

Until Gears' console release this time last year, developer Epic was more famous for Unreal Tournament and the all-conquering Unreal Engine 3, used as the de facto modern game engine to build titles such as BioShock.

Gears of War has shifted over four million copies on Xbox 360 alone, won countless Game of the Year awards and become one of the most popular online shooters of all time. As the legendary lead designer CliffyB said to me earlier in the day, the new multiplayer game is indeed, "fucking hilarious. We're playing the Gears of War PC's new King of the Hill mode, which has just seen myself and four other players kill each other viciously from behind one after another in a hilarious cartoon chain of death. Should you go this route you'll be in for a treat thanks to the addition of more than two-dozen graphics settings, enabling you to increase the resolution and quality of textures, effects and other game elements, and to make full use of your PC's power through the addition of dynamic super-sampling that enhances graphical fidelity when performance permits.I Reel Back in my chair, chuckling, as a group LOL breaks the silence in Epic's dimly-lit testing room, twinkling with the LEDs of 14 state-of-the-art games machines. With Microsoft's new Xbox Play Anywhere initiative, buying a digital copy of Gears of War 4 allows you to play on an Xbox One or on a DirectX 12-compatible PC at no additional cost.

Captured at 4K on a GeForce GTX 1080 PC, the embedded video below gives you a near-identical look at the Gamescom gameplay demo from the comfort of your home, and an excellent taste of the PC edition of the game, which launches worldwide October 11th. Understandably most of you can't jump on a plane or train and pop on over to Germany for a quick visit just to play Gears of War 4, so we've teamed up with Microsoft to bring you a recording of the new demo. They'll get to play at 4K on GeForce GTX 1080-powered PCs, and will experience a 10-minute slice of gameplay that unveils new enemies and hands them control of new, devastating weapons. Attendees of Gamescom 2016 will be the first to go hands-on with Gears of War 4 on PC.
