Gears of War 4 (for PC)

Gears of War 4 (for PC)

Editor Rating: Good (3.5)
Gears of War 4 (for PC) - Gears of War 4 (for PC)
US Street Price$60.00
  • Pros

    Tight, responsive, and rewarding third-person shooting. Story campaign can be played in either solo or co-op modes. Streamlined and accessible keyboard-and-mouse controls.
  • Cons

    Repetitive combat. Pace-altering mini-games aren't particularly fun. Predictable story. Bland characters.
  • Bottom Line

    Gears of War 4 offers brutish new weapons, new monster fodder, and excellent multiplayer modes, but the game drops the ball by introducing weak characters and a predictable story.

Gears of War 4 ($59.99) is the newest entry in the series that defined cover-based, third-person shooting. The Coalition-developed title offers a new team to fight with, new toys to play with, and all-new enemies to blast to pieces, either alone or with a buddy. And like Forza Horizon 3, Gears of War 4 is a part of Microsoft's Play Anywhere initiative, so you can play a digital copy on either a Windows 10 PC or Xbox One console with a single purchase—a nice perk. The gameplay grows a bit repetitive as the story progresses, and the characters lack memorable personalities, but if you're looking for an enjoyable PC game, Gears of War 4 is worth a pickup.

New Start, New Threats
You play as James Fenix, an ex-Gear soldier who sets out to unravel the mystery behind a new and monstrous threat that's attacking human settlements. You lead a ragtag team through various environments, including a derelict monastery and an abandoned mine complex, as you fight through waves of sapient creatures called The Swarm. Thankfully, the world isn't painted with the tired brown or gray color schemes that plagued many last-generation shooters. The Coalition applies many bright colors to the war-torn world, so the settings are lush and vibrant even at their bleakest.

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You descend into the Swarm-infested hellscape with two companions, Kait Diaz and Delton Walker. James, Kait, and Delton are always eager to quip on the circumstances they find themselves in, and they never hesitate to take up arms and mow down monsters. But in truth, the protagonists lack strong personalities. James is the plucky, sarcastic hero, Delton is the happy sidekick, and Kait is the tough independent soldier. I wasn't expecting much depth from a cast of action heroes, but I didn't expect cookie-cutter characters, either. I struggle to recall a single memorable dialogue exchange or catchy one-liner from my time with the game, which is disappointing.

The story is not all that much better. Plot twists have no real impact, and the reveals are completely predictable, even for a new Gears of Wars player like me. Fortunately, the story is little more than a frame on which The Coalition hangs it's incredibly fun gameplay.

Gunning Like a Champ
Gears of War 4 makes heavy use of the now-standard, cover-based shooting action that previous Gears games popularized. You tackle most encounters by gluing yourself to the nearest chest-high wall or crate, and shooting whenever the opportunity allows. On PC, you can use either a controller or your keyboard and mouse to play. The keyboard controls are thoroughly satisfying, so PC gamers don't need to grab their controllers to enjoy the game, as they would with many other console ports nowadays.

The left mouse button fires your gun, while the right mouse button zooms the camera. The mouse wheel cycles between your four equipped weapons. Movement uses WASD, the R key reloads your weapon, and the E key interacts with the environment. Spacebar lets you dodge, dash, or take cover. There are a few other commands, but these are the bulk of your actions. Overall, the controls are streamlined and very easy to learn.

That is not to say that Gears of War 4 is dumbed down or easy. The controls are simple enough that the game is easy to pick up and play, but the mechanics offer just enough depth to keep you engaged. An excellent example of this is the Active Reload system, a single-key maneuver that is the most critical element in the game. Active Reload encourages you to manually reload a gun during a hectic firefight to dramatically shorten the reload animation and boost your damage output.

Gears of War 4 (for PC)

Here's how it works: A reload initiates a mini-game in which a needle passes over the black gauge underneath your weapon icon. If you time a button press so that the needle falls within the highlighted gauge section, you'll net the Active Reload benefits. Flubbing the reload penalizes you with a delayed reload, which sends your character into a lengthy animation that you cannot cancel. This is a highly dangerous state to be in, because you cannot fight back until your character finishes reloading his or her weapon. A failed reload can easily get you killed by aggressive melee units or when facing off against a large number of adversaries. This encourages you to familiarize yourself with your weapons, as each one has a unique Active Reload timing.

Gears of War 4 embraces its cartoonish violence with relish, which sets it apart from more grounded third-person shooters, such as Rise of the Tomb Raider or Uncharted 4. Blood sprays spectacularly, limbs melt into vapor, and torsos shatter into gory chunks with every kill shot. The same holds true for melee kills. Each weapon has a unique melee attack, some of which you can charge for disgustingly powerful attacks. Yes, chain-sawing a monster in half is nothing new in Gears of War, but it is still every bit as satisfying to chop your target into chunks.

The Long Haul
There are numerous enemies to keep you engaged. Early on, robotic foot soldiers make up the bulk of the opposing force, but they are soon replaced with hulking Swarm drones. Foot soldiers take and shoot from cover, mirroring your own team's fighting style. Melee units, like mobs of juvenile Swarm humanoids or the robotic Tracker Balls, overwhelm you with numbers and force you out of cover. Bruiser-type enemies deal massive damage and can soak up plenty of shots before going down, but they are also slow moving and easy to shoot. In addition, each chapter has mini-bosses that demand you exploit their weak point to bring them down.

Chapters are overly long, which unfortunately means that you battle many of the same enemies over an extended period. Plus, the game's length and constant enemy flow makes fighting tedious at times. Very rarely do you come across a room that you do not fight in; you are constantly bombarded with action. Gears of War 4 tries to break the monotony using weather effects and hazards, but they aren't enough to keep things interesting for very long.

Wind flares, for example, are massive tempests of wind and plasma that dramatically hinder your movement, as well as your grenade trajectory. Occasionally, obstacles and debris are blown across the battlefield by the gusts, killing anything they collide with. The hazards appear throughout every stage in one form or another, and help spice up combat, but I wish there would have been used more often, rather than a handful of set pieces.

Gears of War 4 (for PC)

There are a few on-rails sections that introduce new gameplay elements, but these are decidedly less fun than fighting against a tempest. These sections restrict movement, which makes navigation clumsy and unresponsive. These sections overuse instant-death hazards, too, which makes them all the more tedious when you die by making a stupid mistake. In addition, the base defense portions, which task you with building fortifications and posting sentries around a key area to ward off enemies, misses the mark. These scenarios do not occur often, thankfully, but fighting through waves of enemies in this manner gets boring very quickly.

Gears of War 4's campaign supports two-player local and online co-op, which mitigates the combat's repetitiveness. Combat moves at a much faster pace with two people gunning everything in sight, and it's much easier to strategize and plan during an encounter. That's to say nothing of the levity that playing with friends brings. The single player mode is a solid experience overall, but playing the campaign in co-op is highly recommended whenever possible.

Fighting With Friends
Multiplayer is a critically important aspect of Gears of War 4's gameplay. As mentioned, you can play through the story campaign with a friend, which makes the experience more enjoyable. But Gears of War 4 has a variety of highly addicting online modes that several players can jump into and enjoy, either cooperatively or competitively.

Horde is a cooperative mode that pits five players against waves of increasingly difficult enemies. You access a magical fabricator that lets you purchase a limited number of weapons, barriers, turrets, and weapon caches between enemy waves. If you like the cooperative gameplay of the story campaign, Horde Mode is essentially a self-contained version of that; it's just you and four other players fighting for your lives.

Beyond the iconic Horde Mode, Gears of War 4 features competitive modes like Team Death Match, Escalation, King of the Hill, and Dodge Ball. These modes make great use of the game's tight third-person shooting by offering various rule sets that alter how you approach a fight. Dodge Ball, for example, is named so because the rules are similar to the sport, and not because you pelt one another with balls. In Dodge Ball, a dead member of your team can only respawn if you kill a player from the opposing team. This can lead to some tight matches and amazing comebacks.

Gears of War 4 (for PC)

Disgusting Beasts and Glorious Visuals
Gears of War 4 is a demanding title, as Microsoft recommends using a gaming rig that has at least an Intel i5-4690 CPU and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 GPU (though you can get away with an Intel i5-3470 CPU and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 GPU on the low end). You also need to update to Windows 10 Anniversary before you can play, however. My own rig meets the recommended specification and runs the game extremely well. Besides the occasional stuttering during cut scenes or checkpoint saves, I can safely play Gears of War 4 at 1080p/60 frames per second using a mix of High and Ultra settings.

Gears of War 4 lets you adjust a wide variety of video settings to get the most out of your system. The video resolution can be downscaled to 720p from the game's default 1080p, or it can be super-sampled to up to 4K. The frame rate can be locked at 30, 60, 90, 120, or 144 frames per second. Thankfully, you can play with an unlocked frame rate if you so choose. Vertical Sync, of course, can be turned on or off to prevent screen tearing. The Field of View can be adjusted to your preference. It is set to 80 degrees by default, but can be bumped to 100 or lowered to 60.

Texture values feature Low, Medium, High, and Ultra settings. Anisotropic filtering can be applied, too, from 2x all the way up to 16x. There are values for temporal AA Sharpening, Foliage Draw Distance, Level of Detail, and Motion Blur. Lighting has its own submenu, with settings for Shaft Quality, Scattering Quality, Bloom, Shadows, and Ambient Occlusion.

Perhaps the most pleasant surprise is that every visual setting that can be adjusted also comes with a handy explanation of its effects, so people who aren't familiar with PC gaming's encyclopedic video setting options can experiment and adjust these values much more comfortably.

Friends Against the World
Gears of War 4 is a fun monster-blasting romp through a hostile alien underworld. Carving creatures with a friend certainly makes the game worth the price of admission, despite its weak cast of characters, and predictable story. The voluminous amount of multiplayer game modes certainly sweetens the deal, and is sure to keep even casual players sharpening their chainsaws for a long time to come.