Gears of War

Released near the end of the Xbox 360's first year on the market, Gears of War was a defining moment for Microsoft's console. Its gameplay relied heavily on forcing you to take cover to avoid enemy shots, which meant that it required a healthy dose of patience as well as a steady trigger finger. It then beat that mechanic into your head over the course of its quality story mode, while also letting you team up with a friend online to take on the nefarious Locust forces together. Of course, it also had an amazing team-based multiplayer mode in which up to eight shooters could connect and go at it in a variety of different modes. Over time, more multiplayer maps and modes were added to the collection via the Xbox 360's download service. All of that great stuff is now available on the PC, on which the game looks better than it ever did on the Xbox 360, and without sacrificing anything in the process. If you've never played Gears of War, or if you just haven't played it in a while, do yourself a favor and try this new version of the game.

The game scales fairly well, but when it's looking its best, Gears of War requires a pretty heavy PC.

The game's story component puts you in the shoes of Marcus Fenix, who up until the very beginning of the game was serving time in prison for treasonous behavior. But the war effort requires his special brand of badness, so he's quickly set free, dressed up in his old soldier garb, and put back into action with the members of Delta Squad. Your enemy is the menace known as the Locust, which seems to be an amalgamation of different races and creatures, all seemingly devoted to exterminating your kind and taking over your planet. The game's plot points are inconsequential and work in a number of meaningless MacGuffin devices that serve as the only impetus you need to march from point A to point B while gunning down bad guys the whole way. You'll blast even more bad guys in the PC version of the game, which has a new section at the start of the final act that fills in a blank left by the 360 version. It does a better job of explaining how you go from running away from a huge beast with rocket launchers mounted on its head and shoulders to showing up at a train station to take the battle to the enemy general before he ruins everything.

The new content in the campaign is significant because it's new, but it's not especially noteworthy in the grand scheme of things. If anything, it probably would have worked better as a separate "deleted scenes" mode than as an integrated part of the game because it changes things up a bit in ways that betray the difficulty progression of the game. The new content often takes place in wide-open areas that are larger than any areas found in the console version, and it also brings together different combinations of enemies than you see in the rest of the game. Likewise, it forces you to cover a lot of distance between most checkpoints, and it feels much harder overall than anything in the "old" sections of the game. One section even features multiple paths to get to the same location, which seems weird and out of place, given the rest of the game's extremely linear nature. The new content is pretty good, but it's not so mind-blowing that you need to drop everything immediately to see it.

Of course, the rest of Gears of War is completely intact here, as well. And the complete package, done better than it was on the Xbox 360, is exactly the sort of mind-blowing that you might need to drop everything if you haven't already played it. Aside from a few frustrating cases in which the checkpoints are a little too far apart--and perhaps the need for a difficulty setting that falls between the too-easy "casual" and the occasionally punishing "hardcore" setting--it's hard to find many faults with the campaign, which will probably take new players around 12 or 13 hours to complete. The war-torn world you navigate through looks really great, and you're always wondering what will be around the next corner.

The gameplay is really satisfying, too, thanks to a very brutal graphical style that makes your weapons look like they're doing extreme damage. Likewise, you'll appreciate the quality control with a mouse/keyboard setup or an Xbox 360 gamepad, which is fully supported in the game. Your main tactic in the game is to run up to an object and quickly hide behind it, then occasionally pop out to fire off some shots and quickly get behind cover again before you take too much damage and explode into a bloody mist with several meaty chunks. With a mouse and keyboard, you're mostly using the standard WASD shooter control scheme, but the space bar is used to run and to get behind cover, and you can hold down the right mouse button to pop up out of cover and take aimed shots. With the gamepad, the left trigger is used to manage cover, the right trigger shoots, and A is used for running. Both setups work just fine, though holding the space bar to run feels a little awkward. Furthermore, the mouse lets you turn and aim much faster than a gamepad does, which means that the mouse will probably be the control scheme of choice for online matches.

Up to eight players can come together online and break off into two teams for a handful of different game types. Examples include warzone, which is the normal team-deathmatch style of play, and execution, which forces you to run up and chainsaw or boot players who've been downed to finish them off. Other modes, such as king of the hill and annex, make the game a little more tactical by requiring you to claim and hold various points on the map. All in all, the multiplayer offering is just as savage and great-looking as the single-player mode, and with plenty of maps to choose from, it can keep you busy for a very long time.

About the only thing missing from the translation is split-screen multiplayer, but you won't miss that one bit.

The graphics in Gears of War have never looked better than they do in the PC version, though that, of course, depends on your machine. If you can exceed the game's system requirements, the game looks pretty amazing at higher resolutions and delivers a good, smooth frame rate. It certainly looks much better and sharper than the Xbox 360 version of the game, and it does so without looking like the typical console-to-PC translation. The game also comes with a fully featured level editor, another thing you don't typically see in console-to-PC translations. Though some players may still prefer to play it with a gamepad, this feels like a PC game, top to bottom.

With a great loadout of weapons, a healthy multiplayer package, and an action-packed story mode, Gears of War is a terrific action game that, even after a full year, still stands apart from the pack. Whether you're a superfan of the first game who is looking for some additional content, or a PC buff who's been wondering what the console kids have been up to, Gears of War on the PC is most definitely worth your time and money.

Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis

Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis almost certainly isn't the game you expect, especially if you're hoping for a battle of wits between Holmes and archenemy Professor Moriarty. Standing in for Moriarty with the master detective is Arsene Lupin, a French thief who starred in a series of popular novels written by Maurice Leblanc in the late 19th century. Lupin remains a hugely popular literary figure in France, but this combo of characters lacks the punch of the Holmes-Moriarty showdown that the title suggests. Where we could have had a titanic battle of wits, we instead get a somewhat going-through-the-motions story where Holmes plays Batman to Lupin's Riddler, as well as puzzles that are too grueling to solve without immense reserves of patience and access to an online walkthrough.

Like every respectable Sherlock Holmes adventure, this one begins with the great detective and Watson ensconced at 221B Baker Street.

If you have any knowledge of how Lupin and Holmes plied their trades, you can probably guess the basics of the tale told here. Lupin is on the prowl in London, having challenged Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watson, to prevent him from stealing priceless artifacts. His goal is to humiliate the arrogant British Empire; yours, of course, is to foil the obnoxious Frenchman by stopping these thefts. Everything plays out as a stereotypical cat-and-mouse game, with Lupin leaving behind cryptic clues after looting such famous spots as Buckingham Palace, the National Gallery, and the British Museum. All in all, this is a fairly well-told yarn, even if it's obvious that the writers didn't burn any midnight oil on the fine points of the plot. Fans of Holmes and Lupin will no doubt be interested to see the two facing off for the first time since a couple of crossover novels penned by Leblanc a century ago (which, incidentally, angered Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle so much that he sued to force Leblanc to rename his detective Herlock Sholmes). But everyone else will find this story a basic take on the traditional "bad guy taunts police" crime drama.

Style and setting stand out more than the plot, anyhow. As with last year's The Awakened, all of the game's locales are brought to life with a 3D engine that allows you to roam the full depth and breadth of your surroundings. It doesn't exactly provide cutting-edge graphics, but the game is still more attractive than the average adventure. Locales are nicely realized, too, with the investigation taking you to all sorts of London landmarks. Many are quite impressively staged, particularly the National Gallery and British Museum, which feature scanned copies of dozens of famous paintings, as well as numerous historical artifacts. You actually get a fairly thorough lesson in art history and history in general during the game. The only major sore points to the presentation are subpar character art and awkward voice acting. Holmes, Watson, Inspector Lestrade, and the many quirky Londoners with whom you deal during the course of the adventure look more like shadowy, poorly sculpted wax figures than real people. The dialogue is also stilted and loaded with many odd pronunciations (it doesn't even get "Arsene" right). At least the musical side of the audio is just about perfect, thanks to a subtle-yet-tension-building classical score reliant on strings and piano.

But these issues are minor in comparison with Nemesis' wildly tough puzzles. While the game mostly steers clear of the old-school "pick up everything that isn't nailed down" formula and sticks to common sense (at least until near the end of the game where it explodes in stupidity with Holmes practically turning into Inspector Gadget), solving puzzles requires a ton of busywork. You constantly wander back and forth examining your surroundings, engaging in a great many pixel hunts with the naked eye, as well as Holmes' famous magnifying glass. Many puzzles aren't fully spelled out, leaving you in the dark about what you're supposed to be doing, especially when it comes to set-piece problems, such as arranging paintings into some kind of unknown pattern, building a wooden star to unlock a chest, and lining up metal rods to form Roman numerals. A list of objectives in the menu would have been much appreciated, as would added tips from Holmes, who often just says things like "Think!" when approaching a puzzle. More help is needed here, given how involved some of the puzzles are and how many steps they require to be solved.

Careful observation of your surroundings and the smart use of Holmes' famous magnifying glass are crucial to solving puzzles here.

Worse yet, the design is incredibly nitpicky when it comes to the steps that you need to take to move the game forward. Even if you've gathered enough evidence and know how you need to proceed, the game regularly won't let you push unless you've completed all of the tasks required. This is a particular problem in the opening National Gallery episode. You can quickly collect all of the clues you need to start checking out paintings and tracking Lupin's next target, but you aren't allowed to do so until you've completed every last little busywork job, such as measuring all of the footprints spread throughout the gallery. Without recourse to a walkthrough, good luck making it through the game without getting stuck a few dozen times.

Yet even with all of these drawbacks, Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis is often worth the struggle. Virtually all of the puzzles here are worthy of the great detective, partially because of their difficulty and partially because of their reliance on British historical or cultural artifacts. In many ways, the game seems as much a part of gaslit Victorian London as Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. If only it were just a little bit more playable.

Team Fortress 2

As one of the first shooters to pioneer team- and class-based gameplay, the first Team Fortress quickly became a favorite among the online community, inspiring devotion and spawning innumerable user-created modifications that many still play today. Team Fortress 2 was announced almost a decade ago as a sequel to the original mod, and went through many transformations and design iterations before its release last October as part of The Orange Box. At heart, TF2 remains true to its roots, pitting two teams against each other in objective-based competition. Players on both teams select one of nine character classes, each with their own unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. TF2's cartoon aesthetic and stripped-down classes belie its complexity, and the dynamic interplay of abilities and strategies is nuanced, hectic, and challenging. The result is a fantastic multiplayer experience that proves itself a worthy successor to its seminal ancestor.

As a purely multiplayer game, Team Fortress 2 has no need for a storyline. Instead, it has characters. Each class is a uniquely styled character with his own amusing personality (some of whom have been featured in hilarious "Meet The..." video features that are readily available online). These classes come equipped with three weapons, generally classifiable as a primary gun, a secondary weapon, and a melee weapon. For example, the soldier class comes armed with a rocket launcher, a shotgun secondary weapon, and a shovel for close quarters combat. Classes are grouped into offense, defense, and support, though their actual roles in combat are far more fluid.

If you think the heavy and medic won't join the soldier on offense, you got another thing comin'.

The offensive group includes the scout, the pyro, and the soldier. The scout is lean, fast, and nimble (he can double-jump), but light on health. He can capture points twice as fast as other classes and can quickly gun down less robust classes, but his relatively low health makes him highly susceptible to sentry guns and the Heavy’s minigun. The pyro wears a black flame-retardant suit to protect himself from his flamethrower, which can light opponents on fire. While deadly at close range and in enclosed spaces, the pyro is much less effective in open areas. The soldier wields a powerful rocket launcher that is effective at any range, though its small clip and slow reload rate can be a hindrance.

In the defensive group you'll find the demoman, the heavy, and the engineer. Demomen have grenade launchers that can ricochet shots around corners, and remote-detonated sticky bombs that are great for setting traps. Heavies have the most health, but are also the slowest since they carry a giant minigun that can shred nearby opponents in seconds. Engineers have the unique ability to build structures, like sentry guns, ammo/health dispensers, and teleporters. Though they are armed with shotguns as well, their primary concern is building and maintaining their machines in strategic locations.

Support characters are an eclectic bunch: the medic, the sniper, and the spy. The medic's primary gun restores his allies to health, and can charge up to release an ubercharge, giving him and his target temporary invulnerability. The sniper is deadly at long range, able to charge up his bullet by remaining zoomed to the point where a headshot will instantly kill almost any foe. The spy is able to disguise himself as a member of the opposing team and can deliver one-hit kills by stabbing enemies in the back. He also has devices that can destroy the engineer's structures, making him very dangerous when behind enemy lines.

Though different classes clearly lend themselves to different roles on the battlefield, the strategies each can employ are far from limited, and it can be difficult at first to decide which class to play. While certain classes seem more straightforward than others, they all have their nuances that can only be learned over time. Fortunately, you have the option to switch classes every time you respawn, or any time you run back into the spawn point. This gives both teams the flexibility to change strategies on the fly, and it's one of the key elements that make Team Fortress 2 so dynamic.

This flexibility can also cause problems, especially for teams that aren't communicating properly. If half the team decides to switch it up while the other half decides to stay the course, the resulting disarray can scuttle your chances of victory. There are useful hotkeys that allow you to send quick messages, and many players use voice chat to stay on point. Still, many a team has fallen to defeat due to dissonant strategy, and as such Team Fortress 2's biggest strength is also its biggest liability. Your success is tied to your team's success and, in part, so is your enjoyment of the game. Just as being part of a fluid, coordinated team is truly excellent, so too is being part of a fractured, dysfunctional team truly frustrating. These are two extremes, to be sure, but such is the inconsistent nature of a game experience that depends so wholly on other players.

Without that ammo dispenser, that heavy will run dry in no time. Thanks, engie!

Fortunately, most of the TF2 experience falls somewhere between those two extremes. Every game mode demands a cooperative strategy (there are no Deathmatch modes), but the basics aren't hard to grasp. In the Capture the Flag mode, players must grab a briefcase of intelligence from the opposing team's base and return it to their own. In the Control Point mode, teams fight to capture all the control points on the map. The Attack/Defend mode challenges one team to capture the control points while the other team defends, and teams switch roles between rounds. Each of the maps is designed for one or two specific game modes, and all are meticulously designed to create numerous strategic approaches for both teams.

Since the game's release last October, Valve has released a few new maps and game modes, slowly expanding the somewhat sparse catalog. They have also recently released three new weapons for the medic that you unlock by completing achievements. These weapons feature slight stat tweaks and new abilities that add a new element of customization to the class, and no doubt herald future weapon deployments for the other classes. While this did cause a (hopefully) temporary imbalance in the number of people playing as medics and a rise in overtly self-interested tactics, it offers new challenges and goals for players. This new content helps extend the replay value of TF2, which makes the high price point a little easier to swallow.

Valve has done a fantastic job creating and balancing the maps, classes, and other game elements that are within their control. Still, Team Fortress 2 is a purely multiplayer game and, as such, lives and dies by the team. Most of the time you'll find yourself well matched, but the inherent uncertainty of the game can make for some vexing sessions. Your best move is to seek out friends and servers that are least likely to yield such sessions, and then enjoy the fertile battlegrounds that Team Fortress 2 so expertly cultivates. You'd be remiss not to reap this harvest.

Portal

When Portal was originally released as part of The Orange Box in October of last year, its uniquely puzzling gameplay and dark, sharp-witted humor thrilled consumers and critics alike. Set in a mysterious scientific facility, Portal introduced players to new ways of moving through the gameworld that challenged their perspective and flexed their spatial awareness. The pitch-perfect voice-over soon became stuff of Internet legend, and the song that played during the end credits was so popular that it has since been released as a downloadable track for Rock Band. The only real complaint that surfaced was that the game ended too quickly. Recently released as a stand-alone retail product, Portal remains a unique gem of a game that packs a huge amount of appeal into a small package.

At the outset of Portal, you wake up in a sleeping pod. Rising to the tinny sound of Muzak playing on a radio, you look around your glass-walled cell and notice that there is no door. A sedate, quasi-robotic voice welcomes you to your "relaxation vault," mentions something about "enrichment center activities," and alerts you that a portal will be opening shortly. A moment later, a tall, orange-rimmed oval appears on the wall next you. Looking through the glass to the hallway outside your cell, you notice a similar, blue-rimmed oval. Inside the blue oval stands a woman in an orange jumpsuit who appears to be mimicking your every move. Then you realize that the woman is you, and that you are looking at yourself in profile. Stepping through the oval, you find yourself in the hallway outside of the relaxation vault, looking in at where you stood just a moment ago. You've just had your first taste of portals, and it's only going to get weirder from here on out.

So if you step through the blue one, you'll come out...where?

The first few levels of Portal introduce you to fairly simple applications of portal technology, eventually putting the portal gun in your hands and enabling you to create portals anywhere you like. Well, not quite anywhere. Certain surfaces are not portal-able, and this is one way that subsequent levels, known as test chambers, become more difficult. Other elements, such as energy balls, weighted cubes, floor switches, and moving platforms, are incorporated into the test chambers in increasingly exacting ways, but the real complexity and the real genius of Portal lie in the challenge of "thinking in portals."

Sure, you know that if you place portals here and there, you will enter here and exit there, but what if here is the floor 20 feet below you and there is a spot high up on the wall? You'll retain your momentum while going through the portal, so entering the floor portal at speed will rocket you out of the wall portal perpendicular to the floor. This has a profound impact on your strategy, but not all portal-thinking is strategic. If you place one portal at your feet and the other on the ceiling overheard, will you fall forever? Or if you put two portals on the floor side by side, could you create a reasonable facsimile of whack-a-mole? The magic of Portal is that it truly does inspire this unique flavor of spatial imagination, and once you get a taste, you'll be delighted to find yourself thinking in portals even when you're not in front of your PC.

If portal technology is the meat of the game, then GLaDOS is the perfectly paired wine. The omnipresent voice that guides you through the test chambers, GLaDOS initially reveals a dry, almost unintentional sense of humor in the first few test chambers. As you progress, her humor begins to show signs of self-awareness, eventually blossoming into something too hilarious and too well-deployed to spoil here. Suffice it to say, it is one of the chief pleasures of Portal and features some of the best writing in video game history.

Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.

For all its heady delights, Portal is a short-lived feast and can be reasonably completed in as little as five hours. To help draw things out a bit, Valve has included six advanced chambers, all of which are existing test chambers tweaked to present a tougher challenge. You can also take on challenge maps and attempt to complete the test chambers with the least number of portals, the least steps, or in the least time. Ever since it was originally released more than six months ago, there has been ample time for the online community to produce a bevy of maps that, though varying in quality, are freely available for any test-chamber-hungry portaler to download. Its Orange Box roots mean that Portal also comes equipped with in-game achievements that can serve to extend its longevity. Nevertheless, the odds are that it'll be over a bit too quickly for your liking.

Short as it may be, Portal is a fantastic game that should be played by anyone interested in unique, well-crafted gameplay and a witty, whip-smart script. The stand-alone retail release comes with the same price point as the downloadable Steam release, which is about the cost of a night out at the movies. Portal may not last much longer than some feature films, but pound for pound it remains one of the best games on store shelves.