Gears of War

by Microsoft

Product Features

• Gears of War's story plays out like a Hollywood blockbuster
• Unreal Engine 3 technology brings out the smallest details in the largest of battles
• To survive you must suppress your enemy, take cover, and use weapons and teammates to outlast the Locust Horde
• Gears of War for Windows features original content and all-new achievements to unlock
• LIVE supports online matchmaking for Gold members

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000VBFW7E
• Item Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Media: DVD-ROM
• Release Date: November 6, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (104 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,961 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Gears of War is a third-person shooter that places emphasis on using cover to avoid taking damage while moving towards enemy forces. The game uses a number of weapon archetypes, but predominately featured is the Lancer, an assault rifle that has a mounted chainsaw bayonet that can be used to kill foes at close range. The player can attempt an "Active Reload" of a weapon to reload it faster and temporarily boost the damage from the gun, but failing to perform the Active Reload correctly will cause the gun to become momentarily jammed while the player's character fixes it. When the player takes damage, the "Crimson Omen", a red cog representing the player's health gauge, will fade into the screen, becoming more defined with larger amounts of damage. The player can seek cover to recover their health, but if they take too much damage, they will become incapacitated. Once this occurs, a skull will fill the center void of the omen. Depending on the game type being played, the consequences will vary. If single-player career mode is being played, instant death will follow. If there is a second player, they will have to revive their fallen teammate.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Lost saved games ruin an otherwise excellent port, January 3, 2008

By 

C. Sellar (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Gears of War (DVD-ROM)

This is an exceptionally good game. The cover mechanic is one of best implemented to date, the enemy AI is decent, it is beautiful, the weapons are interesting and feel solid, the boss battles are jaw-dropping, and most importantly it's a lot of fun. They even managed to make reloading your weapons compelling. The characters are a little over the top and the dialogue reflects that. But the storyline is suitably grand and it serves to move the campaign along well enough. This should have been a slam dunk must-have PC port of the XBox game.

But it's not. Saved games disappear. The save system is not only an offensively straight port of the console check-point system, but you have to create a Windows Live account to save your progress at all. What? Why? Don't answer that. I know why, and it has nothing to do with the gameplay experience.

I knew there was no quicksave feature when I bought the game, but I didn't know that the game would routinely lose all of my saved progress and achievements. There's a 40 page thread on Epic Games forums about this problem that's been around since the PC version's release in November. If there has been an official response from Epic or Microsoft I haven't been able to find it. That is too long for a massive problem like that to go unacknowledged and unresolved. Unless you have the time to finish the game in one sitting, don't buy this game until they fix the vanishing save games. Go play Half-Life 2, Bioshock, or some other game with a quicksave feature instead.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Painful because the game is actually cool., January 5, 2008

By 

Dan Song (NY USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Gears of War (DVD-ROM)

I purposely got the pc version (windows vista) of this game instead of xbox 360 version just b/c I like playing FPS or any shooting games with mouse better than a controller. Also, windows version of GoW has better graphic than xbox version if you have a good graphic card and has more single campaigns.

Anyway, I've had so much expectation for this game. It took about 1 hour for me to install the game, but it wasn't a big problem for me. The problem started when I started playing it. The game crashed every 5 ~ 10 minutes and therefore impossible to progress. I searched for solution by googling and solved the problem by running the game "as administrater." But that wasn't all. I got to Act 3 of 5 after playing a few hours. The next day, I pressed "continue campaign" but it told me that there was no saved games. I was shocked and pissed. Indeed, it was painful to start all over again. I tried to find solutions online but still no luck.. This game could have been a great action-filled shooting game, but those critical flaws killed it. I recommend getting xbox version, or other better FPS games such as Call of Duty 4, etc.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars So many bugs..., December 3, 2007

By 

Marcelo Mendes (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Gears of War (DVD-ROM)

It might be a fun game to play... but installing and playing it is so hard! I needed to reinstall windows so that would work. I still have some random freezes. Windows Live is not available in my country, so I can only play (and save) offline. But worst than all, every 2-3 days it loses all save data and I have to start it all again from chapter 0 !

Common, next time test the game before releasing! Or release it as beta.