Gears of War Realm

As promised, here is the first of MANY videos I’ll be posting up over the next few days from the “Match Made in Hell” Gears of War promotional event last week. I wanted to put up more, but sadly I’m dumb and recorded the first few videos without sound and had to go back to the tapes to start over. It set me back a day of work, but I’ll work extra hard to make up for my mistake and get you all atleast a video a day for the next week.

Here is the first video, shaky cam of a multiplayer round taken at the event. This is a new map, The Canals, that we hadn’t seen before until the event.

You can also download a High Quality copy of the video encoded in Apple’s Quicktime by clicking here. The Quicktime version is double the YouTube video size at 640×480 and weighs in at about 60mb, so be patient while downloading.

[b]UPDATE![/b]
Videos available on Google Video now, click here!

We have uploaded our photos of the Gears of War/Texas Chainsaw Promotional Event to our photo gallery. We have a seperate gallery for the gameplay and event photos.

Expect our videos to be uploaded sometime this weekend, we are in the final stages of editing them right now.

Also here is a sneak peek at the bag of Gears T-Shirts we snagged and will be giving away soon!

First off I want to thank the Microsoft staff on hand who put together an excellent event last night for us Gears of War fans who made it out to the event. Also mad props to Mike Capps, President of Epic Games, who escaped North Carolina and made it out Chicago to hang with the fans and for showing everyone the ropes. The event was very well run and was a lot of fun for all of us. Most of us got to play at least twice, which was huge for the people who have only experienced the game via videos on the Internet.

We are still putting together over 100 gameplay photos of the event and also over 30 minutes of “shaky cam” footage of multiplayer game play. We just have to clean up the photos and video still. Hopefully we’ll get some of it up for you readers as the weekend gets closer, so stay tuned! So to appease you as you wait, I attached one teaser photo below.

We also were given plenty of Gears of War shirts for our upcoming giveaway, to be announced soon, so as always stay tuned!

According to this story on Amazon.com is offering a new promo to entice those looking to get an Xbox 360. That offer is a free copy of either Gears of War or Viva Piñata, when released, with a purchase of the system this month.

Order either an Xbox 360 or Xbox 360 Core system during the month of October, and we’ll throw in a pre-order of either of Microsoft’s highly anticipated titles, Gears of War or Viva Piñata as a free thank you gift. Gears of War and Viva Piñata are $59.99 and $49.99 values and will be released this coming November.

To receive your free gift, simply add your choice of game, along with an Xbox 360 gaming console, to your shopping cart and proceed to checkout. Your Xbox 360 will ship immediately and your game, on its release date (see the game detail pages for these dates). But remember, this offer is only good throughout the month of October, so order yours today.

Unfortantely, the link they provided for the promo on Amazon.com doesn’t show me this promo so maybe it was put up prematurely. Stay tuned as we investigate further.

[Update 12:39PM CST]

It appears that this promotion may be for shoppers in the UK only. So all of you in the UK, I recommend getting in on this promotion ASAP before the month is over!

I wanted to let all our readers out there know that I’ll be “moblogging,” or live photo blogging, from my cellphone during the Gears of War/Texas Chainsaw Massacre event tonight in Chicago. So keep an eye on my Flickr Page for updates as the day goes on.

Also be sure to send us your experiences of the night. We’ll post the best stories and reactions here for everyone to read.

Instead of just the crappy cell camera phone shots, we hope to bring you better photos of the event tomorrow, depending on the camera situation at the event. We will also be sharing news of our next Big Contest sometime soon. The contest should start up within the next two weeks so keep reading for more information and would pit each of you readers against one another in a race for the top positions.

According to a post on Gaming Bits, the Xbox Team’s own TriXie teased on her blog that today there will be a givaway on Xbox.com for something “cool” for Gears of War fans.

“Are you counting the hours until Emergence Day? Do you worship CliffyB? Be sure to check Xbox.com tomorrow, Tuesday October 3 for a very cool opportunity! You have been warned…” - TriXie

Users on Epic’s Gears of War Forums tend to believe that this giveaway will be a tour of the studios of Epic Games in Raleigh, North Carolina.

There is no more information right now, 9:45am CST, but I’ll update this as things develop.

[UPDATE 3:00 PM CST]
The contest is up, go sign up now at xblgearsofwar.onlinepromo.com! Here are the details of the prizes, sounds like a lot of fun.

Do you and a friend want to visit Epic Studios, meet CliffyB, and play Gears of War® before anyone else?

You read that right; you can get your hands on Gears of War a full week
before it hits stores across the country. The winners also get to hang out
with CliffyB and tour Epic Studios in beautiful Raleigh, North Carolina.

Best of luck to our readers out there!