Microsoft is hinting that Gears of War 3 may not be the final game in the Gears of War Saga…

When Microsoft mades it’s official statement of the release of Gears of War 3, Microsoft described the storyline of the new game, suggesting that it will not necessarily conclude the franchise but, rather, the storyline started by the first two titles.

Gears of War 3 plunges players into a harrowing tale of hope, survival and brotherhood that will conclude the current story arc for Gears of War”

The Los Angeles Times reports that, after months of on-again, off-again rumors about the game-to-film, the film’s prospects have never looked worse. The paper claims New Line Cinema “has now cut the budget, going from a film that would have cost more than $100 million to one that will cost a good chunk less than that. It’s also reined in the story, turning it into a more simple, straight-ahead invasion story instead of a sprawling epic. Producers are looking for a new writer to handle all this, but haven’t found one yet.”

Happy April Fools Day to you all. Epic Games has decided to play a little trick on us, and changed the gameplay of Gears of War 2 for the day of April Fools! Here is what they changed for the one day of April fools.

• Insta-dbno melee
• No chainsaw interrupt
• Knockdown smokes

So let’s see what is better, elbows or chainsaws

XboxFreedom has details of a custom-made Gears of War pillow created by Gearhead and knitting enthusiast R4pwnz3.

Pillows are something which I would prefer on any device or gadget and I guess every person who loves to sleep or is lazy would agree with me. But this Gears of War pillow not only gives me the comfort and increases the aesthetic beauty of my bedroom but make me remember my dreaded gaming with Xbox 360. Keeping the quality and the aesthetic values in mind,R4pwnz3 has once again used her crochet hook and yarn and this time, she has impressed me with this lovely gothic pillow design.

PlatformNation reports that after almost 18 months Major League Gaming has announced that it is dropping Gears of War 2 from its professional circuit.

“Sorry about the bad news Gears players. It was good times. Best of luck to all of you.” MLG pro Killa_KC posted on twitter.

With rumors of another Gears title on the horizon, it may not be long before competitive gaming returns to the Gears universe…

StickSkills posted a video of an Unreal Engine 3 tech demo from the recent 2010 Game Developers Conference which shows off some fancy shading effects and everyone’s favorite lumbering brute, the Brumak from the Gears of War universe.

Epic’s Mark Rein has confirmed to G4TV in a recent interview that the developer won’t be releasing any new titles in 2010.

“We don’t have any games coming out in 2010,” said Rein, “so from a games standpoint, it’s more about our customers’ games, right? Already this year we’ve seen some pretty great games this year — Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2…and Arkham Aslym’s coming out in 3D, the GOTY [game of the year] version, so that’ll be kinda cool.”

The rumor mill is already churning with unconfirmed whispers of two possible Epic titles due in 2011 – a new EA-published title developed by People Can Fly with the rumored title of “Bulletstorm”, along with the usual rumblings of another possible Gears of War game in the works.

 Horde

A new gameplay mode has been added to add more offline gameplay (although it can also be played online). It can also be played online with up to five players as you take on wave after wave of the locust horde. There are 50 waves of horde, each increasing in difficulty, for example, the first wave will start with very few locust to kill, around 9 which are likely to be a few wretches and drones. Although as you progress through the waves, the larger enemies appear and there are more of them, there will be many more Boomers, Grinders, Bloodmounts, Maulers, Butchers, Kantus, Flame Grenadiers and so on. This game type is incredibly difficult, even on the casual the last 10 waves are quite challenging. There is a 30 point achievement for completing all waves on any difficulty. Additional achievements are available with the extra map pack downloads, such as clearing 50 waves on any Snowblind map or clearing 10 waves on each of the maps included in each set of map downloads (Snowblind, Flashback and Combustible). One of the best tactics was to use an inward facing Boomshield to prevent enemies from kicking them down, as drones could only kick them down from the front side. However this glitch was removed or rendered useless by an update giving drones the ability to kick the shield down regardless of the side.

Meatflag/Submission

This is a variant on classic Capture-the-Flag but instead of having an inanimate object sitting in the center of a stage waiting to be captured, Gears 2 will have a mean, gun-firing, AI-controlled Stranded sitting there waiting to do battle (he’ll even tally his own score to be seen by all at the end of a round). Do enough damage to take him down to his knees and then run up, use him as a meat shield and haul his carcass back to your base to score the point for your team. Just remember, there’s nothing more humiliating than getting killed by the flag.

Wingman

Here the ten possible players (up from the original game’s eight) are broken up into sets of 2. Each pair will share the same character model, and you’ll have to hunt throughout the map to kill as much of the opposition as possible before landing at a final kill count. Like free-for-all, but with a partner to work with.

Guardian

One man on your team is the leader. If the leader is assassinated, then the ability to respawn is taken from his teammates, turning their current life into their last. The leader is called out on the opponent’s screen at all times, making the hunt that much easier. First team to wipe out the other wins. To prevent the players from tricking the other team into thinking they’re the leader, players can’t choose Hoffman or Skorge. The leaders for next round aren’t always selected by random, whoever killed the opposing team’s leader becomes their team’s leader next round, if the a team loses and no one killed the opposing teams leader then their new leader is selected by score, however, if the leader has the highest score and the opposing leader is still alive(or is killed by the other leader) the next person on the scoreboard is chosen.

Warzone

The standard Team Deathmatch mode of gears 2. Warzone is a battle between two teams for a set amount of points at the end of each match, by eliminating the opposing team each round. A point is awarded to the surviving team after the round. Players can be downed and killed from any distance with any weapon.

Execution

Similar to Warzone in that the teams compete for the most amount of points by eliminating the other team in each round. The only difference is that players can only be killed by one shot kills such as torque bow, frag grenades, boomshot, the chainsaw, shotgun or headshots, or by being downed and executed at close range, either by bullets, melee, or an execution attack.

For a while we’ve been hinting that we had a new project we’ve been working on. At last, it’s online and ready to go! Introducing The Gaming Rx, your source for all gaming on all platforms! Why did we create The Gaming Rx? Well, it’s easy to get burnt out on a game, now we have every game…including of course Gears of War / Gears of War 2. This site will remain up so anyone can access the wealth of information that is already here but in the future we’ll be spending most of our time posting in the new The Gaming Rx Forums.

Head over to The Gaming Rx and become a member!

Epic and Microsoft have teamed up to give gamers the chance to earn double experience points in Gears of War 2 this Labor Day weekend. There’s also the chance to play against Epic devs in a “Game with Developer” event taking place on Friday.

The event will run from Friday morning, Sept 4th till Tuesday morning, Sept 8th (Eastern time)

• Double experience for all Horde games and Public multiplayer games
• Winning team gets a 500 xp bonus in Public multiplayer
• Public Horde will default to Hardcore difficulty instead of Normal
•  Horde will be infected with Sires, just like the Ticker attack of July 4th
•  Hardcore Horde (Public or Private) will receive an extra experience boost (essentially double Hardcore will be the same as double Insane)
• The Game with Developer event will take place on Friday, Sept. 4th from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Eastern Time). Look for the following Gamertags and send off an invite:

  EpicDarkCorner1
  EpicDarkCorner2
  EpicDarkCorner3
  EpicDarkCorner4
  EpicDarkCorner5
  EpicDarkCorner6
  EpicDarkCorner7
  EpicDarkCorner8
  EpicDarkCorner9
  EpicDarkCorner0