With the offical announcement of Gears of War 3 on Monday, that means Gears 3 is in full swing. So here is a wishlist of things that need to be in Gears 3. These will help put Gears over the top for sure. Well here it goes…. (continue reading…)

A recent video posted on Xbox Live shows Cliff Bleszinski taking you on a tour of the epic games facility. The reporter asks him Various questions and his answers hint around at Gears 3? He says such things as “I can confirm we have multiple unannounced products right now”, and the one thing that gives a big hint is when Cliff says sarcastically “Why would we make a sequel to a game that sold millions” Hmm.. Could he be revealing Gears 3 on Jimmy Fallon on Thursday? We’ll find out.

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.

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:

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Microsoft announced that Gears of War 2, one of the most critically acclaimed action games of 2008, will be getting its own Game of the Year edition

Set for release on September 1 for $39.99, this new edition includes the All Fronts Collection (including all 19 extra multiplayer maps), the Road to Ruin campaign chapter, and every achievement totaling 1750 Gamerscore points.

In a recent conference speech, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney revealed the development cost of Gears of War 2, putting it somewhere around the $12 million mark – a surprisingly modest sum for a current-gen blockbuster.

Tim also revealed that Gears of War 2 took 15 programmers and 45 artists over two years to create.

“All-Time Greatest Game Hero (ATG) is GameSpot’s new interactive editorial feature that gives you the opportunity to determine, once and for all, who the greatest video game hero is. You will also have a chance to manage your own brackets based own votes and win prizes. If you have participated in CBSSports’ March Madness, you’ll know exactly what we’re getting at.”

Check here for the details.

The list:
http://www.gamespot.com/greatest-vid…oes/index.html

You must sign in to your GameSpot account to vote. Need a (free!) GameSpot account? Sign up here.

More information will be added to this post as it becomes available.

Gears of War is awesome yet it never hit the top of the live usage charts and it gets criticized like no other even after 4 title updates. If Epic could make the following changes/additions, I think this would easily be atop the usage charts and dive deeper into the hearts of the average gamer.

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On this year’s G-Phoria, G4’s annual fan-curated awards show, gamers everywhere cast their vote and selected Gears of War 2 as the year’s best shooter. Was there ever any doubt?  Check out the G-Phoria Best Shooter results page for a rundown on the nominees, as well as the video showing Epic Games Design Director Cliff Bleszinski accepting the award.