Gears of War for PC

[Havok83]

Its official. Its coming to the PC, complete with exclusive content

http://pc.ign.com/articles/803/803221p1.html
July 11, 2007 - The "rumors" this week generated from the leaked trailer of Gears of War have proven to be right on to no one's surprise. Gears of War is absolutely coming to the PC as was just announced at the Microsoft press conference down in Santa Monica. While we knew that the game would include new features and levels based off of the leaked video and fight with the Brumak (big monster with the huge machineguns and rocket launchers), we didn't realize that five new single player sections would be added. Of course, we don't know how long these levels will be - we'll ask that when we see them this week - it is good to hear that the extra content won't just be little bits tacked on. There'll also be new arenas, but probably more important is that it will come with an editor which will generate more new content.




The demo shown at the conference was all about the Brumak battle, which seemed pretty freaking brutal. The Brumak is a huge beast controlled by a grunt sitting on his back using controls assumedly wired into the monster's brain. When Marcus and friend ran into the arena the beast immediately started moving around firing all weapons. Cliffy B, who was driving the game, showed how easy it was to connect to a friend over Windows Live and then proceeded to get shot about a million times. The game basically had to be on God mode so we're pretty curious how difficult this creature really will be. The area where he was hanging out didn't exactly have a lot of cover, especially since the creature towered above the human figures and also all of the concrete pipes scattered sparsely around the area. Hiding behind those things didn't seem to help too much.




In order to kill the monster Cliffy and friend first shot off both of the arm machine guns and then attacked the head gun as well. It doesn't look like it's probably a small thing to kill the thing. Maybe we'll be lucky enough to have access to the Hammer of Dawn during the fight. Either way, it was really impressive looking. The PC version of Gears is going to look very, very good on good machines. Also not surprising considering how good the game looked on the lesser powered 360.

Thankfully gamers with both XP and Vista will be able to play the game (not surprising since most developers probably realize the kiss of death that bringing a game for Vista only would be) when it releases. We should have the chance to give some more impressions of Gears of War on the PC later this week.

 

[Fran]

Goddamnit, the Brumak chapter better be 360 DLC

 

[WhatsHisFace]

I think it's supposed to be, but after a few months.

 

[Fran]

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Cool, I might actually play Gears of War if it's on PC. Just gotta upgrade first.

 

[GFreeman]

I didn't like the original that much, but I might pick this up, who knows. I need something demanding to put my PC through anyways.

 

[WhatsHisFace]

I really need to learn how to use an editor like Quake or Unreal.

 

[Havok83]

I just found out the release date is Nov 6th. I had no idea it was coming that soon. Just a montth away. I thought it was going to drop sometime in December

 

[WhatsHisFace]

I'll get it when it's under $20. Already have the 360 version.

 

[Havok83]

Heres a Hands On Preview from Gamespot

Sure, Gears of War debuted on the Xbox 360 last year and became a blockbuster hit that sold more than four million copies. But did you know that when Epic originally showcased the game at the 2005 E3 trade show it was running on a PC? We learned that while visiting Epic's offices in North Carolina recently, where we got a chance to get some hands-on time with the upcoming PC version of Gears of War.

If there's a message that Epic wanted to convey, it's that the PC game isn't merely a port of the 360 game. Gears of War has basically been retuned to feel like a PC game, and the visuals remain on the cutting edge, so much so that you'll probably want to show off the graphics to your friends. The PC game will have all of the content that appeared in the Xbox 360 game, along with all of the extra downloadable content that was released over the past year. It will also ship with five new single-player chapters, three new multiplayer arenas, a new multiplayer game mode, and the latest version of the Unreal editor. This last element is worth noting because Epic will ship the exact same toolset that it used to create the game, along with all of the content used to build the game, so fans can experiment, tinker, and create their own unique levels and mods. And thanks to the many engine optimizations that have been done over the past year, the PC game is essentially running on a "new" engine, which means that much of the new content will never appear for the Xbox 360 game, we're told.




You'll actually get to battle the Brumak in the PC version of Gears of War. Good luck.
The new single-player content is designed to flesh out the final act of the game. When you first load up Gears of War on your system, you can start at the beginning of the game, but if you're a veteran of the 360 game, you can choose to dive into the new chapters. However, be warned that the new content appears near the end of the game, which means that you'll be thrown into some challenging battles. The new content is called Timgad, for the city it's based in, and it basically tells the story of how Marcus Fenix and Delta Squad get to the train station at the end of the game. As such, it helps fill in some of the glaringly missing narrative in the Xbox 360 game. If you're a fan of the boys of Delta, you'll be happy to hear that Microsoft brought in all the voice actors to record new lines, so you can hear Marcus, Dominic, "The Cole Train," and Baird in all their gravelly glory. There are plenty of grueling battles against the Locust Horde, culminating in a battle against the giant Brumak, a fearsome opponent that was only seen in a cutscene in the Xbox 360 game.

All of this new content will add up to about an hour of extra gameplay on the casual difficulty level, though if you ramp up the difficulty to hardcore and insane, you'll certainly have a fight on your hands. Regardless, when single-player is done you'll be able to turn to the game's impressive multiplayer suite. Gears of War has a cooperative gameplay mode with support for two players, as well as various competitive modes on a total of 19 maps. The new multiplayer mode is king of the hill, and it's a variation of the annex mode. In it, teams battle to control a certain point on the map, and you have to hold it for a total of 120 seconds. To seize a point, you have to clear it and have at least one teammate in it at all times. It takes a few seconds for control to be established after that. However, the opposing team can break control instantly if one of them can breach the perimeter of the control point. This can make for suicide charges to buy time for reinforcements to appear.

Epic has done some nifty things with the control scheme. You can plug an Xbox 360 controller into your PC and play Gears of War just like you would on the console. Of course, most PC gamers will use the keyboard and mouse. After all, playing with a mouse allows for much more precision compared to a gamepad. But let's say you're in the middle of a level and decide, on a whim, to pick up and play on a gamepad. In that case, the game will automatically detect the switch and "adjust" the feel of the game. Gears of War is tuned for both control schemes.

With that said, the keyboard and mouse controls are pretty intuitive, given that the W, A, S, and D keys are used to move around and the mouse is used to aim. Naturally, you can remap the controls any way you'd like. The only real learning curve is related to the game itself. Gears of War isn't a standard run-and-gun shooter. It's rather a game about using cover to shield you from enemy fire, and then "popping out" from behind cover to shoot back. To use cover, all you have to do is move against a solid object, such as a wall, and your character will "hug" it automatically. You can also simply move next to cover and hit the space bar. When hugging cover, you hold the right mouse button to "pop out" and aim, and release the right mouse button to return to cover. It's that simple. Other actions are also pretty intuitive. Running is as simple as double-tapping the W key. When you do that, your character runs at a crouch and the camera moves low to the ground and follows, a neat technique that reminds you of combat documentary footage. Likewise, acrobatic moves such as twirling from behind cover are as simple as moving in the direction you want to go and tapping the space bar.




The PC version looks even better than the Xbox 360 game if you have powerful hardware.
Visually, Gears of War arguably looks even more stunning on the PC than it did on the Xbox 360. That's partly due to the nature of the platform. On the PC, the display is often just a foot or two away from your head, so you can soak up all the minute detail onscreen much easier than you can on a television that's across your living room. However, if you have a beefy system you'll be able to appreciate even higher resolution and higher-resolution textures than the 360 game. Of course, your mileage may vary depending on your system specs. We're told that the minimum system requirements are a 2GHz AMD or a 2.4GHz Intel single-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and an Nvidia 6600 or ATI X700 video card.

Gears of Wars will ship with support for Games for Windows - Live, the PC version of Microsoft's excellent Xbox Live service. However, it will not require Windows Vista to run. To maximize the potential install base for the game, Gears of War will run on both Windows XP and Windows Vista. The game won't feature cross-platform online play, so you won't be able to battle Xbox 360 players. On the plus side, though, you won't have to subscribe to Games for Windows - Live, because PC-to-PC multiplayer is free on the service. And because it supports Games for Windows - Live, Gears of War will feature a whole new set of 1,000 achievement points that you can amass. Epic learned some lessons from the 360 game and has reworded some of the achievements so that players have motivation to help their team. For example, in the 360 game, there was an achievement that rewarded you if you got 100 headshots in multiplayer. What ended up happening was that players would join games and just sit back with the sniper rifle to try to get headshots, rather than trying to win the round. That achievement has since been reworded so the goal is to get a single headshot in each of 100 different rounds. The idea is that once you get your headshot for the round, you can drop the sniper rifle and go help the team win.

Given that Gears of War will ship for the PC less than a year after the Xbox 360 game, Epic hopes to make PC gamers feel as if they're part of the club. The company did not want to ship the PC game years after the 360 game, which would have made it feel like the PC community was getting a warmed-over port. That's hardly the case here, and Gears of War looks like an amazing game and, more importantly, it feels like it was made for the PC. It will ship on November 6.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/g...topslot;title;3&om_act=convert&om_clk=topslot

 

[WhatsHisFace]

It still feels like the PC community's getting a warmed-over port.

 

[Havok83]

good thing it looks like Epic is going out of their way to make it more than just a PC port

 

[Havok83]

First review gives this a 9

http://gamesradar.com/us/pc/game/re...&sectionId=1000&releaseId=2006111715561688087

 

[Maggotx9]

OK i made the mistake of making a thread for this game on the XBOX forum, but w/e now im doing it rightXD i need to know if I can play this game with a ATI RADEON 9600 ??

 

[Havok83]

OK i made the mistake of making a thread for this game on the XBOX forum, but w/e now im doing it rightXD i need to know if I can play this game with a ATI RADEON 9600 ??

sorry. Wish I could help you but I dont know the hiearchy of ATI cards. If you dont get help here, you might want to check out the official board

http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/

 

[Maggotx9]

im going to check it out thanks!!

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Minimum requirements for the PC GoW are at the bottom of this page. It says a Radeon X700 is required, and the X700 is higher than the 9600, but it's not by a gigantic margin or anything. You should still be able to run it with relatively low settings.