When you"re trying to bring one of the successful Xbox 360 games to the PC then the mantra must surely be "don"t drop the ball", but for Epic Gaming the latest title to earn the Games for Windows tag not only brings everything that the original version has, but also adds five new chapters and the chance to design your own maps. Gears of War"s success on the 360 was hardly surprising given the novel duck and cover fighting method and the mind-blowing graphics, but ports from console to the PC have often fallen short of perfection – with the accuracy of the mouse and keyboard set up a world away from the joypad. Epic"s lead designer Cliff Bleszinski admits that the control conundrum was indeed the hardest thing about GoW PC, but is hopeful that he and his team have provided the solution.
"First and foremost the controls are tricky because we were going from a dual analogue setup on the Xbox to the keyboard and mouse," Bleszinski told Tech & Gadgets. "When you have keyboard and mouse games, especially with shooters, you get this super hyper-fast gameplay. Now we wanted to keep the methodical pacing that Gears of War has, where it"s fast but also tactical. "So there was a lot of tweaking because we didn"t want using a keyboard and mouse set up to undermine the core of the game. So, without going into too much detail there are things like weapon kick and no auto-aiming that are in there. I would say that was the biggest challenge..."