Customer Reviews

Gears of War

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I realize Gears of War is the darling of the gaming industry, and there's some great reasons why the X-Box version of Gears of War deserves that acclaim. For the PC, however, the customer truly gets the shaft. Most of the problems with Gears of War for the PC have been a complete showstopper for many, many users out there. I put the game away for a year. When I re-installed it last weekend, it was because I had hoped the last round of patches would make things better. It amazes me that here we are, years later, and still this game is plagued with problems.

What problems?

1) Installation may take 2 hours or more. Something in the system (signs point to DRM) throttles back installation of the product. I have no idea why it does this, but I've witnessed it on more than one machine. This same issue may be what causes the game to take 2-3 minutes to launch every time I go to run it.

2) After installtion, the game will not be able to launch without patching. It will accuse you of having tampered with the code and tell you to re-install the game. Don't bother reinstalling, because that won't change anything. Instead you have to patch the game. There was a server certificate issue that Epic/Microsoft fixed after it broke a lot of users' installations. The workaround involved moving your PC's calendar to a date/time before the problem (which, by the way, can cause other bad things to happen with other programs). I ended up rolling my clock back, patching, then rolling forward and rebooting to properly get the job done.

3) And speaking of patches...the patcher will often crash. Thankfully, it finishes the job before dropping dead; the last patch crash I witnessed appears to be the patcher attempting (and failing) to launch the game for you.

4) The Windows Live account creates problems of its own.
- First it needs to be updated in-game: having the latest version of Games for Windows Live on your machine will not do because Gears of War cannot figure that out; it has its own installation of the program.
- Second, you cannot log into Games for Windows Live outside of Gears of War and expect Gears of War to run; it won't understand this and it will prevent you from accessing content without explaining why. Leave the game, log out of Games for Windows Live, close Games for Windows Live, and re-launch the game.
- Third, other Games for Windows Live titles that can't detect a separate install of Games for Windows Live--like Halo 2--really don't like it when you bounce from one Games for Windows Live game to another. Updating Games for Windows Live in one game doesn't update it in another. You should probably know that after you agree to letting the game update Games for Windows Live, it will then tell you that it may decide to restart your computer. I wish I could know that ahead of time, before I agree to a reboot I can't control.

Why does Games for Windows Live matter? For the same reasons that I have now played Gears of War two-thirds of the way through, about 8 times:
- Your saved games are dependent on Games for Windows Live.
- Your saved games will randomly disappear, or become corrupted and you have to start the game over.
- You definitely cannot access your saved games if you haven't logged into Games for Windows Live, and
- You may also find that your saved games won't transfer from one machine to another: I've had a message that my saved games do not exist "on this machine's hard drive".
- If you're buying Gears of War for its Multiplayer capability, you should know that you will not be able to access the full benefits of Multiplayer without a paid Live subscription: you will otherwise get limited features and no achievements.

Graphically, Gears of War offers an extremely well-rendered experience, provided you have some hefty hardware for it. I run the game on a dual-core AMD (4400+) machine with 4GB of RAM and dual 8800GTS cards in SLI. I need to throttle the settings back to medium/low for everything (and I still have tearing problems and framerate drops with V-Sync enabled).

The concept of Gears of War is relatively simple, and it forces you to change your thinking from "run-and-gun" to "duck-and-cover": everything you do requires you to hide behind cover, move to other cover, and blast the living hell out of anything that gets in your way. Blood fountains, bullets fly by the thousands, the enemies die splattingly and "on the ground" camera angles put you in the middle of the action. There are decision paths along the way that provide slightly different experiences, depending which direction you choose. There is some small amount of strategy: close the hole in the ground, lure the monster out into the open, etc. Everything is tied together into a larger story that is told through cinematics. Sadly, most of these gorgeous cinematics contain little dialog or plot development beyond military grunts sniping at each other, and hints that no one else really likes your character.

If you want to take a chance that you'll be one of the lucky few who have a minimum of problems, Gears of War for the PC may offer you the same experience enjoyed by the X-Box crowd. I still wouldn't recommend paying full price for the PC version, if only because of the many headaches you'll most likely be in for.

This game is very fun and really has a lot of non stop action, but it's not for Windows. It is a really sloppy port of the XBOX360. If you have played this on the XBOX360, then this game will waste your money. They added some new content, but not really worth buying. Epic also is very lousy with support for the game. They have released two patches, but this game really stutters pretty badly on my dual core rig, which runs games like Crysis on high settings like water.

Just don't get this for Windows, or if like me, try for another title like Bioshock 2 or Fallout 3. They are better titles and really keep you into the game. They also have better support.

Another Note: This game requires that you sign up for Games for Windows Live to save you progress. That's another reason to consider before buying Gears of Wars

Brand new PC built just for games, (new Quad processor, 2GB memory, 8800 GTS by Nvidia, 750 GB drive, etc.) Flawlessly loads and runs every game I have except for this dog. What a buggy piece of software.

Other issues:
Must create an online account.
Constant crashes, and freezes.
Save points require unnecessary replay of long segments of game whenever you get killed.
Control over the character is unintuitive, even keyboard play brings with it unnecessarily difficult movement I always associate with console hand controllers. Give me a keyboard and mouse that tap into modern character movement and control (like Far Cry or Crysis, or even Unreal Tournament) any day over this kind of game control approach.

I may pick this up again some day down the road, but this baby is being retired early because its difficulties in operation trump its benefits.

The first problem with this game is that you need to sign into LIVE to save any progress in single player mode. If anything happens to your Live ID you loose your game. At least when it's saved on your hard drive you have the option of backing up any game progress and can restored it if anything happens.

But most of all it wasn't that good of a game. I was first attracted to it because your blood splattered on the monitor when you got shot. As it turns out, not enough to make the game good. I bought it at a higer price than the $29 but wouldn't pay that if I had to do it again.

This game is unplayable. Twice I have got half way through this game and my game save has disappeared. This is a common occurance check the net. The game saves are copy protected so you can't make a back up of them. I have downloaded the latest patch and it makes no difference. I am playing this game on XP. You might be lucky and get to the end of this game without losing your game saves but if you don't it is very frustrating.

Arguably the best game to hit the XBox 360 yet, Epic Games' Gears of War comes to the PC with a more than solid translation from console to PC. If you've played the game before on the 360, you'll feel pretty much right at home here with what the PC edition of Gears of War has to offer, as it boasts the same gorgeous graphics, brutal gameplay, and addictive multiplayer that helped make the game such a hit in the first place. For newcomers to Gears of War, you'll get to see what all the fuss is about for the most part, although there are a few flaws to be found. Most notably is the fact that there are a few glitches and bugs to be discovered as you progress throughout the game, but they don't detract from the overall experience of the game. The difficulty curve could have been tweaked a bit as well, but as far as flaws go, they end there. Gears of War supports the keyboard and mouse as well as the XBox 360 gamepad, but either way, the control remains tight. There are some new additions, including added mission chapters and maps, and while they aren't anything spectacular, they're still worth playing through. As mentioned before, the game is a sight to behold, even more so now on the PC, but beware that there are some pretty steep system requirements to witness Gears of War in all it's visually brilliant glory. That aside, if you have the hardware and have never before experienced Gears of War, you should definitely give it a try now that it's on the PC, and see for yourself what all the fuss was about when the game was first unleashed last year.

Ok, don't get me wrong, this is, essentially an EXCELLENT game...for the 360. Not, however for the PC. No, apparently the developers thought it'd be a good idea to rush a product out...then update it but not fix the major issues.

Here's some things you get to look forward to if you mistakingly buy this port instead of the real deal for the 360:

A) Saved games disappear randomly.
B) Probably will act glitchy, doesn't matter your specs so don't feel bad.
C) Even if you manage to make it through a good portion of the game, don't switch computers and try to transfer the save files like I did...ended up not being able to continue.
D) Did I mention the saved games disappear?
E) Oh yeah, it takes an hour to install, 2 additional hours to -maybe- get it running.

So, essentially you're stuck with 3 hours of pure non-sense. I kid you not, I sat there trying to get this game to run for 3 hours while my wife gamed and gamed and gamed some more on our 360.

Pop in a disc and play? No no, this is Windows why should we be so bold to expect that?

Not worth it to be able to use the mouse and keyboard, 360 controller isn't that bad.

Again, the Xbox version is EXCELLENT, pick it up! Don't pick up the PC version though...it's a waste of time that you could spend gaming instead of click *load* *crash* *click *load* *no saved games found*