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….

Dont Do Anything Too Crazy…

• What I mean by that is dont stray to far from the original Gears. I wouldn’t try to make the game to much different than Gears 1 and 2. Gears 2 was a major advancement, but some stuff was flawed. Just dont do nothing too crazy. Stick to what made Gears of War so awesome.

Focus On Online Quality BEFORE Releasing the Game

• I dont know much about how coding,servers,etc. I do know is this: Gears of War 2 has shown the world how to drop the ball in regards to competitive multiplayer. Yes after a year or so they have got the multiplayer playable. Lag has to.. has to.. has to be adressed. With minimal lag and great balancing and great maps like epic does. I guarantee you’ll see a massive boost in players.

A Better Ranking System

• The ranking system for Gears 2 was weak… No challanges to keep people involed, just a thrown together ranking system where you get a bunch of points and rank up. I know Epic can do somthing creative with this. Somthing that could involve Career Profile/Badge System

We Find Out About Adam Fenix

• He was mentioned, but only briefly in Gears of War 2 and now it’s time to see exactly what Adam Fenix was up to prior to Gears of War 1. We visited his former estate, we’ve heard the Locust Queen speak of him as if she’s had some kind of interaction with Marcus’s father and the final few seconds after the credits have finished feature a great voiceover from Adam himself. But even still, we know essentially the same information as we did at the end of Gears 1. It’s time we find out exactly where Mr. Fenix’s allegiances lie.

We Find Out a Little More To Marcus

• For those of us who haven’t read the books. We don’t really know a whole lot about Marcus. Epic needs to digg a little into his background, and somthing needs to happen with him and Anya (good or bad)

Bigger, Better and More Open Gameplay

• Rather than just throwing players into straightforward encounters with wave-after-wave of Locust creatures, give us a more thrilling experience with enemies surrounding our quartet of heroes whenever possible. Gears 2 was too much about marching forward without looking around because there were no threats less those in front of you. Gears 3 should not only include enemies from every direction for designed set pieces, but it should also allow the player to design their route to combat. Opening the environments only slightly and rethinking the way cover is laid out could change Gears gameplay for the better.

Better Boss Fights

• Gears of War 2 had some interesting, new, and cool boss fights. Skorge was introduced with about a 5 – 10 minute boss fight with chain saw duels, but some people were a little disappointed because it wasn’t all that hard unlike the RAAM battle in Gears 1. It seemed hard, but after you beat it, it just seems easy. Skorge is presumed dead, but if he does or doesn’t come back, we want a harder finishing boss battle. The Leviathon was pretty cool as well. I liked it and it required strategy, so there might or not be some of them in Gears 3. Some people are wondering what happened to the Beserkers in Gears 1? People really liked those and maybe there could be a chapter explaining those in Gears 3. Also, people liked the Corpser battle in Gears 1, so it could be optional to put it in Gears 3.

Fight a Brumak For Real

• This one kind of goes hand in hand with the “Harder bosses” but needs to be done. Now piloting a Brumak was cool the first time through and there are plenty of on-rails scenarios where Brumaks pop up for players to fight in Gears of War 2 but for Gears 3 we want to fight one of those suckers on-foot. Marcus and company laying into a Brumak with nothing but grenades and lancer fire sounds like an orgasmic experience to us and the fact that PC gamers to play exactly that in Gears 1 feels like a slap in the face.

More evolved enemy types

• This means not just new enemy types, but enemy types that shake the routinely ‘cover, grenade, charge and kill’ that seems to be the formula for Gears of War. We need more enemies that push us off our regular strides and get us to think of new ways to take out those enemies.

Add More To Horde Mode

• Horde Mode was great, don’t get us wrong. I loved marching through 50 waves of tough-as-nails enemies across all the maps, but we couldn’t help but feel like it could have been better. For starters, can we not have the same mix of enemies every ten waves? Yes, they level up, but they’re identical in number and variety. That gets boring really quick.Make Horde only maps! Put Reavers in horde to really up the difficulty. Also, the 50th wave should feature some sort of boss fight that is unique to each level.

Add a Four Player Campaign [Confirmed For Gears 3]

• Simple enough. Allow 4 players to play cooperatively in the main campaign. This is a very popular feature with the few games that have enabled it and could speak well of Epic’s respect for fans of teamwork and camaraderie. Imagine rolling out as Marcus, Dom, Cole, and Baird controlled by your friends, it would be simply…epic.

Make Insane Harder

• I’ve beaten Gears 2 on insane.. It was challanging, but it could be a little more “Insane” like. Maybe an alternate ending for Insane mode?

Female Gear [Confirmed for Gears 3]

• Maybe there could be a tough playable female gear in the campaign and multiplayer which would be pretty cool.

More Weapons Including Melee[Check out Gears 3 Shotgun]

• It was a nice add on of the Mortar and Mulcher in Gears 2, but it would be nice to see some new weapons that were as original as the lancer. Also if we as players could wield melee weapons such as Skorge’s staff. Epic made melee and gun play fun with Unreal Championship 2 so why not Gears? It would add a more fun and strategic way of approaching certain situations. Epic should consider dual wielding pistols as well. Two Boltoks for easier head shots would be fun!

This wishlist will continue to be updated as time goes on. I can only hope someone at Epic has had this same brainstorming session and implements at least one, if not all, of these ideas.

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:

  EpicDarkCorner1
  EpicDarkCorner2
  EpicDarkCorner3
  EpicDarkCorner4
  EpicDarkCorner5
  EpicDarkCorner6
  EpicDarkCorner7
  EpicDarkCorner8
  EpicDarkCorner9
  EpicDarkCorner0

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.

Focus On Online Quality BEFORE Releasing the Game

• I know much about how coding,servers,etc. I do know is this: Gears of War 2 has shown the world how to drop the ball in regards to competitive multiplayer. If so many other games can prevent host advantage, massive lagging or map exploits, why has it been so hard for Epic to do so as well? Get on your QA and come out guns blazing with a stable online service. I guarantee you’ll see a massive boost in players.

We Find Out About Adam Fenix

• He was mentioned, but only briefly in Gears of War 2 and now it’s time for the veil to be removed from what exactly Adam Fenix was up to prior to Gears of War 1. We visited his former estate, we’ve heard the Locust Queen speak of him as if she’s had some kind of interaction with Marcus’s father and the final few seconds after the credits have finished feature a great voiceover from Adam himself. But even still, we know essentially the same information as we did at the end of Gears 1. It’s time we find out exactly where Mr. Fenix’s allegiances lie.

Bigger, Better and More Open Gameplay

• Rather than just throwing players into straightforward encounters with wave-after-wave of Locust creatures, give us a more thrilling experience with enemies surrounding our quartet of heroes whenever possible. Gears 2 was too much about marching forward without looking around because there were no threats less those in front of you. Gears 3 should not only include enemies from every direction for designed set pieces, but it should also allow the player to design their route to combat. Opening the environments only slightly and rethinking the way cover is laid out could change Gears gameplay for the better.

Better Boss Fights

• Gears of War 2 had some interesting, new, and cool boss fights. Skorge was introduced with about a 5 – 10 minute boss fight with chain saw duels, but some people were a little disappointed because it wasn’t all that hard unlike the RAAM battle in Gears 1. It seemed hard, but after you beat it, it just seems easy. Skorge is presumed dead, but if he does or doesn’t come back, we want a harder finishing boss battle. The Leviathon was pretty cool as well. I liked it and it required strategy, so there might or not be some of them in Gears 3. Some people are wondering what happened to the Beserkers in Gears 1? People really liked those and maybe there could be a chapter explaining those in Gears 3. Also, people liked the Corpser battle in Gears 1, so it could be optional to put it in Gears 3.

Fight a Brumak For Real

• This one kind of goes hand in hand with the “Harder bosses” but needs to be done. Now piloting a Brumak was cool the first time through and there are plenty of on-rails scenarios where Brumaks pop up for players to fight in Gears of War 2 but for Gears 3 we want to fight one of those suckers on-foot. Marcus and company laying into a Brumak with nothing but grenades and lancer fire sounds like an orgasmic experience to us and the fact that PC gamers to play exactly that in Gears 1 feels like a slap in the face.

Add More To Horde Mode

• Horde Mode was great, don’t get us wrong. We loved marching through 50 waves of tough-as-nails enemies across all the maps, but we couldn’t help but feel like it could have been better. For starters, can we not have the same mix of enemies every ten waves? Yes, they level up, but they’re identical in number and variety. That gets boring really quick.Make Horde only maps! Put Reavers in horde to really up the difficulty. Also, the 50th wave should feature some sort of boss fight that is unique to each level.

Add a Four Player Campaign

• Simple enough. Allow 4 players to play cooperatively in the main campaign. This is a very popular feature with the few games that have enabled it and could speak well of Epic’s respect for fans of teamwork and camaraderie. Imagine rolling out as Marcus, Dom, Cole, and Baird controlled by your friends, it would be simply…epic.

Customizeable Gears in Multiplayer

• Instead of having millions of Carmines and Theron Guards running around why not have a create a character feature for the online play? You could start from a base model and go from there.. with different armors/weight & height etc.

Female Gear

• Maybe there could be a tough playable female gear in the campaign and multiplayer which would be pretty cool.

Well, in a nutshell that is one average man’s view on what would help the Gears of War series get back not only onto the top of the Live usage charts but into many gamers hearts as well.I can only hope someone at Epic has had this same brainstorming session and implements at least one, if not all, of these ideas.

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.