There's an unofficial PC port of Gears of War 2 based on a leaked build from 2008

Gears of War 2 featured a campaign you could blast through over the course of a weekend. The perfect length for the kind of story that strings together a bunch of setpiece spectacles that won't tax your thinking muscles. At one point you end up inside a giant worm and have to fight your way out. It's great.

But it's one of a couple of Gears of Wars that never made it to PC. Maybe because Cliff Bleszinski was going through a "down with piracy phase" at the time, saying things like, "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."

Whatever the reason, we didn't get Gears of War 2 or 3 on PC. There was a leaked build with Windows binaries back in early 2008, however, and that's what xHeliosx has used to make Gears of War 2: Hollow, an unofficial port of the Xbox 360's greatest celebration of gleeful meatheadedness, which you can download and play today.

This port contains the Road to Ruin DLC and saves your progress at the completion of each chapter, and while you can try the multiplayer it's not guaranteed to work. "It just wasn’t tested honestly as my focus was pure single player", xHeliosx said.

The launcher's available on ModDB, and while the other files you need to run it were available on xHeliosx's Discord server, that's now been rammed with so many requests to join that it's gone down and you'll have to source those files from elsewhere.

The upcoming Gears of War: E-Day is coming to PC, as a Microsoft representative confirmed when we asked, so that's something at least.

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