That's right, you heard me: I won't be buying Gears of War 2. No way, no sirree, will I play a first person shooter (Gears is close enough to quality as an FPS) on a console until keyboard and mouse controllers are available, and let's face it, that ain't gonna happen any time soon!

Epic announced at the end of August that there would not be a release of Gears 2 for the PC platform--a huge disappointment! While it did take a full year for a PC version of the original Gears of War, it was, in my opinion, well worth the wait, as the graphics and visual effects of the game were absolutely stunning, even a year later. I was very happy to go out and pay full price for a year-old game, because it was that good, and I played it through to the end twice (single player, then multiplayer co-op).

However, with the announcement that there will be no Gears 2 for PC, Epic has lost a paying customer in me, and I'm confident that I'm not the only one who finds using a gamepad for an FPS to be cumbersome at best, and absolutely frustrating at worst.

Furthermore, I take exception to a recent statement by Gears lead developer Cliff Bleszinski during an interview with TVG:

"Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software."

CliffyB (yeah, I called him that, tough!) effectively groups hard-working, intelligent consumers who pay good money for their gaming rigs to play the best games--which they purchase legally--with unscrupulous, downloading pirates who don't care about the future of PC gaming, or the law for that matter. Well, I happen to take offense to that, and I seriously hope Mr. Bleszinski retracts or apologizes for this unfair generalization in the near future, or risk a boycott of all of his games! As if using GameSpy to power the multiplayer in Unreal Tournament III wasn't bad enough!

Besides all that, with my limited time, there are several other games to keep me occupied this fall/winter season, such as Far Cry 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Crysis Warhead, NHL 09, Mirror's Edge, Rock Band 2, and more. I think Epic made a big mistake with this decision, and I won't be paying $70 to settle for a second-rate FPS experience using a gamepad on my Xbox 360.