patches...the patcher will often crash. Thankfully, it finishes the job before dropping dead; the last patch crash I witnessed appears to be the patcher attempting (and failing) to launch the game for you.
4) The Windows Live account creates problems of its own.
- First it needs to be updated in-game: having the latest version of Games for Windows Live on your machine will not do because Gears of War cannot figure that out; it has its own installation of the program.
- Second, you cannot log into Games for Windows Live outside of Gears of War and expect Gears of War to run; it won't understand this and it will prevent you from accessing content without explaining why. Leave the game, log out of Games for Windows Live, close Games for Windows Live, and re-launch the game.
- Third, other Games for Windows Live titles that can't detect a separate install of Games for Windows Live--like Halo 2--really don't like it when you bounce from one Games for Windows Live game to another. Updating Games for Windows Live in one game doesn't update it in another. You should probably know that after you agree to letting the game update Games for Windows Live, it will then tell you that it may decide to restart your computer. I wish I could know that ahead of time, before I agree to a reboot I can't control.
Why does Games for Windows Live matter? For the same reasons that I have now played Gears of War two-thirds of the way through, about 8 times:
- Your saved games are dependent on Games for Windows Live.
- Your saved games will randomly disappear, or become corrupted and you have to start the game over.
- You definitely cannot access your saved games if you haven't logged into Games for Windows Live, and
- You may also find that your saved games won't transfer from one machine to another: I've had a message that my saved games do not exist "on this machine's hard drive".
- If you're buying Gears of War for its Multiplayer capability, you should know that you will not be able to access the full benefits of Multiplayer without a paid Live subscription: you will otherwise get limited features and no achievements.
Graphically, Gears of War offers an extremely well-rendered experience, provided you have some hefty hardware for it. I run the game on a dual-core AMD (4400+) machine with 4GB of RAM and dual 8800GTS cards in SLI. I need to throttle the settings back to medium/low for everything (and I still have tearing problems and framerate drops with V-Sync enabled).
The concept of Gears of War is relatively simple, and it forces you to change your thinking from "run-and-gun" to "duck-and-cover": everything you do requires you to hide behind cover, move to other cover, and blast the living hell out of anything that gets in your way. Blood fountains, bullets fly by the thousands, the enemies die splattingly and "on the ground" camera angles put you in the middle of the action. There are decision paths along the way that provide slightly different experiences, depending which direction you choose. There is some small amount of strategy: close the hole in the ground, lure the monster out into the open, etc. Everything is tied together into a larger story that is told through cinematics. Sadly, most of these gorgeous cinematics contain little dialog or plot development beyond military grunts sniping at each other, and hints that no one else really likes your character.
If you want to take a chance that you'll be one of the lucky few who have a minimum of problems, Gears of War for the PC may offer you the same experience enjoyed by the X-Box crowd. I still wouldn't recommend paying full price for the PC version, if only because of the many headaches you'll most likely be in for.
Ultimately, the game is built on the Unreal Game Engine (UR Engine) which means that it is going to be good and involved. The game lived up to the expectations established by the UR Engine and its developers as the game development was overseen and managed by the same people as a "work for hire" publication for Microsoft Studios.
The game is quite difficult but, playable and manageable on harder difficulty settings as there are many to start and insane ones that you can unlock. There are hidden items that you can find for unlockable points awards on Windows Live and an array of weaponry that seems to suite everyone. The game is still quite active for online player "death-matches" and is completely compatible with the newer Windows Live 3.0 desktop client software.
Look forward to alot of continues as even the easy difficulty level is ranked "Hard" and being brutalized often as some of the death scenes will leave you feeling a bit split on the side. The game can be a little upsetting at times but, war is hell!
Game play is challenging enough to have you actually plan and orchestrate surgical attacks and that is what I and every other war style FPS player looks for in this type of title. The casual "rush-in" style of guns-blazing, blind-fire attacks will almost always result in you getting hammered later on in the game. The difficulty and computer AI gives the player a little room to breath with a diminishing curve as the game progresses.
The graphics are what you would expect from a new generation media intensive interaction and thus you will definitely want a sturdy graphics card. If your card can wing it you could always get the game and upgrade the card later and have a re-match with all the gory glory full on. You will want at a minimum of 256MB's of dedicated video RAM and support for: DirectX 9.0c and second generation 2.0 shaders -- and this is the minimum. All that said, you will be able to play the game with varying performance and graphics but, it will be accessible to you.
TIPS:
(This is how I installed GoW on my P.C. and have not a single problem with lost game saves, hiccups, crashes, or un-expected game behavior.)
1.) Download and install the Microsoft Games for Windows Live Desktop Client 3.0 or use Windows Updates to upgrade your current client.
2.) Go to the Gears of War 2 web-site and download the P.C. patch for Gears of War. A bit vague here as the patch is on the GoW 2 for XBox 360 site.
3.) Install your GoW game on your P.C.
4.) Install the P.C. patch for GoW, that you downloaded from the GoW 2 for XBox 360 site, right after you've installed the Gears of War game on your system.
5.) Restart your P.C. to get your software and system registries some setup time and burn in to prevent registry difficulties.
6.) Get your game on.
Some other games that use the Unreal Game Engine (a.k.a. - Unreal Technology) are as follows:
1.) Batman, "Arkham Asylum" -- Eidos Games.
2.) Section 8 -- SouthPeak Games.
Played the demo for Batman and it was excellent. FPS styled action adventure with hybrid free roaming and linear based mission play. Same style as Gears of War.
Section 8 is the same style of play from the approach of GoW and Batman, "Arkham Asylum" with some cool twists and unique features. Played it , solved it. Way easier than GoW.
GoW gets four stars for the fact that the game could have had a little more by way of a twist a plot game play styling. It is pretty much a linear game that when you pass a checkpoint you are done with the previous sections like it or not. They should use automatic save points like the Cry Engine used in Crysis (fantastic game) and allow the player to really ambush the crap out of the enemy. GoW gets five stars for gameplay because it earned five stars for gameplay. It gives you everything that its genre demands and then some as well as solid game play mechanics that are seasoned to say the least.
Shifting.
