A little over a year ago, Midway and Epic Games released the highly anticipated Unreal Tournament III. The game, which was awesome to begin with, was made even better by the release of a free map pack. Now, even with the financial problems Midway is suffering from, another free downloadable pack is coming to the PC and PS3 versions of the game. The really exciting thing is just in the huge amount of content that’s available. Firstly there are 11 new maps spread out across Warfare, Deathmatch, CTF (Capture the Flag), and Vehicle CTF to compete on. Read More...

For the Gears Of War fans out there, now is your chance to not only scoop up a custom Gears Of War Xbox 360 Pro, but to also be charitable.  Clayton Davison of Tech"Know" Podcast is working with Epic Games to raise money for the Make A Wish Foundation and is auctioning off the console on Ebay. The console features a crimson Gears of War logo hand drawn by the Senior Concept Artist, James Hawk, on one side and on the otherside features the signatures of the games Lead Designers.    Here is the list of the signatures featured on the console:James Hawk, Senior Concept ArtistCliff Bleszinski, Design DirectorDave Ewing, Senior Level DesignerRod Fergusson, Senior ProducerJoe Graf, Unreal Engine 3 Technical DirectorDave Nash, Lead Level DesignerChris Perna, Art DirectorLee Perry, Lead Gameplay DesignerAlan Willard, Senior Level Designer The entire auction includes the following:An Xbox 360 Pro console with a 20Gig hard driveA copy of Gears of War 2 Wireless ControllerHD AV CablesThree months to Xbox Live Gold.The auction began today and will be up for 7 days and bidding starts at $249. Read More...

Epics Rod Fergusson made a post in the Gears of War 2 forums about a "proposed rank change", hopefully making the rank system more experienced based whenever a third update comes out. Fergusson writes ""What if, instead of skill rank, we instead showed your experience level." And over at Kotaku explains how it would work:• Experience would be acquired through individual performance in public mutliplayer. The experience would be balanced according to game times, so you couldn't level faster on the respawning game types. • Levelling would not be a fixed amount for each level, but a progressively higher amount for successive levels, ("like a typical RPG. Read More...

With the new Friday the 13th movie coming in just a few weeks, the Gears team is hosting nearly 2 weeks of giveaways on Xbox Live starting February 1st. That's 65 daily prize packages and 13 grand prize packages.The daily packs come with: * Gears of War 2 video game soundtrack * Gears of War Aspho Fields novel * A 12" x 18" Gears of War 2 promotional poster autographed by members of the Epic development team * An in-game Golden Hammerburst and Lancer weapon The grand prize packs come with: * A Samsung 40-inch 1080p flat panel LCD HDTV * A Locust Bust * A red Xbox 360 Wireless Controller * A Marcus Fenix bronze statue * Gears of War 2 video game soundtrack * Gears of War Aspho Fields novel * A 12" x 18" Gears of War 2 promotional poster autographed by members of the Epic development team * An in-game Golden Hammerburst and Lancer weaponTo register, you either need to go on Xbox.com or download the 13 Days of Gears Registration Gamer Picture from the Marketplace. The rest of the info can be found here. Read More...

A while back, I posted about a Gears of War 2 patch coming later this month. Now it turns out that coming along with the patch are seven new achievements. No official release date has been said, but should go live once the patch is released. All seven equal up to 175 points, mostly focused on the flashback and combustible maps. Go here to see more about it. Read More...

Mark Rein from Epic has responded to everyone's complaints about all the glitches in bugs in the game such as equipping the shield with a 2-hand weapon, Lancers with infinite ammo, invisible shields and so on. That's all going to end soon. Posted on the Gears forums is all the details of what's coming in this patch."We're fixing a whole bunch of online exploits. For example we've fixed the ability to wield an invisible shield, melee through some walls, gain infinite Lancer ammo and equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously plus many more. Read More...

This review is long overdue, but with a very busy schedule lately, it’s better late than never.Gears of War 2 is Epic Games sequel to the acclaimed original, which was one of the best games to ever grace the XBox 360. Will part 2 rise above its predecessor or fall to the way side of sequels that can't capture that same feeling of the original? After sitting down and getting some good playing time in to the campaign and single player, I came away feeling this was Gears of War 1.5. Read More...

So that thing with Take-Two didn't work out huh, well there's always more fish in the sea, and it looks like EA may have another one on it's hook. Word on the street (from gameguru) states that EA is looking to gobble up Epic Games in an effort to win back the hearts and minds of the hardcore gamer. Now gameguru may not have the best grammar or the most trustworthy sources however the fact that EA recently struck a deal with People Can Fly (an in-house studio belong to none other than Epic Games) only strengthens their claims. Along with the claims of the Epic buyout, gameguru also indicates that EA would like to get it's hands on Unreal 4. Read More...

  EBGames/Gamestop have posted what you will be getting in the Limited Edition version of Gears of War 2:         Gears of War 2: Limited Edition Get your hands on the most complete Gears of War 2 experience available! The Gears of War 2: Limited Edition includes the following bonus materials:Collectible SteelBook™ DVD case"Beneath the Surface: An Inside Look at Gears of War 2," a 48-page hardbound book including character profiles, exclusive concept art, and foreword by Design Director Cliff BleszinskiBonus DVD including exclusive making-of-the-game video footage, design galleries with audio commentary by Epic Games, and promotional videos including the E3 2008 trailer, "Rendezvous." An exclusive gold-plated Lancer Assault Rifle available during online play     One thing they forgot to add was a picture of Dom and I would guess his wife, if he has one. Is this worth the extra $10? Read More...

Epic Games has now launched their new "Make Something Unreal" PC game mod contest. Sponsored this time by Intel, the contest will give aspiring game creators a way to win cash and prizes for making mods based on Epic's Unreal Tournament 3. Over $1 million in cash and prizes will be given to the winners and just like the first "Make Something Unreal" contest (for mods made with UT 2003/2004) the new version will have a grand prize of a full Unreal Engine 3 license for the overall best mod. Last time the winner was Tripwire Interactive for their Red Orchestra mod; they later formed a full dev team and released the game as a stand alone commercial title. Judging will begin in June 2008 in the first phase of the contest; the final winners will be determined in fall 2009 after all four phases are complete. Read More...