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Gears Bonus Content Released Two brand new maps, a video and a game update are now available for Gears of War - just press X at the main menu screen! Why not read our thoughts on the update and bonus content too. More >
Interview & Weapon Guide Don't forget to check out our Gears weapon guide, as well as our interview with Mark & Cliff of Epic. More >
Supreme Commander Demo: Sample the next evolution in the Real Time Strategy genre.
January Mailbag Here it is - the January edition of the award-winning Planet Gears mailbag.
Gears Bonus Maps & Patch: The Good, the Bad & the Upscaled 480p We've posted our thoughts on the recently-released Gears of War game update and bonus maps.
Sunday, 11 February, 2007 � Gears of War News
EGM Interviews CliffyB 17:50 PST | redef | Print News | Mail News The CliffyB interviews continue, this time with one at 1Up. This interview is taken from the February edition of Electronic Gaming Monthly, and covers all sorts of Gears topics over four pages. Here�s an excerpt:
EGM: Graphically speaking, is there room to improve?
CB: I think there's more that we could squeeze out of the 360. You get used to the limitations and potential that this console has, and then you can really start exploring. I guarantee that, in the future, the technology of what we do here will squeeze every bit of coolness out of [the 360]. If there's a follow-up, it'll definitely look better than the first.
GameInformer Interviews CliffyB 13:34 PST | redef | Print News | Mail News The GameInformer folks have interviewed CliffyB after Gears� recent success at D.I.C.E. and the Interactive Achievement Awards. There�s all sorts of talk about the road to Gears� success, the future, and Epic in general. Here�s a sample:
GI: Was it hard to balance the game, based that the game was mainly based on co-op, for the single-player experience?
B: Well, what we ultimately wound up doing is we intended people will play it on a harder difficulty level when they play it on co-op. Casual with two human players is just ridiculously easy, right? Hardcore is kind of where it�s at, for two guys playing co-op, but insane is definitely where those guys should aspire to be. That�s what we let the different difficulty levels kind of dictate as far as multiplayer goes.
Thursday, 8 February, 2007 � Gears of War News
Propaganda Art 23:57 PST | redef | Print News | Mail News A forum thread at the official Gears forum is providing some rather awesome fan art. Started by Crimson Engage, this thread challenges Gears fans to create �propaganda.� Epic�s very own TK409 has posted a piece of his own art which was coincidently created in the same theme. If you�re looking for a Gears-themed wallpaper, or just some cool art, be sure to check the thread out.
IGN: But people want a story. Don't you feel like the ending was pretty confusing, too? I mean the hive leader female voice in the end? What was that all about?
CliffyB: The ending was meant to be ambiguous. There are plenty of games where they end with giant tentacle monsters rising up and devouring cities that make absolutely no sense. The game made sense in that you were gathering data to get a bomb and bomb these mole-men. And that was always it. Were there questions we didn't answer? Absolutely. A lot of that, in regards to the final cutscene and the female voice-over you got? That was by design. There were a few lines of dialog that were cut out with regards to the train, yeah, that did end up getting massaged out, but a lot of that was by design.
Gears Gets Game Developers Choice Awards Nominations 7:51 PST | RaptoR | Print News | Mail News Looks like Epic Games' trophy cabinet is about to become a lot more crowded. Gears of War has received nominations for three Game Developers Choice Awards - Best Game, Technology, and Visual Arts (thanks BU). Details of the other nominees can be found here.
We've very much applauded Sony for having the hard drive on every single machine. We will absolutely take advantage of the hard drive on Unreal Tournament 3. So, if you don't have a hard drive on your Xbox 360 and you want to get the most out of your UT purchase, think about getting one.
Mark also talks about the practice of releasing patches and bonus content for games, something which Epic has been employing going right back to the original Unreal Tournament on PC in 1999. Obviously the plentiful storage offered by the 360 hard drive makes taking advantage of game updates and bonus content much easier.
In my opinion it always seemed like the 360 Core System was an unnecessarily nerfed console. The lack of a hard drive and no HD cable made it look decidely last-gen. Core System owners: you heard the man, go buy a hard drive!
New 360 DVD Drive 'Faster and Quieter' 7:06 PST | RaptoR | Print News | Mail News Reports are circling around the Internet of a new DVD drive included in Xbox 360 consoles manfuactured after November 2006. The new BenQ drive is reportedly quieter than older models, and even slightly improves loading times.
Xbox-Scene user XBOXIZGOOD claims the new drive runs �super quiet�, compared to the previous drives used by Microsoft, and it even loads stuff a bit faster.
I think everyone will agree that Oblivion sort of bogs down or pauses briefly in certain areas, but this new drive really helps with all that. It doesn't ELIMINATE all the issues, but it certainly makes load times quicker and smoother when moving between rooms and areas.
Thankfully Unreal Engine 3's streaming technology makes loading times something of a non-issue for Gears players anyway. As for the noise, years of PC gaming have left me able to tune out the sound of whirring fans and disc drives. Besides, I think my comically large CPU fan alone makes more noise than my 360 ever could.
However, with Microsoft due to release an updated model of the 360 with cooler and quieter 65nm chips (also rumored to include HDMI output and a 120GB hard drive), that machine you queued overnight for in 2005 could be starting to look a little old.
WN: It's also tough to ignore the success of the Wii at this point. Do you guys have any plans to be in that space?
Rein: Hey, we're in that space! Red Steel, Splinter Cell -- those use our previous engine technology. But it's not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It's really designed for next-gen, high-definition.
File Uploading/Submission Fixed 9:59 PST | KBowen | Print News | Mail News File uploading, submission, and modification is working once again. Please let us know if you experience any issues and apologies once again for the brief inconvenience.
Thanks to everyone who voted in last week's poll, which saw Old Bones beating the bloomtastic Raven Down as your favorite bonus map by just a few votes.
Planet Halo Launches! 5:11 PST | RaptoR | Print News | Mail News Please welcome Planet Halo (replacing the old Halo Planet), the latest addition to the Planet Network! Planet Halo should be your first stop for news and other goodies relating to the growing back-catalog of Halo games, as well as Halo 2 on Vista when it launches later this year and the highly-anticipated Halo 3 on the 360!
Why not drop by and congratulate them on the launch.
Gears Inspires Mortal Kombat 8 5:07 PST | RaptoR | Print News | Mail News Mortal Kombat creator Ed Boon has said that the visual style of Gears of War has had a huge impact on the graphical direction of the upcoming Mortal Kombat 8.
"To me, when I saw Gears of War, I was like, 'Holy shit!' That�s the look that we�ve been talking about.� Visually, that�s what we want to do."
4. Maturity levels of the players are lower in Gears than the green toilet bowl water in a motel bathroom of a crack user. I want to enjoy talking to my teammates without the swearing, trash talking, bad singing, gangsta' rap, and wining. Solution? Choose your age demographic you want to play in before you start your matches. I'm over 30 now and I want to play with 30 year olds. Also, I want to choose the speaking language of the people you want to talk to. I only speak English so when I'm in a room of Spanish, Italian or French speaking players, there's some obvious language barriers there. "�l est� all�!!..." What?
File Uploading/Submission Down 13:42 PST | KBowen | Print News | Mail News Due to a few technical problems, the uploading, modification, and submission of files on this site is currently disabled. We apologize for the temporary inconvenience and hope to have this issue fixed soon.
Thursday, 1 February, 2007 � Gears of War News
Gears Nabs 1Up Award 9:14 PST | RaptoR | Print News | Mail News Gears of War has been honored with the "Best Shooting Game" title as part of the 2006 1Up Awards, beating such rivals as Resistance: Fall of Man, GRAW and Prey. "Game of the Year" went to Zelda on the Wii.
