RETRO – Countless games are released every year, yet few titles become so strongly associated with a particular machine. These are the games that make even hardcore PC players hesitate and seriously consider whether buying a specific console might be worth it. The franchise turns 20 this year…

It is therefore understandable that the company behind a console is reluctant to bring such a game to PC, since that leaves players with one fewer reason to switch to its machine. That is why we had to wait a full year for Gears of War, one of the Xbox 360‘s hardest-hitting and most powerful titles even today. For a long time, it was not even certain whether we would ever get to welcome this gem onto our PCs, but fortunately the old saying proved true once again: patience bears Gears of War!

“This is madness!” “Madness? This is SERAAAA!”

But what made Epic’s shooter, packed with tactical elements, such a phenomenon? One thing is certain: it was not the story, which, while not bad, is full of familiar sci-fi clichés, and the developers clearly did not pour excessive energy into it either. The story takes us into the distant future, when humanity has long established itself in space and colonized several planets. One of them, Sera, catches the attention of an aggressive alien race, which decides to get rid of its current inhabitants as quickly as possible. On Emergence Day, the bloodthirsty Locusts rise from beneath the ground with the radical goal of wiping humanity entirely from Sera’s surface.

Human civilization can only fight back with enormous difficulty and massive bloodshed, deploying the special units of the Coalition of Ordered Governments, the Gears of War commandos. These soldiers are somewhat reminiscent of the macho Spartan warriors from 300: they have physiques and musculature that would put bodybuilders to shame, and they can remain standing even against overwhelming odds. They are rough men who know neither mercy nor fear, and even the surviving civilian population of the planet is afraid of them.

We control the toughest and by far the best GoW soldier, Marcus Fenix, who is rotting in a prison at the beginning of the game for disobeying orders and desertion. Naturally, our hero was not afraid of the Locusts, he merely wanted to save his father’s life and therefore defied the command of his superiors. That alone was enough to earn him forty years in a military prison. Of course, it did not take forty years, or even four, for the aliens to almost completely crush every form of resistance, and the leadership eventually decided to release and mobilize every imprisoned GoW soldier, including our hero.

The developers do not place much emphasis on fleshing out the background story during the game: we learn surprisingly little about the Locusts or the past and present of the planet Sera. Instead, it feels more like watching a classic war road movie, in which a squad must survive constant bloody battles while travelling across a long route to reach a destination and complete a special mission. Some members of the group lose their lives, new ones join us, and at one point Marcus takes command of the squad.

“Take cover!”

If we look only at the story, Gears of War is not all that different from Halo, apart from the fact that the world of GoW is much darker, bloodier and more depressing. Yet it differs fundamentally in one crucial respect: this is not an ordinary FPS, or even a conventional TPS, but a proper tactical shooter. If we simply charge forward like lunatics off the leash, the aliens will take down our hero within moments.

We will therefore spend most of our time behind cover, emerging at precisely the right moment to fire accurate shots and clear the area of aliens alongside our companions. It is essential to locate the protected positions around us from which we can fight most effectively. We also frequently need to outflank the enemy line, move to the Locusts’ side or rear, and pick them off from there. In this respect, Gears of War somewhat resembles Full Spectrum Warrior, only it is far faster, more exciting and much bloodier.

We often have to decide in a split second which piece of cover to sprint toward and which of the aggressively attacking aliens coming at us from every direction should be targeted first. If we hesitate for too long, the Locusts will gradually reach us, and at close range the only option left is to slice them apart one by one with the chainsaw mounted on our rifle. The damage system works according to logic somewhat similar to Halo‘s, except that no shield protects our body here. Instead, the Gears skull insignia turns increasingly red as we take hits, then slowly fades away again once we retreat behind cover.

Fortunately, our comrades are reasonably effective at mowing down aliens, but they are naturally helpless without us, and the Locusts eventually wear them down.

If one of the GoW commandos is seriously wounded, Marcus can fortunately “revive” them. If we stand beside them and press [E], Fenix helps the fallen soldier back onto his feet, then barks something like “Fight through the pain!” or “You are good to go!”, and our man is healed instantly. Long live modern medicine… This brings me to my first criticism: compared to the Xbox 360 version, the artificial intelligence of our men had become somewhat less capable, because they would unfortunately get stuck quite often and stand in one place while the Locusts calmly tore them apart.

There was one section, for example, where it was essential, at least on the higher difficulty level, for one of my companions to provide cover. Yet the idiot was incapable of finding cover for himself and merely wandered around aimlessly while the aliens kept taking him down, forcing me to revive him again and again. By the time he had died for the twentieth time, I simply left him there, but it was especially irritating to listen to the poor fool groaning: “Oh, help, someone help me already!”…

Post-Apocalypse Now!

Fortunately, this minor mishap does little to diminish the value of Gears of War, which still hits harder in terms of gameplay than most PC blockbuster titles released this year. Although GoW is fundamentally a linear tactical shooter, the developers designed its individual levels and locations with such excellent instincts that the game never becomes boring for even a moment. During the adventure, our determined little team moves through Sera’s outer streets, among the walls of beautifully crafted ruins that were once grand buildings, through factories, enormous cave systems deep beneath the surface, and many other varied locations.

Over the course of our adventure, we encounter the local population, the “Stranded,” who live miserably and nomadically, somewhat like the people in Mad Max. We also meet colourful, original characters, such as the slightly unhinged petrol station attendant who fills our very special “jeep,” armed with an array of defensive systems, with fuel before we take the wheel ourselves. One of the game’s most memorable sections sees us driving this special vehicle back to the Stranded settlement while bat-like, bloodthirsty alien creatures keep attacking us from the air. Every now and then, we have to stop and deal with them using UV light.

Our own men are colourful and well-developed characters too: Marcus, the permanently foul-tempered, tight-lipped and gruff protagonist who comments on everything with familiar English four-letter words beginning with f or s; Cole, the adrenaline-fuelled killing machine who, in the “civilized” days, was adored by crowds as a thrashball star; and Baird, the constantly whining, somewhat cowardly but still quick-witted and reasonably intelligent soldier. Our heroes constantly trade barbs during the game, and these exchanges make the already incredibly realistic game feel even more alive and cinematic.

Better Looking Than Ever

When Gears of War arrived on Xbox 360 a year earlier, everyone was already staring at it with their mouths open, yet the PC version managed to raise the bar even further. Despite being the first major game built on Unreal Engine 3, the developers made the most of the engine’s capabilities.

The environments are both astonishingly detailed and incredibly atmospheric, while the depth-of-field and bloom effects are used exactly as much as necessary. The character models deserve similar praise: the grim, muscle-bound GoW commandos look perfectly lifelike, especially the macho protagonist Marcus, whose battle-hardened, suffering face is covered in deep scars and wounds that tell the story of brutal conflicts. There is no reason to complain about the bloodthirsty Locusts constantly bursting from the bowels of the earth either: they are not only sufficiently horrifying, but also remarkably varied.

Alongside its genuinely jaw-dropping level of detail and stylish presentation, Gears of War is also an extremely brutal and bloody game. It is no coincidence, even if the local censorship was “slightly” pathetic, that Germany did not even bother with an age rating and simply banned the game. The Locusts’ bodies explode under gunfire, blood sprays everywhere when our hero is hit, and a rocket strike can tear poor Marcus to pieces. Achieving the proper level of detail requires a very powerful machine, however, and strangely enough, the game occasionally stuttered even on my current, fairly muscular configuration. After restarting, those issues fortunately disappeared.

Controls are often another bane of PC conversions, but thankfully the PC version of Gears of War handles this area reasonably well overall. We move with the usual WASD keys, aim or zoom with the right mouse button, fire with the left button, use the “active camera” with [Q], and help our men back onto their feet or interact with certain objects using [E]. Only the use of [Space] is a little cumbersome, as sprinting forward, taking cover and jumping out from cover are all assigned to that single key. In the heat of battle, this can lead to doing something completely different from what we intended.

It might have been better if these functions could have been assigned to separate keys, after all, we are playing on PC with a keyboard, not a gamepad. Anyone with an Xbox 360 controller can naturally use it perfectly with this game as well, but honestly, aiming with a mouse and rotating the camera feels a little easier and more natural…

“Fuck! Don’t Miss This One!…”

As if waiting an entire year was not enough, they release it right now, when we are already looking left and right at this incredible flood of games? Do these people have no heart? It would certainly have been more fortunate if Gears of War had reached stores at the end of summer or in autumn, but in my opinion, you should not miss this game even if you already have a million other titles planned.

-BadSector-(2006)

Publisher: Microsoft

Developer: Epic Games

Genre: Action-TPS

Release: 2006, 2016 (Ultimate Edition for Windows 10)