Epic Games has put out the 5th title update for its third person shooter Gears of War 2 resolving a slew of glitches and a security hole that arose in the fourth patch. Plus, just in time for the Halloween Holiday, Epic is also treating gamers to another double XP weekend event Friday, October 30, through Monday, November 2.

Hit the jump for the full list of release notes via the official Gears forum. Read more…

If you are anything like me and my girlfriend, you have likely seen the Snuggie commercial on TV half a million times (not to be confused with the WTF Blanket). Well, Epic Games rep Dana Crowley recently told Kotaku on her Twitter feed that the Gears of War themed Snuggie featured above “really does exist…”

Unfortunately, Dana  goes on to explain that the Snuggie complete with screen printed armor is only a prototype, and that it won’t be released to the Gears lovin’ cold on the couch sittin’ general public.

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Today mark’s the release of the highly anticipated Gears of War 2 Dark Corners and All Fronts Collection DLC. The Dark Corners DLC features seven new multiplayer maps and a bonus deleted single-player chapter, “Road to Ruin,” from the Gears of War 2 campaign. In “Road to Ruin,” Marcus and Dom face the Locust but can either choose stealth or the usual run and gun action to survive. The seven new multiplayer maps include a new War Machine (the classic Gears 1 map), Allfathers Garden, Highway, Memorial, Nowhere, Way Station and Sanctuary (a favorite from Gears for Windows).

The All Fronts Collection DLC is geared towards players who have yet to download any of the previously released DLC map packs. Along with the “Road to Ruin” campaign chapter and the seven new multiplayer maps, the All Fronts Collection DLC will also contain all maps included in the Flashback, Combustible and Snowblind DLC.

The Dark Corners DLC will run you 1200 Microsoft Points ($15), while the All Fronts Collection will run you 1600 Microsoft Points ($20).

So after just posting the announcement of a Call of Duty: World at War double XP this weekend to celebrate the 4th of July, I found out that Epic Games is doing the same thing with their own title giving Gears of War 2 it’s own double XP weekend from July 3 to July 6, as well. During ranked matches on the public playlist, everyone will receive double the XP, and the winning team will also walk away with an additional 500 XP.

In addition to the double XP promotion, the latest update for Gears of War 2 will be released sometime before the weekend allowing for some changes to the Horde mode (most notably the addition of experience points). Speaking of the Horde mode, Epic will be celebrating Independence Day with it’s own fireworks by adding Tickers to every wave in Horde, and on the 10th wave of every Horde match, there will only be Tickers.

So, which double XP promotion will you be enjoying this weekend? Call of Duty: World at War or Gears of War 2?

Source: Joystiq

Joe Graf, Epic Games’ technical director on the Unreal Engine 3, has confirmed via the official Epic forums that Gears of War 2 will be receiving a fourth title update.

As of now, nothing is known about the newly heard of update, but Graf does confirm that a broken message in the game regarding the map packs will be fixed in the patch. Stay tuned for everything else.

The boys and girls at Epic Games have been working hard on some new DLC to extend the life of your Gears of War 2 purchase. Gamers will be able to get their grubby mitts on the Snowblind Map Pack, containing four new multiplayer maps (Grindyard, Fuel Depot, Under Hill, and Courtyard), March 31st for 800 MS Points.

Cold gas and hot lead don’t mix. Remember that.

As Shacknews reports, the gigantic Unreal Tournament 3 patch and Titan pack has been released for free for PC and PS3 users today. Steam and PS3 users can simply let the game update itself, and non-Steam users can either register the game to Steam or download the files from Fileshack. The extra content includes 19 new maps, two new game modes, and a myriad of vehicles and items. Hit the jump for the (frankly, titanic) full release notes.

[Update]The game is set to be free this weekend on Steam, and a 40% discount is in place until 15 March.
Read more…

Guys and commitment do not usually go hand in hand. Most of us cringe at the idea of a five yea car loan — so how would we feel about a ten year long ride involving the mass murder of Locust? I’m pretty sure we could deal with that.

In a recent discussion durring the New York Comic-Con Gears of War Panel, Gears scribe Joshua Ortega had the following to say about the franchise: Read more…

A few weeks ago, Gears of War for the PC died. Well, good news- Destructoid reports that the game is back up and running by way of a patch. Now you can set your system clock to the right time again, GoW PC fans! Is everyone excited?

Users on the Gears of War official forums are reporting that the digital certificates for the game have expired, as of 28th January 2009. This means that the game will not launch at a system date post-28th Jan. Obviously, this is awful news for those people who enjoy playing the game on the PC, since unless they keep their system date before the 28th, they cannot play the game.

This is what all the fuss about DRM (Digital Rights Management) is about; people who bought this game are essentially not allowed to play it. Ironically, the people who pirated the game, who the DRM is supposedly trying to stop, won’t be affected by this. The more that stuff like this happens due to DRM, the more the games are going to be pirated- only the customers are being punished. Anyway- bad show on Epic’s part; this needs to be fixed.

Epic Games’ Gears forum received a post from company VP Mark Rein a few minutes before 1AM today. In that post Mark makes mention of a title update for the Gears sequel that they hope to release in January. The laundry list of issues being addressed include the ability to wield an invisible shield, infinite lancer ammo, melee through walls, and more.

Hit the jump for Mark’s post in its entirety. Read more…

If you’ve ever played Gears multiplayer with me, you probably heard me scream “he’s freaking glitching!” on more than one occasion. Well the Gears of War sequel was in attendance at Glitch Fest 2000. Check out the full list of glitches features in the video above.

I can’t decide if the maker(s) of this video loved the game or hated it. I personally loved it and wasn’t bothered by (nor do I remember) any of these glitches features. I will admit that after the first minute, I tabbed into another application and listened to the audio from the clip. Enjoy.

Source: Kotaku

Some of you may already be familiar with the fact that I didn’t play through the campaign mode of the original Gears of War the first time around, and instead spent countless hours lost in the game’s multiplayer mode. Well, being that I was going to review Gears of War 2, I felt the need to go back and complete Gears of War 1 first.

With the assistance of Dan Landis, I cleared through the Gears 1 campaign in co-op mode, and then played through the Gears 2 campaign in single player mode over the course of two nights. In terms of multiplayer, I ran through a few of the classic formats and tested out Horde Mode with Dan, Zung, Dlyan, and some 14 year old kid I’ll refer to as “Superman” because he almost always decided to run off and save the world from Locust on his own.

Alright, enough small talk, let’s “dig in baby”. Read more…

The Gear loving crew over at G4TV spent their weekend “working” very hard in the name of better gameplay. Yes, this means they played lots and lots of Gears of War 2. The list after the jump outlines the issues they came across while playing single/co-op campaign, straight up multiplayer, and horde mode. Read more…

If you’ve been anticipating the release of Epic’s Gears of War 2, you may want to avoid gaming news site N4G for the time being. People (likely PS3 fanboys) intent on ruining fans’ Gears 2 experience – we’ll call them “assholes” – have been spamming N4G with phony news articles containing Gears 2 spoilers. Read more…

The two minute Gears of War 2 cinematic intro paints a picture of human ignorance fueled by a “hunger for power” — soldiers marching without hesitation into a war that the narrative suggests they brought upon themselves. Pretty darn deep for a game centered around albino skinned monsters who live underground.

Hit the jump for face full of Locust and things that go BOOM! Read more…

The word on the Locust infested streets of Sera is that Legendary Pictures is looking to purchase Epic Games. No clue as to whether or not the companies would change their name, but they might as well go for “Uber,” I can’t really think of any thing else that tops Epic or Legendary (Artifact perhaps?)

The two studios have been working closely with each other on the film adaptation of Gears of War, and apparently have bonded over a love of Chainsaw Bayonets, leading to speculation that the purchase is at the very least being discussed seriously. Read more…

I recently interviewed Metacrtic founder, Marc Doyle, about what many were calling a suspiciously low LittleBigPlanet user score of 6.3 on his site. Those unfamiliar with Metacritic need only to know that it aggregates the scores given by critics on various websites around the web into one “metascore” and also allows users to submit their own scores which are aggregated into a separate user score.

The total amount of users who had submitted a score for LBP at the time of my article was upwards of 2,200 and the result apparently motivated a group PlayStation 3 fanboys to retaliate. The current user score for the upcoming Xbox 360 exclusive, Gears of War 2, is a laughable 4.1 comprised of roughly 375 submissions. Read more…

Where to begin. I had originally assumed that the “Rendezvous with Death” trailer was going to be commercial that introduced the world to Gears 2, but I was wrong. As Keane pointed out earlier, the “Last Day” spot is without a doubt Epic’s sequel to “Mad World”.

As an enormous fan of the commercial that started it all, I wasn’t initially as impressed by Last Day, but after watching it over a few times and realizing the level of depth the creative team was able to portray in such a short period of time, I quickly changed my tune. Speaking of tune, the Last Day trailer features a song titled “How It Ends” which follows the trend set by Mad World and cranks it up a notch.

Last Day is hands-down, the best Gears of War trailer yet. It’s one minute of pure emotion from start to finish. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to share my impressions as well as a brief run down of the events that take place in it. Here goes. Read more…

There’s a new Gears 2 TV spot/trailer that hit today – it’s another minute-long meditative piece in the vein of Gears 1’s “Mad World” spot that captured the hearts of so many. It’s got the same somber but pretty soundtrack, Marcus looking glum, minimal exposition, the works. Personally I think it’s a much better piece of advertisement than its predecessor, but the jury’s out on the larger consensus among gamers.

Now, the Gears of War franchise being something that’s very male, I wondered if maybe this ad would have enough artistic sway to win someone over who’s not exactly into big dudes with soul patches and chainsaw bayonets. Someone like my girlfriend.  After all that’s what these ads are designed to do – make the game seem like something more sophisticated than dudes killin other dudes.

Hit the jump to watch the clip, and to hear what my better half has to say. Read more…