Gears of War Realm

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.