Gears of War PC

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that.

I didn't want to assume.

It's a pretty fair question given that the game is almost exclusively on a single plane (from the player's point of view). There aren't very many instances in the campaign where you really have to aim up or down a lot.

Sure there are plenty of stairs and ramps, but even then, they aren't steep, and you're not really fighting on significantly different elevations. The only places I can think that are that have a stark elevation difference are

Spoiler

the end of one of the early levels where you get the two turrets and you're high above the enemy, during that big battle at the end of Act 2, on the stairs leading up to the mansion, and also within the mansion when you defend it from the locust

. Those weren't even hard parts of the game either!

In multiplayer, it should be the mouse that wins long range battles. Even with the sniper rifle handicap, you should be able to aim at enemy heads much more easily and take them down more quickly using any of the other weapons (the human or locust assault rifles). I guess it would depend if they've added a bit of random motion to those weapons too.

IME, I think you lose a lot of the "Gears" experience if you don't have that rumble feedback with the 360 controller. It's not crucial, but I mean it's not a proper chainsaw gorefest without that ridiunkulous rumbling!

 

this is one of those frenetic action shooters isn't it? no time to screw around? (ie finish map, move on to next level). at least that's what it looked like on G4: xplay. i may have even read that.

infinite respawns? no quicksave?

 

There are quite a few moments where you'll wish it was non-stop action. (There are points where Marcus is speaking to someone over some invisible MIC and you are forced to walk slowly). It really is just "stop and pop" firefighting requiring one to seek cover and then aim at people.

In multiplayer it's more frantic though, usually ending in something disgusting.

In co-op, if your pal goes down, you have to go over to his kneeling body and revive him. He doesn't die until he explodes or is continually shot while down. In multiplayer, the typical game does not have infinite respawn. The matches are setup as team vs team, the winners killing the entire enemy team. I think if time runs out, the team with the most players wins. There's the king of the hill or annex mode which does feature infinite respawns though.

No idea on quicksave. The game uses numerous and intelligently placed checkpoints (usually after a battle), so it shouldn't be that much of an issue. The Acts are broken up into chapters as well, so you should be able to get to the "good" parts easily from there.

 

Damnit AlStrong, you're making me all giddy now. I've only played GoW once at a xbox stand for 5 mins and I really liked it. Is the game short? I read comments it was a 10 hour game, what do you say? Hopefully the 5 new maps will extend it a bit.

 

hehe

If the game options are exactly the same, players can choose to start on normal or hardcore. After you complete the campaign, you unlock Nightmare. Hardcore is a pretty good starting place for the experienced, but you really do have to start watching the COG symbol that appears on your screen as you get hit. You don't want to see the COG in its entirety.

It really comes down to getting head shots with the sniper rifle, using your grenades effectively to take out the emergence holes and having a bit of patience while your COG health meter disappears.

On co-op, my buddy and I finished normal in about 7 hours, including the cut-scenes, on the 360. It's the fact that your buddy is generally a whole lot smarter than the friendly A.I. and does more damage that makes it short. On hardcore single player, 8-9 hours sounds about right to me. There are a couple sections in there that get really frustrating especially on the harder settings, and it's not for the lack of aiming precision either. In some cases, co-op is even more frustrating because some parts separate the two players entirely , requiring that neither of you get downed.

Nightmare is really just that at times... I think if you ever doubted the robustness of the checkpoint system, playing on Nightmare should put that particular fear to rest... for the most part. It would be too easy if you could save after every kill you made, wouldn't it?

 

I was really concerned about this being a 3rd person shooter too, but it really isn't that bad. The gameplay is designed around the perspective, so being in 3rd person doesn't really feel like a hinderance.

I think you PC boys will like it. The co-op rules.

 

News Source: Gears of War PC Goes Gold - Shacknews

 

Thanks Unknown Soldier. I think this is a great PC product. We get it a year later than the Xbox 360 did but at a lower price, with better graphics, more content and SDK.

Can't wait to try out the level editor myself.

 

Ack! Stop giving me less and less reasons to have purchased a 360! I'd like to think that money went somewhere other than The Darkness and Mass Effect!

I know from experience, though, that Gears, while it was still visually appealing, had a LOT of graphical flaws. Hopefully, some of those issues were resolved, that's just wishful thinking, though. Also, the game was a hog on the 360, which was made apparent by the skipping frames, namely in cutscenes. It will be nice to aim with a mouse now. Perhaps now I can finally beat the damn thing on it's hardest difficulty.

 

I personally can't wait for GoW PC

I haven't played the XTS version since I don't own one but have seen the action and it seems very interesting. The fact that it can do XP is even better. I can't wait.

US

 

Interesting

News Source: DailyTech

 

Gears of War PC Performance and IQ

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQxNiwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

 

thanks for the link max-pain!

since the crysis shader tweaks, it's harder to take this comparison seriously. I'll read the article first before making judgments.

 

So better to run DX9 unless you have a GTX in which case DX10 with 4xAA would be the preferred option.

Still .. can't wait.

US

 

Its great to see some GeoW figures finally available but I really can't get onboard with this method of testing. Highest playable settings is subjective to the reviewer so saying DX10/AA on on a GTS 640 isn't playable doesn't tell me much. Especially given that I wouldn't be playing the game at 1600x1200 anyway. I would just like to know what framerates the game gets at those gettings and then I can make an informed judgement about what I would get at my settings and whether I would be comfortable with that.

Even weirder is that fact that they rate the highest playable settings as 1600x1200 but then clearly go on to say in the write up that the games were playable at 1920x1200 and even 2560x1600 on some GPU's!

It seems like DX10 has taken a big blow with this game - very dissapointing. Still, these benchmarks should put to rest any lingering claims that Gears will bring PC's to their knees. Seema any of these GPU's can handle it with ease at hgher resolutions and DX9 settings. I'm looking forward to seeing how the DX9 generation handles it.

 

Read on another forum that you have to install it to C:? Doesnt give you an option for anything else? Confirmed, or not? If so, I wont be getting it.

 

You can instll it anywhere, but you need to create a Windows-Live Account to be able to save in the singleplayer game.
And thanks to "Games for Windows" you are pretty much screwed with non-Xbox-like Gamepads.

Deinstalled my *cough*unofficial demo*cough* after playing for 5 minutes, they arent seeing money from me.

 

That sounds similar to what's in the UT3 demo where you can't save your settings unless you make an online account. Some sort of way to force registration even for a single player game, maybe to prevent piracy or prevent second hand resales?

[Pity that screws the demo for UK players who can't get a "@" symbol on the UT3 keymap and thus cannot give the email address registering requires. ]

 

How do you folks get the @ symbol then

 

Same way we do probably, just with a different keymap.