Gears of War Realm

In celebration of the upcoming Emergence Day launch of Gears of War on November 7th, we at Gears of War Realm are launching our biggest contest yet. The contest will be a referral link contest, so you will place a Gears of War advertisement image on your MySpace page, forum signatures, personal websites, or or anywhere you think you can get clicks.

The top five (5) users who generate the most unique hits during the month of November will win prizes. The contest runs for the entire month of November, from November 1st, 2006 until November 30th, 2006.

So what do you get for promoting Gears of War and our website Gears of War Realm? We are giving away a copy of Gears of War for the Xbox 360, two limited edition E3 2006 faceplates, and five Gears of War T-Shirts. Sounding good yet?

Click Here To Enter The Contest

The contest starts tomorrow, so better get the banner placed on your pages and get to work promoting!

Also keep an eye out for four mini contests that we’ll be running during the month. These contests can be anything and will only be announced after they have been awarded. I may throw some clues out but I can say being active in our forums and in our story comments is a good start.

Last week Gears of War was officially completed and Epic Games and Microsoft celebrated their achievement, with a few lucky fans, at the Hollywood Forever Cemetary in Los Angeles. There are a few photos of that event here.

Along with that event happening, there is a tidal wave of news and updates hitting the internet now on the game. With the game starting to ship this week, expect this to keep growing as more and more information gets revealed. We were busy, so we decided to catch up our readers with a bunch of stories we gathered.

So here is a quick run down of what is new:

New Gears of War Trailer on the Marketplace

Gears of War Trailer Fan Edit

Gears of War Trailer Fan Edit 2

Multiplayer Gametype Breakdown

Germany Bans Gears of War

Joystiq Spoils Gears Fans Gamestop Fun

Major Nelson interviews CliffyB

Emergence Day Events

It appears there are a lot of View Askew (Kevin Smith) fans over at Epic Games. A list of all the Gears of War Xbox Live Achievements have been released, and they are definately named on the funny side. One in particular, My Love For You Is Like a Truck, is taken from the lyrics of the song Berzerker that is sung in the movie Clerks. The goals for the achievement reveal the tie in: Defeat a Berserker on Hardcore Difficulty. Another favorite of mine is this one: A Series of Tubes.

Thanks to the guys at News Askew and a long time contributor Dante Gil Grant for pointing it out to me!

I just read over at Gear Heads of War about a Gamestop/EB Games event this Saturday night! On October 21st, 2006 from 9:00pm to 10:00pm at your local Gamestop or EB Games stores, they will have a special preview event for Gears of War. They’ll have a video presentation and giveaways at each store.

I had heard about this from my local store manager, but he never called me back with more details. Also be sure to call your store before you stop over, but it sounds like it’s nationwide for sure. I sadly can’t make it, because I’m hosting a big Halloween party that night.

The Gears of War Emergence Day hype onslaught continues, this time with two more big Match Made in Hell events. One event will take place in Los Angeles and another event for fans in/around New England, both happening at the end of October.

In Los Angeles, Microsoft Game Studios and Epic Games will be putting on a huge launch party at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Thursday, October 26 at 12:01 AM. Here are some details of the event from the press release:

Thrown by Microsoft Game Studios in advance of the title’s Nov. 12 release, this exclusive event will be hosted by members of the “Gears of War” development team, including Lead Designer Cliff Bleszinski. In keeping with the bone-chilling theme, developers, industry luminaries and Tinseltown’s hottest young talent will be mixing and mingling in a real mausoleum, at the famous Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.

In New England, the event will take place at Six Flags New England (in Springfield, Massachusetts) and will be a Six Flags “Fright Night” event on Tuesday October 31st. You’ll get to play the game early, and also get to see a private mini Megadeth concert featuring the premiere of their new song “Gears of War.”

So you may ask, how would one get into these events? Well you have to register to win! You can enter at www.xbox.com/matchmadeinhell. Word is that those who entered to attend any other Match Made in Hell events have already been entered in the drawing I hear, but I would enter again anyways (I did!).

Also, it said that anyone who registers for the contests also get access to a free month of Xbox Live Gold service if you pre-order their copy of Gears of War through Gamestop, I also assume this includes EB Games but not sure at the moment. I’m also not sure if this is open to people who have already pre-registered early or not. Once I know more I’ll post it up here.

Good luck to everyone who enters! I hope to hear some of our readers report back if they got picked!

There is a rumor going around that Gears of War may actually be available in demo form for the Xbox Live Marketplace sometime soon. Sadly we have already gotten a response from Epic Games VP Mark Rein on the Epic Games Forums, he said it’s not happening. Here is what he said about the rumor:

“Comment on what? I don’t see Gears of War in that list. There is no Gears demo and there won’t be before launch. I suspect that is a generic header with the Gears image in it. There aren’t any plans at the moment to make a demo of Gears. We have other things we’re going to be working on as soon as Gears has gone gold but I can not elaborate on them at this point in time.” - Mark Rein, VP Epic Games

As promised, I have put all our recent videos of our Gears of War Match Made in Hell coverage up onto Google Video. This way anyone having issues with Quicktime can view the videos online.

Included in those videos is two new multiplayer videos that we just put up today.

Here are the links for all the video of the event.

Single Player Demo by Mike Capps

Multiplayer Video 1

Multiplayer Video 2

Multiplayer Video 3

Multiplayer Video 4

Multiplayer Video 5

Multiplayer Video 6

I may be able to dig another mutliplayer video, or two, out of our footage, and if so it’ll be up this week.

Are you looking to add to your Gears of War stuff collection like the rest of us? Can’t wait for our next contest to start up? Got some mad Photoshop skills?

Well you are in luck! Fellow game media site Aeropause is running a contest of their own for their Gears of War swag collected at the various events this year. Their contest is a Photoshop screenshot editing contest, so find your favorite Gears of War screenshot and get editing. Get started now by reading the contest rules and prizes on the contest page. Act fast, the contest ends on October 21st!

Here is an example of one of their entries, gives you a good idea what they are looking for:

Click to Enlarge

We hope to have our contest up in the next two weeks. I should have time to finalize it once my work for our other site, The Realm of Mortal Kombat (TRMK), slows down. So stay tuned!

In anticipation of the upcoming release of Gears of War, the Xbox folks have updated the game’s official website GearsOfWar.com. The website now features some really slick interactivity, with what is sure to be many hidden puzzles and clues related to the game’s universe.

Here is what Microsoft’s press release had to say about the new website:

With the threat of Emergence Day on the horizon, Microsoft Game Studios released a new “Gears of War” site that allows gamers inside the mind of its lead character, Marcus Fenix. The site, which can be found at http://www.gearsofwar.com/, immerses gamers through a series of disturbing flashback videos that foretell various aspects of the game’s storyline and highlight the uniquely destroyed beauty of the games environment.

Visitors to the site can also pre-order “Gears of War,” visit the community forums, share the site with a friend, or register to join the Xbox community for exclusive updates.

We have made more progress on getting videos for everyone of the Gears of War: Match Made in Hell event in Chicago last week. This update comes with FOUR new videos for everyone.

First up is the video of Epic Games President, Mike Capps, giving us in Chicago a demo of the single player gameplay. At first I thought he’d stop when the rescue copter picks up everyone, like the E3 demo, but he kept going.

View the Single Player Demo Video Here

Second is three new Multiplayer gameplay videos! We even got an awesome shot of a Chainsaw death at the end of one of the videos. I think they speak for themselves, so enjoy everyone.

View Multiplayer Videos 2, 3 and 4

We have enough footage for atleast another three videos. So stay tuned, they should start to appear tomorrow.