Gears Of War

Another fine example of console ports at their worst.
This PC port of Gears Of War is even more buggy and messed up, than it's xbox counterpart. (That in itself belongs in the how not to do it section of console game making.)
Random crashes, hangs and errors galore. The game is so utterly unstable here that it is near impossible to really play it.
After going over the readme file one cannot help but wonder why with so many known issues this game was released. It would have made far more sense to delay things a bit, and work out the kinks.
When you know that your game has possible issues with both Nvidia AND ATI cards, several Samsung DVD drives (including mine.) and several other things that should have been a clue you need to do some extra work.

One side effect is that crashes once in a while make the game not register the last checkpoint you've reached. So having to replay even bigger parts of the chapter/level to get back to the point where it all went boom is quite possible.
The port itself is also extremely poorly done. That is to say that this game lacks the features and options PC gamers tend to expect. After installation you are given one shortcut and that is to start the game. No documentation, no links to web based resources, not even a manual or an uninstall shortcut. These files exist, but it would have been a no trouble at all to create a little sub folder with shortcuts for quick access.
There is also no configuration tool, that is to say it is not possible to configure the game and it’s settings before loading it. You also have no simple way to force Gears Of War to load in a safe mode.
Lacking both these tools makes trouble shooting a lot harder and needlessly so.

The game itself has its charm, the acting isn’t bad, the graphics aren’t either.
Gameplay is quite decent be it geared towards gamepads. In that respect it’s a bit dualistic. On the one hand you have a lot of dodging and running that is a lot easier to do with a pad than your keyboard. On the other hand when it comes to aiming and shooting nothing beats a real gaming mouse.
What I personally would have liked to see was some more control over your team. Something like the options you find in Star Wars: Republic Commando or Clive Barker’s: Jericho. You don’t really miss it but it would have been nice. As it is now I hardly ever used the team commands.

Sounds and music wise it’s not bad either, although sometimes the ambient music is a tad off. You’ll hear the typical ominous bit of music that usually means something is about to happen, but nothing does. So after a while you start to ignore it.
This game also lacks proper surround sounds, don’t expect to be able to hear your enemies position or rely on your ears to know when something is sneaking up/waiting for you.
That’s a real shame with so many pc gamers having at least 5.1 or 7.1 surround systems hooked up to their rigs. And this title has an atmosphere that offers a lot of options for impressive audio.

For now all I can say about this game is: wait. If you want to play it do yourself a huge favour and sit back until some patches are released. The random crashes will ruin the experience for you.