Gears of War hit the shelves with all the hype and expectations a next generation shooter could hope to inspire, and by most accounts, the hype was justified with an Xbox hit. Critics and casual gamers found themselves in awe of the breath taking graphics, graphic content, cinematic feel, and the innovative game play.

All the praise heaped upon the home console game left a bit of jealousy, or at least a healthy dose of curiosity, from those not blessed with an Xbox 360, but that need be not the case anymore. Gears of War has been wonderfully ported to the PC, keeping everything great from the console version and adding a fair share of additional content.

From those of you not already familiar with the core game, Gears of War is a 3rd person shooter of epic proportions. Your character is a tough talking hulk of muscle and attitude, a criminal branded as a traitor whom is busted out of jail to aid in the fight against an alien race, the Locust.

It isn’t exactly made clear why this war of races is raging, but it is clear that it is a genocidal fight to finish. The Locust are ruthless slaughterers, a take no prisoners sort whose raison d’etre is to do violence and little more, which is exactly the same sort as you and your human comrades.

You shoot and saw your way along a path determined by some pretty flimsy story telling, weak motivations and McGuffins popping up along the way, leaving a trail of death and destruction on a planet already in ruins.

The settings are stunningly realized landscapes of pure chaos. You see some pretty grim stuff on your travels, and boy does it look awesome. The graphics, which were amazing on the 360, are ridiculously impressive on the PC port.

The level of detail, even with the sometimes slightly bland palate of greys and dull greens, the models, the frame rate, the polygon count, and whatever else might pique the interest of a modern gamer, is like wow. The game looks so good. The cut scenes are gorgeously rendered, really cinematic in nature like the rest of the game, and are well directed.

Gears of War is presented as a long action movie. The story is spare and shallow at best, but it is enough to move along the action. The voice acting is good considering the script provided, not the headiest bunch of dialogue, but it gets the job done and never feels inadequate for the story that the game is trying to tell.

The game never promises what it cannot consistently deliver, and what it can deliver, it does by the boat load with such enthusiasm that you cannot help but get excited.

Audio wise, Gears of War delivers. The score is unapologetically over the top. There are dark orchestral movements, hard hitting action tracks, and heroic/patriotic themes, all of which amp up the emotion like only the most successful action packed blockbusters can do. The rest of the audio is superb as well. The gunshots ring out loudly, explosions quake the speakers, and the voices are well recorded. This a game that is best played at high volume.

The gimmick of the game is its main game play mechanic, the duck and cover system, which is absolutely essential to a successful gaming campaign. While it has be lauded as being incredibly innovative, revolutionary, it really is not. It is not the game’s fault that people have been making such a big deal about the combat system, but this type of thing has been done before, and done very well.

Not the greatest game ever made, but certainly not the worst, a PS2 title, Kill. Switch., put tons of emphasis on the same type of combat seen in Gears of War. This is not a knock against Gears of War, but it does take away from of the newness of the game if you have already played titles such as Kill. Switch.

I like the duck and cover system, however, it can get slightly tedious. You simply cannot be as impulsive as you can in many other shooters. If you do not rely on the environment to protect you, and patiently get shots off over or around your cover, you will get shredded quickly. You die after minimal hits, but you can recharge your health if you wait it out a while, which can slow down the pacing of the action.

If you take your time and play it as the game designers intended, you can get through the game without much difficulty on the default “casual” setting. The next highest setting will give some people a bit of trouble, especially during the latter sections of the game.

It seems that additional intermediate difficulty settings should have been included for those intermediately skilled players that form the majority of gamers. An even more difficulty setting can be unlocked with the completion of the main game.

Gears of War is not a long game by any stretch of the mind. In an era of when games routinely take 30 or more hours to complete, and much longer sometimes if side quests and extras are taken into account, Gears of War seems all too brief.

The first time through is a rush of excitement, a genuinely interactive cinematic experience that thrills from start to finish, but the second time through is slightly less enthralling, and by the third run through, it feels stale. If the main storyline starts to bore, however, you can always hop online for some multiplayer action.

The PC version is very close to the Xbox 360 version with a few exceptions. If you have a machine that has excellent stats, the game runs smoothly with better looking visuals than the original console version. If you have a machine that just barely meets the system requirements, expect to turn down a lot of the visuals, like shading and the ilk, and still suffer from some frame rate issues. I have also heard that some people can simply not get this game to work on their machines, and that there are serious, game destroying bugs present in some instances.

Gears of War for the PC also has 5 new stages at the beginning of the last section of the game. They are fun levels that let you take shots at a mega villain only glimpsed at in the 360 version, and they are very well made, design wise.

This may not be a problem, but there is a lack of continuity between the new levels and the rest of the game. The additional levels are huge and occasionally offer options on how to progress through areas, which is contrary to the strictly linear nature of the rest of the game.

Plenty of games are ported from consoles to the PC that just do not feel like PC titles. This game feels like a PC game. The mouse and keyboard feel natural. It is a bit odd how often you press the space bar, which is usually relegated to door opening and other such tasks, but you learn to love it. Everything is responsive and should be a smooth play for any veteran PC gamer.

Gears of War is a great addition to any PC game collection, though, if you have played through the 360 version your share of times, you might be better off not shelling out for this one. The graphics are stunning, the atmosphere is appropriately apocalyptic, audio is top notch, game play is solid. The bar has been set high with this one. Other than some potentially buggy PC play and brief completion time, Gears of War is a truly great shooter.

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