It is great to be part of the 1Up Network. You know why? Because tomorrow, 1UP’s GameVideos will be the very first place online you’ll be able to see new footage from Gears of War 2 in all of its HD glory. According to 1UP, “you’re going to be blown away”. Sounds great if you are a GoWfan and are looking forward to the next installment from Cliffy B and the rest of the folks at Epic Games.
The new footage is expected to hit the net around 10:30 pm PST - so for those of us in the EST zone, that is 1:30 in the morning. Sorry, but I just can’t stay up that late to watch it - maybe if it was something I was truly excited about I could possibly do it, but even then, I prefer to get my beauty sleep and trust me - you, dear readers, benefit more from it than I do. There is nothing worse than a cranky Stephany - except maybe a rabid badger.
Sure, that pre-rendered trailer for Gears of War 2 was pretty awesome, but seriously, I just want to know what the actual gameplay looks like. Luckily, Epic plans to reveal just that in a little over two weeks. On May 9th, the developer will finally reveal some gameplay footage for this hotly anticipated sequel. GameTrailers TV has apparently secured the footage, which is set to air at 1 AM that day. The video will also apparently include an introduction from game designer Cliff Bleszinski (a.k.a. “Cliffy B”). So we’ve only got just a little more waiting ahead of us before we get to find out just how different this game is from the first.
While this may not come as a complete shock to most folks, alas, the news is slightly grim for those who want to try out Gears of War 2before laying down their hard earned cash on a cold, unfeeling retail counter.
According to Tanya Jessen, the associate producer of the game, Epic is not planning on releasing a demo for the highly anticipated sequel to the fan favorite Gears of War. Well, at least in ADVANCE of the title’s November release - what they plan on doing after the release is unknown except to psychics, ghost-whisperers and Cliffy himself.
Tanya had this to say about the demo:
“[There are] no plans for a demo. The reason being that it’s been such a fast turnaround. A two year production cycle, for a game of this caliber, is really short. Our focus is always on putting out the best possible game we can. Whenever you do a demo, you have to basically ship a whole separate product. As far as our plans after we ship, I can’t really speak to that.”
Despite gamers not being able to get an idea of what to expect from the full title, I am sure this will still sell very well - because you have to remember that the original did not have a demo released beforehand and it went on to sell over 3 million copies anyway. So demo or no demo, it won’t make a bit of difference either way - gamers want it, therefore they will buy it.
Thanks: Shacknews
DC seems to be all over the video game industry these days. Just this week they’ve announced a comic book series for Prototype and a game featuring their beloved superheroes battling the Mortal Kombat crew. Well, now you can add “Gears of War” to the list of tie-ins, as they’ve now announced a new comic books series based on the popular shooter. The book is set to debut through DC’s Wildstorm label in October. And, like the Prototype comic, that’s pretty much all we know at this time. Wildstorm did however mention that the comic will fill in the timeframe between the first and second game:
“Big guns and monsters — what a perfect comic book for WildStorm! We have an opportunity to work closely with Epic to add to the canon of the Gears of War mythos, so you can imagine how excited we all are, said Hank Kanalz, VP – General Manager, WildStorm. “Epic sets the bar very high, in graphics, story, and gameplay — and expect no less from our series, starting with our lead-in arc that fills in the gaps between the first game and the upcoming sequel.”
NECA has unveiled the first series of Gears of War figures that they will be releasing soon in their finished and packaged state. Series 1 will include Marcus Fenix, Cole “Train,” a Locust Drone, and a Locust Sniper. NECA is pretty well known for their attention to detail, and it looks like these figures are no exception. Series 2 should also bring Baird, Dominic, and a couple more varieties of Locust to the fold. This first wave of figures shold be appearing at certain retailers in the coming weeks.
The New York Comic Con will be taking place April 18 – 20, at the Jacob K Javits Center in New York City and for those planning on attending, you might want to check out the gamer’s summit that will also be part of the festivities.
Attendees will be able to take part in roundtable discussions on writing for games, advice on how to break into the industry and gaming journalism. Michale Capps, the president of Epic Games and Gears of War writer Joshua Ortega will be there providing some information on Gears of War 2, and other titles such as Age of Conan, EVE Online, Iron Man and Warhammer Online will also be featured at the summit. Gaming publishers Konami, Namco Bandai Square Enix, and Ubisoft will also have exhibits for gamers to check out at the show.
Some other cool things to look forward to at Comic Con:
The Premiere of Dr. Who Season 4
An Evening With Neil Gaiman
Autograph opportunities with Guillermo del Toro, Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, and Mike Mignola
If you live in the New York area or are in need of a fun little road trip the dedicated gamer’s summit is scheduled for April 20.
Oh yeah, I keep forgetting that there’s a Gears of War movie actually in the works (probably because there hasn’t been anything really all that interesting announced yet). Still, ComingSoon.net decided to check in with producer Wyck Godfrey about the status of the film:
“We’ve got our script on and a director we’re about to attach. We’ll hopefully make that early next year for the summer of 2010,” said Godfrey.
So don’t start getting too excited just yet; there’s still at least a couple of years left to go before this film can even hope to make it to theaters. Hopefully the sequel being released in November builds up even more interest to get the production moving along.
Two new Epic Games/Gears of War 2 related videos are now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. (Or you could save yourself the effort of moving and watch them on FileFront.) The first is a very brief look at the unveiling of Gears of War 2 at this year’s GDC, featuring Mike Capps and the Lancer-wielding CliffyB.
The other is much longer and features a demonstration of many of the newer features of Unreal Engine. The first thing of note from the video is that I really wish I could have someone announce my arrival at a location, to be followed up with music from Unreal Tournament as I walk out. Sure, we’ve seen the tech demo before, but anytime you can feature a cube of meat, you take advantage of it.
There’s been a lot of talk about developers having difficulty with the PS3. In this case, developer High Moon seems to indicate that the problem lies with the Unreal Engine 3 rather than the console. VP Paul O’Connor commented on the difficulties of developing The Bourne Conspiracy game using the Unreal Engine 3 for the PS3 in a recent interview with Gamasutra. The title is currently being developed for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3.
“We needed a lot of support on Unreal to make it run on the PlayStation 3. We got caught in the same crunch as everybody else when [Epic] finalized Gears [Of War], so that definitely slowed down the PS3 support at the time.
But, that being said, the guys have done extraordinary work with the PS3, and it’s just about ready to pipeline.”
O’Connor elaborated on the apparently largely out of the way trials and tribulations of simultaneous SKU development with Unreal Engine 3, explaining:
“I don’t want to badmouth Unreal. It’s an awesome toolset. We wouldn’t be where we were if not for Unreal.
Their support has been as good as it could be for a company that’s had its attention so divided between supporting the developer community and making their own game. But we had to roll a lot of our own stuff on the PS3.”
O’Connor also told Gamasutra about the influence of having source code for Epic’s Gears of War on the development of the Bourne game.
“A key part of the shooting is that we have a cover system. We used Unreal 3, as you know, so our guys had the luxury of picking and choosing the parts of the Gears of War cover system that we thought that fits the Bourne shooting experience.”
When asked to clarify that Epic handed over the Gears Of War source code as part of Unreal Engine 3 license, O’Connor explained:
“We got the whole level layout, too. That was a cold bath for my guys when they saw how they built the Gears of War levels. They look a lot more complex than they are. They’re brilliantly executed in that regard.”
Read the entire interview with O’Connor on Gamasutra.
Old Man Winter decided to dump a little over 6 inches of snow on us last night. Looking out into that glorious winter wonderland, memories of sledding as a kid and making snowmen sprang to mind as I looked out over my vast bright white yard. I contemplated getting all bundled up in coveralls (yes I own a pair, wanna fight about it?) and my boots and creating a snowman so intricate and creative that I would be the envy of all the neighbors for having such a neat piece of art adorning my front lawn. Then reality can running in and viciously kicked my fantasy in the crotch. I then realized that I am not 10 years old anymore, and no one wants to see a grown woman in coveralls slipping and falling all over the place - and due to the bulkiness and weight said coveralls, rolling around in the snow trying desperately to get up. That would be very undignified, plus, I have never been patient enough to sculpt a really cool snowman, let alone one that any four year old could outdo - so I stayed in the house and worked instead. Such is the life of a grown-up.
Whether, like me, you are too old to play in the snow, are deficient of snow, or are just glued lethargically to your computer trying desperately to fill the void of another boring Saturday afternoon, you can always try out some of our latest demos or download some patches you may have been unaware of.
Gamers wishing to show the world their sense of fashion along with advertising their favorite game can now do so with little chance of getting a swirly between second and third period. Inno-Wear, a European clothing and accessories company that licenses video game attire, recently signed an exclusive Gears of Wars 2 agreement with Epic Games.
The highly anticipated GoW2 will be joining Inno-Wear’s vast catalogue of the Himmersion line which includes such gaming licenses as: Xbox, Resident Evil,Tomb raider, Devil May Cry, Unreal Tournament,Mario, Sonic, Guild Wars, Zelda and more.
You can expect the GoW2 clothing and accessories line to hit stores around the same time as the game in November.
Not content to just make the game any way they please, Epic is asking gamers what they would like to see in the upcoming Gear of War 2. Whether gamers suggestions will seriously be taken into consideration or not is still the big question, but it is nice to know that they supposedly care about what the gamer wants.
When you go to the Gears of War 2 survey, you will be expected to log into your Windows Live account. Why you have to do this is beyond me unless Microsoft is secretly watching you. Here are some of the questions you will be asked:
What is the best OG moment from Gears 1?
Which Delta Squad member would you want to have your back?
Who is the vilest member of the Locust Horde?
What’s the toughest battle in Gears 1?
There are four more questions they ask of gamers and the survey is multiple choice, so you don’t really have to think too hard. If you want to take the survey, just click here. Personally, if I were to take the survey I would have to say that the toughest battle was the final one with General RAAM, man I hated that guy.
If nothing else, this rumor will give your eyebrows a workout as they rise up when it’s suggested that Microsoft is poised to purchase Epic Games. This rumor is being reported on by GamePro, according to dBTechno.com, and suggests that the price would be a cool $1 billion. Epic is of course the developer of Gears of War and Unreal Tournament, as well as the oft-used Unreal Engine.
While Epic as a company has yet to respond to the rumors officially, VP Mark Rein sent an email response to develop, stating, “I have not seen the actual GamePro article but if they’re going to make predictions about us selling Epic we would prefer if they started at $2 billion.” What makes $2 billion the magic number? Rein said, “Because we don’t want anyone thinking that we’re cheap. :)”
Rein’s sarcasm aside, we can’t really shoot down this rumor outright – Microsoft Game Studios have seen quite a few defections recently, and it seems quite clear that Microsoft needs to somehow bolster its first party lineup. Ensuring that Gears of War remains exclusive to the 360 (and PC) doesn’t seem like a bad way of doing just that.
Today’s Microsoft GDC keynote was punctuated with a big announcement which really wasn’t all that surprising – a Gears of War 2 trailer was shown that showed a grand total of no gameplay, followed by Cliff Bleszinski coming onstage with the chainsaw gun (a Lancer, if memory serves me right). With a release date of November 2008, he promises the game will be “bigger, better, and far more badass in every way,” which is all you could really expect from a sequel to a game like Gears.
You can view the trailer at GameVideos or grab it from the Xbox Live Marketplace so that you can watch it again and again in an attempt to find some hidden goodies.
CliffyB seems to have caused quite a mess with his comments that PC gaming is in “disarray,” but in other corners of the Internet (does the Internet have corners? then how does the globe have corners?), Mark Rein sat down with Gameplayer to discuss Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, and the Unreal Engine.
So where do you see the limitations [of Unreal Engine 3] coming in? At which point do you start thinking you need to move onto the next engine?
Well there’s so much more further to go with this generation. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are really only in their infancy and we’re going to make a couple of more games for them. It’s not a case of next game/next engine. You can see we have brought UTIII out and we are doing cool stuff on these systems so we are with it for the near future now. We do have a research project for the next engine but that’s just Tim Sweeney writing bits of formulas on paper [laughs]. We won’t be seeing any changes until we see changes in the console technology. So who knows? It could be five years; we don’t have a clear time-frame for it. But we are working closely with Intel on projects and an engine down the road that’ll really take advantage of that.
So with UT out the door it’ll be pretty quiet for you guys next year?
We’ll just have to wait and see. You know how it is – people are like ‘you just did Gears of War, when’s the sequel out?’ We’re still working on the first one guys! Now we’ll be working on stuff for UT. For us it isn’t a case of ‘we’ve put our game out, it’s time to move on’. Putting our game out is one step in supporting our game. That’s the public step. Now the game is out we have to watch what happens next. That’s all about the way we roll. We see the game as just being the start of the user experience and we’re working more and more around the mod contents. But it’s a case of getting this game out, seeing what people can do with it and working from there.
I wouldn’t put much stock in Rein’s comments that it could be five years before the next generation of consoles or Unreal Engine; it sounds more like the first number that came to mind rather than some secret he knows.
I also wouldn’t put too much stock in the idea that Epic’s not working on Gears of War 2. We know it’s coming, Mark. Don’t you play coy.
The leaderboard for the most played games via XBL for the week ending February 9th have surfaced, and the game taking the top spot was CoD4: Modern Warfare. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has played the game, but Halo fans will be a little saddened to know that their hallowed game has lost its crown for the time being. Guitar Hero III beat out Rock Band and surprisingly Assassin’s Creed is still getting a little download lovin’ from 360 users.
Below is the full list courtesy of Major Nelson, where each list is based on global unique users connected to Xbox Live or in the case of Arcade, full versions purchased that week:
LIVE Activity for week of 2/4
Xbox 360 Top Live Titles
Call of Duty 4
Halo 3
Guitar Hero III
Gears of War
Rock Band
Madden NFL 08
Devil May Cry 4 Demo
Assassin’s Creed
Forza Motorsport 2
FIFA 08
Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions)
Poker Smash
Rez HD
Chessmaster Live
Metal Slug 3
UNO
Bomberman LIVE
Sonic The Hedgehog 2
TMNT 1989 Arcade
9 Worms
Marble Blast Ultra
The above arcade list is based on full versions purchased.
As a longtime fan of Rare’s and most everything they’ve developed (except Perfect Dark Zero, but that’s neither here nor there), so Banjo Kazooie 3 is near the top of my most anticipated Xbox 360 games. If Shane Kim’s comments to MTV Multiplayer are accurate, we’ll be seeing the game before the end of the year.
When asked about Rare’s status and where they stand in regards to making E-rated and M-rated games, Kim said, “I’m super-excited about what they’re doing with ‘Banjo.’ I think ‘Banjo’ is going to be a big hit for us this holiday.” That’s not quite the same as getting an email with the headline “Banjo This November” or anything, but hopefully Kim isn’t too far off in his estimation.
The interview also hit up several other subjects, such as the cancelation of Marvel Universe Online, whether Viva Pinata DS is still in the works (“There’s still a hint”), a future for Halo outside of Peter Jackson and Halo Wars, Ken Lobb’s enthusiasm for Crackdown, Alan Wake’s 2008 release (“not necessarily”), and a whole lot more.
Kudo Tsunoda has decided to part ways with Electronic Arts and has moved to the Xbox division at Microsoft. This new position for Tsunoda will reunite him with his former EA Vancouver colleague Don Mattrick, who runs the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft, and John Schappert the former VP of Worldwide Studios for EA.
Tsunoda will now be reporting directly to Mattrick as the general manager, which is part of Mattrick’s reorganization of the Xbox division, and not only will Tsunoda be GM, he is also the new project lead on the upcoming Gears of War title.
So, all EA employees take note: If you get fired or just want a change of pace, you can always get a job at Microsoft.
NECA has announced that their line of Gears of War action figures should kick off in spring. The first wave will include figures of Marcus Fenix, Augustus Cole (”Cole Train”), and a Locust Drone. The figures will feature an impressive amount of detail and articulation, plus accessories from the video game. More importantly, now you can construct that diorama featuring an army of Cole Trains you’ve always wanted to make.
Major Nelson has posted up a few lists of interest on his blog detailing the most played Xbox 360 and Xbox 1 games on Xbox Live, as well as the most purchased Xbox Live Arcade games from 2007. Unsurprisingly, Halo 3 and Halo 2 dominate the first two lists, while TMNT 1989 Arcade was the most purchased Arcade game of the year. I thought I was alone in loving that game prior to its release on XBLA.
Top Xbox 360 Games (Unique Users)
Halo 3
Gears of War
Call of Duty 4
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas
Call Of Duty 3
Crackdown
Oblivion
Guitar Hero II
Forza Motorsport 2
Lost Planet
Call of Duty 3? Really? I found that one to be pretty shocking considering how terrible I’d argue the game is. Apparently, people don’t seem to care, and so long as you’ve got a popular name attached to the game, people will play it. (Why do I get the feeling that saying that is just begging someone to bring Madden up in the comments?)
Gamers wishing to show the world their sense of fashion along with advertising their favorite game can now do so with little chance of getting a swirly between second and third period. Inno-Wear, a European clothing and accessories company that licenses video game attire, recently signed an exclusive 
If nothing else, this rumor will give your eyebrows a workout as they rise up when it’s suggested that Microsoft is poised to purchase Epic Games. This rumor is being reported on by GamePro, according to 
