Gears of War

Microsoft and Epic announced today that they would release a brand new map pack for Gears of War as soon as Thursday, for 800 MS points (free in september). The new maps are called Bullet Marsh, Garden, Process and Subway, and are visible inside.

Microsoft and Epic released these images and this video presenting the new Annex mode of Gears of War, that will be released soon now. Finally something new for the numerous GoW players out there.

First nice surprise of the year, Microsoft and Epic announced the the first Map Pack for Gears of War would be available on January 10 (or 11 depending on your time zone) and will introduce 2 new mutliplayer maps: Old Bones and Ravendown. A patch fixing the issues of the game will also be available a bit before that. And of course, it's free!
Update: Added a video presentation of both maps by Cliffy B.

I've read quite a few times already that some people didn't like Epic's choice of very muted colors for Gears of War. Well it looks like they also thought it wasn't a good idea to force people with such a palette, as there is an option in the game allowing us to change it with 4 presets. In order of the images: Default, Soft, Lucid and Vibrant. The last one gives as expected the most colorful image.
Update : I've been asked to encode a video showing the rain level. There it is. It's the same one as the X05 demo, but there are still some spoilers.

Gears of War is finally here, at least for the lucky few who got it in advance or will find it today in the US. And it doesn't disappoint, at all. And for an exceptional game, an exceptional coverage, with nothing less than 3 long videos in great quality, ready to stream from your PC to your 360. The first one if our usual "first 10 minutes", but the next 2 are montage from a few nice sequences from the 90 first minutes of the game. The first montage shows some gameplay and almost nothing about the story, but the second one contains some spoilers. Nothing really important as the story isn't really Gears' strongest point, but you can't say you haven't been warned!

It's worth noting that the 720p videos have been encoded with the VC1/WMV9 Advanced Profile codec, as will be more videos in the future here. They work natively with the 360, but require to install either Windows Media Player 11 or at least the codec itself you'll find on the video download page. Mac and other alternative OS users will have to use a nightly build of VLC, mplayer or any other ffmpeg based media player.

Microsoft released this awesome trailer of Gears of War on the Marketplace a few hours ago. Incredible trailer, with an excellent musical choice. I'm not at home today so I won't be able to capture a 720p version.

EB and Gamestop yesterday had an event in their US shops where they had a long gameplay video of Gears of War on display. It didn't take long for this video to be available on the forums, so there you have it, it's not a new level, but it's the first time we get to see it in direct feed.

Finally Microsoft is starting the hype campaign for Gears of War. And as always with MS they did not do things half way as the teaser site is excellent. For your convenience, I also (painfully) captured the four videos. They don't show much from the game, but they sure did a good job hyping me for the game.

Microsoft, as always now, released a long video montage of most of the upcoming Xbox 360 games. I guess this will be the only way to get to see some Gears of War and Alan Wake action in direct feed for the moment...
Update: 720p version.

And finally, Cliffy B's fantastic work Gears of War. The images may be a bit old, but they're now official.