Gears of War - PC Game Previews - The Armchair Empire


	Platform PC Genre Action Publisher Microsoft Game Studios Developer Epic Games ETA Holiday 2007
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Gears of War

Gears of War has already made a substantial splash on Xbox 360 – it has sold more than 3.5 million units – so it wasn’t surprising that Microsoft again tapped Epic to bring the game to PC gamers.

If you don’t already have the lowdown on the story, go read our review of the Xbox 360 version.

The graphics have been tuned up and five new chapters added (so the story might actually make some kind of sense) but the biggest and most significant addition to

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the PC version is a robust level editor (i.e. Unreal Editor) which will not only allow fans to create new levels, custom artwork can also be imported. I’ll always remember the deluge of Unreal Tournament mods… there seemed to be a half-dozen user-created games every day for the span of almost two years. The problem was that

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only a handful were worth playing. I can only think that the same will be true of mods for Gears of War.

Another boost is sure to be the online play, which will include new maps and new modes. Though it’s not mentioned specifically, one can guess that co-op will make the transition also. At least, it had better. After playing with a buddy through the Campaign over Xbox Live, it’s really heard to go back to playing solo.

At E3, after Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski demonstrated a boss fight with the Brumak – which only shows up in a cinematic in the 360 version – he left the stage with the comment that Gears of War was coming for “Game for Window and XP.” (Emphasis added.) That was probably the most surprising bit of news so a day later I asked the Global Director for Games for Windows, Kevin Unangst, if I’d heard Bleszinski correctly – XP, are you serious? It looked like he had answered that very question a couple hundred times since the press conference. And though I don’t have a recording of his specific answer – “Yes!” – I did scrawl a note afterward that said, “Almost rolled his eyes at XP question.” Whatever the reason for including XP in the equation when Games for Windows is Microsoft’s big initiative, PC gamers will definitely benefit from the decision.

The wait for Gears of War on PCs will be a short one – it’s noted for a “ Holiday 2007” release.

- Omni

(August 31, 2007)