Gears of War Realm

Was anyone wondering why the leaderboards were not reset for the Gears of War Tournament that was to start on April 9th? Well today we got the answer, it seems the leaderboards did not get reset as planned so the tournament will restart tomorrow, April 20th, 2007. Thusly, the tournament end date has been pushed back until May 13th, 2007. Here are the details straight from Microsoft themselves with further details.

Gamers aiming to participate in the “Gears of War” Global Xbox LIVE Tournament can lower their weapons and start training behind the scenes as technical issues have delayed the Leaderboard re-set previously scheduled for 12:01 a.m. GMT on April 9, 2007. Tournament play has been scheduled to resume on or about 12:01 a.m. GMT on Friday, April 20, 2007, and the tournament will continue until 11:59 p.m. GMT on Sunday, May 13, 2007. Additionally, tournament registration has been extended until Saturday, May 12, ending at 11:59 p.m. GMT.

Good luck to all those involved, and hope the first two weeks of the tournament served for a good practice run for you!

After playing some Annex over the weekend, I noticed a lot of people complaining about getting stuck to walls. It happened to me a few times as well, but I thought it was just because I hadn’t played in such a long time. Well it appears the recent update made some changes to the rules revolving getting into cover while doing the Roadie Run. Because users were used to the old system, they would wind up sticking into cover like Velcro if they got too close.

To save the day and end the debates, Rod Fergusson the Producer of Gears of War popped over to the forums to made a posting over at Epic Games’ Gears of War Forums about it. He basically said they made changes to improve it, but after the complaints will go yet another direction. Now they will be testing out combining the old way with aspects of the new way to get the best of both worlds.

I’m sure we’ll hear more about this as the next update gets closer to release, which I’m sure will be quite a ways off.

[From Xbox 360 Fanboy]

As promised here is the video of the new Gears of War gametype Annex. Below you can find an easy streaming Flash video, along with Quicktime HD, iPod and PSP formats for video playback.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

I just got an email from the folks at Microsoft indicating that the Gears of War title update was to hit last night, April 9th 2007, at 4pm PDT. Since I was out seeing Grindhouse, kick ass movie btw, I missed this email and the update. I’ll check the update out tonight, and report back.

Here is the official list of fixes in the Gears of War April Title Update, most of the game play elements were changed for the multiplayer game for game balance reasons.

• Annex: In Annex, gamers seize victory by keeping control over key map locations, or objectives, long enough to collect a winning number of points. Every map contains two to five identified objectives available for capture, with one objective active at a time. Objectives are based on map weapon-spawn locations and have a potential value of 60 points toward either team?s score. Teams collect those points by maintaining ownership of an objective until all 60 points have been distributed. Every second that a team controls an objective, the team gets one point. When an objective falls to zero points, the next objective is selected at random.
• VGA Cable Support: Monitor resolution widths greater than or equal to 1280 now render as letterbox. In particular VGA users running at 1280×1024 will now see the game in full 720p (1280×720) resolution in letterboxed form.
• Adjusted Assassination Multiplayer Gametype: Leader no longer has to unlock weapons and now has to be executed to die.
• Adjusted Boomshot: Splash damage to be more effective rendering targets down-but-not-out
• Adjusted Hammer of Dawn: Aiming will be more forgiving of moving targets
• Adjusted Roadie Run: Reduced frequency of accidently grabbing cover while running
• Kill Message Ticker: Ticker can now be seen while down-but-not-out and spectating
• General: Addressed a number of possible exploits in multiplayer

I’ll also be updating the Gears of War Wiki with anything that may need updating in relation to this update.

UPDATE 11:00AM CST – Here are a few screenshots sent to us by Microsoft. They also sent along some video which I am working on encoding up for everyone as I type this, I should have that up tonight if all goes well. Click the thumbnails below for some High Resolution 720p shots.

The folks over at the 1UP Yours Podcast called up the Epic Games‘ founder and CEO Tim Sweeny to discuss Gears of War. During the interview, Tim mentioned some additional content coming up for Gears of War. They have an additional four maps that they have created and want to give away, but Microsoft is not seeing eye to eye with Epic Games. He also made mention of the upcoming Gears of War update, saying the update (that includes the new game type Annex) will be free, as we expected. But no date of release is currently known, as it’s still going through the certification process at Microsoft.

Here is the quote of what Tim had to say on the podcast:

With Gears of War we’ve gone through our own effort and built a bunch of different maps that are free for download. We already released two and we have four more maps that we’ve built. We’ve been willing to give them away for a long time, but actually Microsoft has been pushing back on us. They’re trying to build this business model around selling additional content for games and and that’s a valid idea, but we would definitely like to release more stuff for free, and we haven’t been able to do so yet, which is unfortunate, I mean there are a lot of good business reasons for releasing free content for a game. First of all you want to increase the player base and keep the game alive and the business reason, right now trade-ins of console games are a big issue. If people hold on to our game longer, or forever because we release more stuff over a time for free than that’s a good business incentive for us. But we haven’t been able to do that so far because of Microsoft’s business strategy around selling content.

[From: Game Stooge]

Last week, news hit mentioning a new Gears of War. Among the bug fixes, like more VGA tweaks, word was a new multiplayer game type called Annex.

Well today more details on that game type has come to light. It is a “King of the Hill” variant, that actually appears to be very similar to Halo 2’s Team Crazy King game type. The game type will feature respawning, which is a first for Gears of War, every fifteen seconds and also unlimited lives.

A nice addition is that the map’s “hills” are going to be located around key weapons in the map. Giving the team controlling the hill access to that weapon. Each map will have as little as 2 or as many as 5 “hills.” For more details check

This makes a good addition just in time for next week’s Global Tournament.

Not to be outdone by the Boston Aqua Teen movie fiasco, Microsoft has decided to up the virtal marketing ante by opening an emergence hole in South America.
Just kidding, this is a true story and not caused by Microsoft or Gears of War.

This is actually a story from a few months ago, but I just ran across the story again today. This is just an amazing story where a sinkhole opened in Guatemala City, Guatemala. It resembles almost perfectly the Locust Emergence Holes in Gears of War.

I attached a few smaller photos here, but check out the story for some much better high-resolution photos.