gears-of-war posts

The annual Toy Fair is underway in New York City and alongside the typical new and upcoming action figures shown at the show for things like Marvel and DC super heroes, Star Wars, G.I.Joe and the like, there are quite a few new action figures based on games.

Figures.com has images from the show floor on many of these toys, including new entries in the Halo series from McFarlane Toys and Gears of War from NECA. The latter company is also showing off a number of other upcoming figures from games like Dead Space and the upcoming Prototype (show above) and Dante's Infermo. We are still waiting to see some Team Fortress 2 action figures; we might actually buy them.

On Monday we posted up a feature showing off a number of notable games that have been turned into comics by various publishers. Today we have the second and final part of our feature that takes a look at even more comics that are based on either current or upcoming games.

Many of these comics have been released recently by Wildstorm, the division of DC Comics that's also responsible for the art direction of the upcoming MMO DC Universe Online. They also have several comics in the works and rumors are they will be doing even more games-to-comic adaptations.

Click on the image above to continue reading From Games to Comics: Part 2

"A new update is available for Gears of War for Windows. This update fixes an expired digital signatures issue that prevents all earlier versions of the game from launching. This is a required update. Please download and install the update before launching the game.

This update incorporates all previous updates and bug fixes for Gears of War for Windows, where applicable." Continue reading for update notes from previous patch.

Download Gears of War Certification Patch (6 MB)

Last week fans of the PC version of Gears of War were miffed to discover that their copies of the game could no longer be played. So what happened? IGN contacted Epic Games' VP Mark Rein to find out. As it turns out, the error was all about how the game takes care of multiplayer cheaters.

Rein told IGN, "The online cheat detection features in Gears of War for Windows are based on digital signatures. Well, we made an embarrassing mistake: we signed the executable with a certificate that expired in a way that broke the game. We're working with Microsoft to re-sign the binaries properly, and hope to have this fixed very soon. We know how much this situation sucks, and we apologize for the inconvenience." There's a simple workaround; simply set your PC's clock back to sometime before Jan. 29. So far there's no word when the game will be fixed.

If you like your games to have full co-op mode in the single player campaign then this year is a good time to be a fan of PC first person shooters. This week developer Treyarch and publisher Activision release Call of Duty: World at War, which finally adds co-op support for the first time in the series. Next week is even bigger as Valve finally releases the full version of Left 4 Dead, a game designed from the ground up to be a co-op shooter.

Today we look back at the history of co-op gameplay in first person shooter titles.The genre actually had quite a few games that supported such features when it first started but the last few years have seen a decline as FPS have emphasised more popular multiplayer features like deathmatch, CTF and more recently big team based gameplay. But with Call of Duty: World at War and Left 4 Dead out this month co-op gameplay may be coming back.

Click on the picture above to continue reading Playing Together: Co-Op in PC FPS Games.

Developing PC games just by themselves can be challenging. You have to deal with not one but thousands of different hardware configurations along with updating graphics drivers, the unique keyboard-mouse interface and more. But what about when you develop a PC game that was originally made for a console like the PS3, the Xbox 360 or others?

Some PC ports of console games have been embraced by PC games like Gearbox's superior port of Bungie's first Halo game and more recently BioWare's PC version of Mass Effect. Yet so many other consoles games either don't translate well to the PC formula or fail to reach a wide audience even if they add content that is not in the original version. Today we take a look at the many console games that either failed as a PC game translation or failed to reach a high PC gamer audience.

Click on the image above to continue reading "The College Try: Failed PC Ports Of Console Games"

When Epic Games decided to do a PC port of their 2006 Xbox 360 mega seller Gears of War they decided to go all out with support for DirectX10, Games for Windows Live support, an all new single player mission and new multiplayer maps and modes that the Xbox 360 owners would never get access to. However, the game's release in 2007 was a bit of a bust with sales on the low side.

So it's no shock that Epic designer Cliff Bleszinsk has been quoted by IGN in a new Q&A as saying, "Gears of War is a great franchise first and foremost for Xbox 360, and therefore we're focusing on that platform for Gears of War 2. We've decided we're not going to do a PC version this time around." Epic is not abandoning the PC platform; they are working on a PC game for Electronic Arts with their partners at People Can Fly

Epic Games was a little hurt at the reception that their 2007 PC port of their 2006 Xbox 360 game Gears of War got last year. In fact, in a MundoRare video interview with Epic President Mike Capps he states, "I think it's bullshit. Because what we did was take a great game, Gears of War 1 for Xbox 360, made it run at higher resolutions and added three new hours of really good gameplay and it got lower reviews. I think that's bullshit, and I don't understand it. I can't figure out what it is."

While all of that is true we have to say that the Games for Windows Live features, some of which you had to pay for until just recently, were part of the reason why Gears of War for the PC may have gotten some lower scores. Also, the fact that PC owners still had to wait a full year to play the game is always a factor, no matter how much new content you might have put into the game.

[Via Voodoo Extreme]

Forget hot coffee, violence and piracy -- lists are perhaps the most controversial topic in the video game industry, especially among readers. Someone's favorite choice always seems to be excluded, and less-than-deserving names often manage to edge out more venerable entries.

That being said, GamePro has assembled what is arguably a competent list of the eight most powerful game studios in the world. Love them or hate them, it's hard to argue the studios that made the list, and thankfully the list is not compiled in any order designating best and worst.

Among the most notable is Epic Games, developers of Unreal Tournament and Gears of War. The growing popularity of Epic, mostly due to console gamers' embrace of the Gears franchise, certainly qualifies their inclusion. Equally important, especially to the PC gaming world, is Blizzard Entertainment. Always a favorite among mouse owners, Blizzard's World of WarCraft launched the company into mainstream culture, a move that is good or bad depending upon whom you ask.

You can check out the full list on GamePro's official website.