I've been wanting to play a third person shooter for awhile, and I'm trying to decide between Gears of War(PC) and Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions(PC). Which one do you guys think is a better game?

I cast a very, very strong vote for Gears of War. It's optimized extremely well for the PC (in DX9 that is), has the bonus content so it's not so short like the 360 version, and is just all around a really fun game. I tried the Lost Planet demo and it didn't do it for me.

Ok, thanks. Does GoW have good online multiplayer?

I would say so. I never played online on the PC, but I did for the Xbox 360 - I wouldn't say it's the BEST online multiplayer around, but it's still far above average. Plus, the PC version added like new modes and maps and all that stuff, so it's probably better with the extra choices. Like I said though, I only played the demo of Lost Planet, so it would probably be good to get someone else's opinion who has also played Lost Planet for a lot longer than I did. Either way, GoW really is a good game.

GoW Optimized? Thats crap. The game stutters like mad on my computer. The latest patch is applied as well. It is not optimized, if it was I would not have the stuttering on the lowest settings at 1280x1024. No matter what settings I chose I have stuttering. Oblivion plays fine, so does crysis, and every other game I own, so its not my system. Epic just sucks at optimizing the engine for PC use. The stuttering is a known issue and Epic have failed to fix it. Just read their forums.  
I tried the multiplayer, first not many were playing it and second, you have to have a live account that you pay monthly for, **** that.

Your card isn't bad at all, I don't know why you're having problems. In DX9, I hardly dip below 50 fps (the average is well above) with my 8800 GTX, and that's at max settings running at 1680 x 1050. Maybe you don't have the right drivers or something, I dunno, but it's the Unreal 3 engine and really is well optimized.

I checked the epic forums and many other users were having these stuttering problems. They all had different card though most were nvidia cards. At the same time, there were people who had no problems. My FPS is fine in GoW, I get close to 45-50 but it stutters randomly. Even at all stock clocks (CPU and GPU) it stutters.  I have the latest nvidia drivers (175.16) and it still stutters. Also I am running XP.
 
I applied a tweak a user on epics forums provided and that lessened the severity and frequency of the stuttering but it is still there.  
 
 
I believe that Epic didnt optimize the GoW engine correctly when they ported it. I know it is the U3 engine, but it was modified for GoW.
 
To the OP:  
There is a chance this will happen to you, and there is a chance it won't. If you know someone who has GoW, I suggest you try it out. Same goes for Lost planet.

Do you really have to pay monthly for a live account to play GoW multiplayer?

Yea, Hence why I don't play online. You get a 30 day free Gold live subscription when you buy the game. The stuttering did not occur in multiplayer (though I didn't really play it since so few people played).
 
I have a free silver account but I can't play online with it.

Hmm interesting. I'd never heard of any of those problems, even after reading 2-3 reviews of the PC version of the game. I suppose I lucked out. The only significant difference between our system is that I run it on Vista.
 
As for what you said about the port - I wouldn't really call the PC version a "port." Especially not as much as Lost Planet was, which incidentally did not run well at all on my PC. The developers practically reworked the architecture over the several months in the gap between the console release and the PC release, with the extra bonus content and all of that. On top of that, you can see how much better the PC version looks than the 360 one. I've had good results with all U3 engine-related games; I think they look very good and run well, too. This includes GoW, Bioshock, Turok, Mass Effect, and the U3 demo itself. That demo looked great and was smokin' too...I hardly dipped below 100 fps.
 
Anyway, I would also suggest, with this being the case, that the OP get some more opinions like you suggested, soloman02. Maybe there is an issue and I just got lucky.

If you're into the military kind of action, then choose Gears of War. If you're looking for an anime / mech feel, check out Lost Planet. I'm not particular to either game, so no biased opinions here

gears of war

Gears of war is a fun game, I have not played it on the PC so I can't offer an opinion on how it plays on PC.

Why play a 3rd person FPS anyway?
 
Removes the point of a shooter...intensity.

So I'm guessing you've never played Gears of War or Uncharted then?

Gears of War is far from my favorite game, but I own it and it was worth playing through.
 
It is pretty fun the first time, but it gets somewhat repetitive by the end; thats the only real downside. The big thing that Gears of War has going for it is co-op play, it adds a lot of the fun factor to the game.
 
Never played deathmatch multiplayer, so I can't comment there.

Well, do you guys know of any other good shooters or RPG's for under $30?

personally myself i just bought hellgate london for 20$ cant beat it and it doesnt look so bad just trying to get it to run in sli good

Meh, I played the Hellgate demo and I got bored of it pretty quick.

I liked Lost Planet more than Gears of War, your choice really.