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Gears of War for Windows

Still Lookin' Good After All These Years... er, One Year

Gears of War was a visual triumph when it was released on the Xbox 360, and today it remains one of the console's best-looking titles. A showcase for Epic's multi-platform Unreal Engine 3, Gears of War on the PC is a stellar visual experience. Without even delving into the technical aspects, the game is an example of how effective art direction can authentically transform a designer's vision into on-screen pixels. Each art asset helps to build the theme of a specific area and adds to the overall visual package.

Textures never look out of place, and none stand out as being rushed or thrown in at the last minute. At the highest detail settings, there's a measurable improvement in overall visual quality over the console version, and the additional memory afforded by the PC allows for very detailed textures. Level design, while intentionally constricted in the name of gameplay, rarely feels contrived, which gives the environments an authentic feel. The planet has been at war for some time when the story begins, and the color palette is subdued and washed out to reinforce that notion.

At medium quality, there's a subtle reduction in shadow quality

The "Low" shadow option has no dynamic shadows and only minimal static shadows

One of the highlights of the Unreal Engine 3 is the lighting system. It's easy to argue that the bloom lighting is overdone at times, but for the most part the effect is used judiciously. When a ray of light pierces through the darkness and illuminates an otherwise pitch-black hallway, the effect can be mesmerizing. Dynamic shadows give buildings and characters a sense of place in the world, and the dynamic shadows in Gears of War are some of the best-looking around, with few glitches in rendering. If anything immediately stands out, even to non-gamers, it's the character models, which are extremely detailed.

Animation is fluid and without hitching, and Locust who wander near a grenade will explode in random ways, with a torso in one direction and a severed hand in another. As always, the ragdoll effect on corpses is exaggerated. The only complaint of any merit is with the blood splatter, which is prevalent and doesn't seem at all to fit with the game's art style. For a game with such a brooding and serious tone, the excessive and almost cell-shaded blood seems out of place. It's a minor complaint, and one that stands out only because the graphical package is so cohesive otherwise.

More Than Just Gears At Stake

Epic has a lot invested in the Unreal Engine, and its licensees are likely keeping a close eye on Gears of War to see how effectively (and efficiently) their own games can be moved from one platform to the other. Relative to console development - even next-gen console development - creating games for PCs is a difficult task. Where a console is a standardized hardware and software platform, PC developers must contend with a near-endless variety of hardware and software configurations. Add in legacy Windows XP machines and new Windows Vista-based computers, and the list of potential issues is doubled; split the XP and Vista camps into 32- and 64-bit flavors, and the number of target platforms doubles yet again.

Take time out from the firefight to admire the glow of the muzzle flash

Augustus Cole: thrashball player, trash talker and all-around man of action. Check out the detail on the character model

Standard APIs simplify the task, but the amalgam of GPU and driver combinations alone are enough to make an engine coder's head explode. The PC market has seen a number of poor-performing (or completely unplayable) Xbox 360-to-PC ports over the past twelve months, which speaks toward the level of difficulty inherent in moving titles from Microsoft's console to the PC. Thankfully, even with the deck stacked against them, Epic (with the assistance of Painkiller developer People Can Fly) has massaged the Unreal Engine 3-based Gears of War to perform well on a range of PC hardware.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Gameplay - Single-PlayerPage 3: Gameplay - MultiplayerPage 4: GraphicsPage 5: PerformancePage 6: Issues, Summary and Scores

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