Porting a game is a bit like translating literature. It requires as much care and consideration to create the copy as was put into original.

Sadly, like most book publishers, most game designers are ignorant of this fact. If the original product is good, they figure, the port must be good, no matter what.

So they get it done as cheaply as possible, messily copying and pasting everything. The result is a ruined game and angry gamers, a situation that everyone who has every played 'Resident Evil 4' for the PC knows all too well.

But every once in a while, a poet translates poetry and the result is every bit as good — if not better — as the original. And the result is 'Gears of War' for the PC.

Before 'Halo 3' became the big console seller for the Xbox 360, 'Gears of War' was cited as the reason by kids all over the world why they simply had to have the system. And, unless you have no interest in gaming whatsoever, you have already played — and loved — the game on that platform.

So what, if anything, has changed for the PC incarnation of 'Gears'? While it may not seem possible, the graphics have actually been improved. If you have a rig that can handle 'Gears' on its highest settings, the game is simply gorgeous and outclasses its Xbox 360 counterpart completely.

Not surprisingly, this has nothing to do with DirectX 10, since the game looks every bit as good running on DirectX 9 and is, if anything, more stable on that setting. This just goes to show how long we will have to wait before DirectX 10 really starts showing its potential.

Another big improvement over the console version of the game is the addition of extra game content. No fewer than five new chapters have been created for the PC incarnation of the game and since the original 'Gears' was deemed to be somewhat short, this is a welcome change.

However, despite this new content the game is still short and is unlikely to provide much of a challenge for even casual gamers. The developers have tried to add longevity to the game by encouraging replays on harder difficulty settings, but this strategy doesn't really work. There is simply too much of a gap between the casual and the hardcore difficulties and the latter frustrates more than it entices.

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that the PC version inherits from its console cousin is the game's story. Of course there is no way that the developer is going to change the storyline for a port, but it doesn't excuse how average it is in the first place.

The player takes control of Marcus Fenix, a really, really bad guy who is serving time in prison at the start of the game. But the war effort becomes so desperate that he is released because, as it turns out, the armed forces are in need of some really, really bad guys to kill stuff and cause general havoc for the enemy. The enemy is the insanely stereotypical "Locust" horde, a mean brand of invading alien who are very ill-tempered for no obvious reason. It's all standard stuff, really, the kind of thing you find in a blockbuster movie.

And ultimately, that is what 'Gears of War' is: a blockbuster movie trapped in a game's body. But that isn't, in this case at least, a bad thing.

The game does a fantastic job of immersing the player in the action. You have to duck and cover behind anything and everything, expertly moving from burnt-out cars to overturned tables until you are in the enemy's face, where of course you stick your chainsaw for some gory revenge. It's fantastic.

Never mind that the story could have been better, or that the elite team of soldiers cover every inch of their bodies in armour — except their heads, which are left invitingly uncovered. These inconsistencies would cripple a lesser game, but lesser is something 'Gears of War' certainly is not. It's visually breathtaking, non-stop action that every gamer will love.

Sure, you won't be playing it for very long, but like any good movie, you'll whip out the DVD every now and again and have a great couple of hours' worth of good fun.

Bizarrely for a product that is so well polished, there are some technical issues that are very annoying. Installing the game is a chore and it took several attempts on two very different high-end systems before the process was completed successfully. And even after one successful installation the game still refused to work. Combine this with widespread reports of lost save games and trouble with the Windows Live! Service, and you are left with a product that is buggy, but a game that is not. Strange.

But despite this, once 'Gears of War' is up and running, there is no other gaming experience out there that is quite so enjoyable.