Gearheads of War

Head’s up, GearHeads!

Tomorrow we will be announcing a brand new event here on the site…As the title hints, this event will give our wonderful community a chance to play Gears of War 2 with fame…What kind of fame, you ask? Well the first celebrity is a good friend of the site and has appeared on our podcast…That’s the only clue you get! An announcement with the name of the guest will be posted either late tonight or early tomorrow so stay tuned for that!

Now for the details of how to win…Another appropriate title might have been: “Finally! A Screenshot Contest!”  Here are the details:

What: Gears 2 screenshot contest; 1 screenshot per GearHead

When: Submissions begin with the post where we announce the first guest and end Wednesday morning at 7 AM CST. Finalist will be picked and then the community will vote on 3 winners which will be announced Thursday afternoon.

Prize: Playing Horde with a video game celebrity!

Other info: This “game with fame” will consist of Horde beginning at 9 PST Friday Night.
(Full Details Inside)

So start looking for and taking your best screenshots from Gears 2 and stay tuned to find out who the special guest is!

I've been so obsessed with finishing Gears 2 single player and playing Horde that I'd honestly hardly touched any MP.  That all changed on Friday night.  I got on around 8:15 and folks were already playing Horde so I killed time until folks switched over.  We played some Execution and the MP of Gears 2 feels like an entirely new game.  It really doesn't feel like Gears 1 at all outside of the cover element.  

And you know what, I'm not 100 percent sure that I like all of the changes.  There are things I love about it.  For example, I was able to kill someone from the grave with a planted grenade.  That's pretty freaking cool.  Oddly enough one of my bigger complaints with Gears 2 is the overpowered nature of the nades.  I HATED nade spam in COD4 and it was one of the reasons why I think that I gave up on that game.  I was tired of the folks with the three nade perk who would just spam an entire area.

Well, first of all the smoke grenades have a ridiculously large blast radius.  I thought I was in the clear multiple times and the smoke nade would still knock me down which almost always means certain death with the new power of the Lancer and Hammerburst.  I remember on several maps just seeing nades raining everywhere.  I'm also not crazy with how the poison grenade works either.  For a game that preaches about the importance of cover, a well-placed poison nade basically can render one whole area unusable in terms of cover.

But my biggest issue is definitely how powerful the smoke grenade is.  It can completely change the dynamic of a one on one situation.  I might come to love it later on once I get used to it.  But right now, it's obnoxious.

The other thing I noticed is that essentially the grenades blow up as soon as they land on the ground whereas in Gears 1 there was a delay.  I remember one time Blank threw a nade that appear to blow up on impact.  I saw it coming and figured I'd just move once it landed but it blew up like it had been cooked or something.  Weird.

So still for now, I think I love Horde more than anything else about Gears 2.  I'll need more practice at MP for sure.  I remember when I first started playing Gears 1 that it took me a while to really figure out the maps and strategies, etc.  And I know a lot of you have been playing a hell of a lot of MP since the game was released and I'll be curious to see how you guys feel about the nades.  

Sorry it's taken me so long to get this up, but I've been out and about almost all weekend.  We're putting up the old Christmas lights on the house today.

Happy Thanksgiving, Gearheads!!!  I'm guessing a bunch of you on the East Coast are already chowing down on turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and all the fixins.  But if you can rouse yourself out of your tryptophan haze, we can game together tomorrow night!  I'd personally like to try a little Left 4 Dead since I haven't done that yet.  BUT if we can get the group together who was trying to beat Horde on Insane, well, Gears 2 takes precedence right now.  Sorry, Valve.  Oh and don't forget to give Blankman and crew props for beating another map on Insane.  

So let me know what you'd like to do below.  I'll probably be on around 8:30 p.m. PST or so.  I would like to tell you all that I'm very thankful for Gearheads on this day dedicated to giving thanks.  You guys are a great group of people, but moreso, a great group of friends.  Thanks and I'll catch you tomorrow night.

By the way, Gears 2 got a game update that should supposedly fix some of the matchmaking issues people have run into.  Read about it here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Waldo and Carmen Sandiego

CHECK IT OUT

GearHeads come in all shapes and sizes, states and countries. The above map proves just how unique, yet brought together we all are! By zooming out you will be able to see the state where each GearHead lives accompanied by their Avatar!

Enjoy!

*Disclaimer: If you aren't on there I had some issues getting your Avatar on there, just post a pic of your avatar and where your from and I'll get you in!

Also, GearHead's locations are only specific to their state, so you won't be in the exact location that you live in for safety reasons. =)

Special thanks to 3Suns for giving me a hand with this!

Zoso and Infidel creeping up on the Beastless Rider

I got on rather late and had to leave early, so I don't have a lot to remember or recap for Friday.  Let me just say this though.

I think it is HILARIOUS that when I jumped into the almost full room, Infidel was hosting.  This is the same Infidel with the same connection that everyone was screaming about (including me) for Gears 1. It is a testament to how much Epic improved the netcoding.  Of course, I was freaking out,　because for me (Japan), it was so bad, I was having a flashback to N64 Goldeneye days.  Literally, it appeared as superbad framerate issues.  Since I have only spent a couple of hours with multiplayer, I didn't know if that is the way it always is, or if it was just me lack of skillz and somehow diminished perception.  I couldn't believe my ears when everyone calmly told me that Infidel was hosting.

Anyway, after him, Kenai hosted, and then eventually Blankman.  All good stuff, guys!  Thanks!

Saturday was filled with Dirty, dirty horde.  I came on and the fellas were on level 28 Avalanche.  We were grinded to a halt there.  We switched to Blood Drive and would have carried that sucker all the way home, had it not been for the disconnects and RRoDs.  As it was, we got to L47.  Thanks to Grymm and Kenai for listening in on our very heated, but somewhat entertaining (if I do say so myself) live broadcast.  Cheers!

So, what are your stories of weekend game frolicking?

Zoid!  Congratulations, Zoid on winning the second raffle of prizes for donating to Gearheads of War.  I've been passing along the funds to Jon who helped put up the revised version of Gearheads of War.  

We'll be putting what you've won in the mail very soon.  Never fear those of who that have donated and haven't won already (Degrees and Zoid were the first two winners), will be entered into the next raffle once we hit the next target goal. Details on the next donation drive will be coming soon via a Blankman post. Thanks to everyone who has donated and helped to make this community so special.

Can it be?  Gears of War 2 has only been out for two weeks and yet, I get the feeling that a lot of the Gearheads community isn't just dipping its toes in L4D, but they're diving right in.  Unfortunately I won't be able to make FFF tomorrow night.   My wife and I are going out on a date and I get to see Quantum of Solace.  

But I wanted to open it up for folks to say below what they'd like to play.  Would you prefer L4D or Gears 2?  Sign up below, state what time you'll be on and what game you'd prefer to play.  Maybe folks can even play both tomorrow night?

Just so you know, I was going to run my personal review of Gears 2 this week and then I decided I was going to wait one more week.  Then I realized next week is Thanksgiving.  So I plan on running the review the first week of December.  I'm making sure I put it off long enough so I can talk about every element of the game without having to worry about it being a spoiler.  That's my update on that.

Sign up for FFF and have fun tomorrow night.  I'll miss playing with you this week.

I haven't even had a chance to download it, but those of you who have...What are your impressions?!

I'll be copy and pasting some of your impressions here on the front page, so be sure to post your thoughts! Also, be sure to post a pic of your avatar for use in a special little project Suns and I will be working on...=)

GearHeads:
Grymm: Personally, I thought I was gonna HATE the Avatars, but since I got somewhat of an acurate look-alike for me (only thing that's really different is the tattoo, eyebrow piercing, and my hair's a bit longer) I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

Blankman: The installation of games onto your hard drive is just gravy.  It ranges on the time it takes to install onto the HDD anywhere from six minutes (Left4Dead) to seven/eight minutes (Gears 2 & Fable 2, respectively).  Less wear and tear on your disc drive, less power consumption, and less heat generated.  Nice!

Robbins: So far, the avatar creation is A LOT better than I was expecting. There are tons of things to customize your little guy with, and it definitely impressed me. The whole dashboard in general now flows a lot smoother than the previous (thank GOD!).

The Wife and Kids…
Blankman: I explained it to my wife and she's pretty excited about it too.  In fact, Sherri even designed her own avatar.  LOL
Chris: I really enjoyed making mine and had a lot of fun watching my kids make their avatars.  They both did it all by themselves.
Windowlicker: My girlfriend got home and I showed her and helped her make a profile she loved it and she hates games.

Thanks for your thoughts, GearHeads- Keep 'em coming!

Apparently some pics of a previously unseen multiplayer map have surfaced on Flickr.  The map looks to revolve around Imulsion and shows off a bit of destroyed beauty.  

Xbox360Fanboy has an article asking the obvious: DLC Coming soon?!?

With evidence of DLC based on Gears 2 environments, are you excited or would you rather be looking at some new Gears 1 maps to download?

Just like a prophet, 3Suns made the call that the Gearheads would be the first to conquer Wave 50 on Insane difficulty when Cliff divulged that Epic’s best testers only made it to Wave 17 or so.  Well true believers, we did it. We did it within the first eight days of the game’s release.  ***I'm not sure about those claiming that they've beaten it on Insane difficulty on the official Epic forums, but this image that I provided is proof enough.  They're basing this on their scores on the leaderboards.

The band of misfits (cue the ‘A-Team’ theme music) consisted of:  Zoso Fan, Infidel, 3Suns, Sai Tyrus, and myself (Blankman).  The core three from Wave 1 thru 50 were: Zoso, Infidel, and myself.  Many thanks go out to 3Suns' boys (Johann and Timothy), PureRage, Razor Hanzo, Degrees, Robbins, Grymmy, Jambi, and Really Doe for filling in along the way. This was truly a community accomplishment! :D

We started from Wave 1 on the ‘Day One’ map and whittled away at this for about three days.  The dirty, dirty Horde didn’t stand a damn chance!  Forget about throwing the kitchen sink at us, the Locusts threw the damn house!  We have it all on film, baby!  Gearheads FTMFW!!!

*BTW: Happy Birthday, Zos!!!  He's 22 today!  We hope that you get everything you wished for!  Steph was making him a Gears-themed cake!  Awesome! :)

It's 4:30 AM.  I just got done playing Horde, Warzone, Submission, Meatflag, Wingman and then even MORE Horde. A journey that started around 10 PM CST and ended SIX hours later.

THIS IS FRAGFEST!!!

I played just about every gametype Gears 2 had to offer with David, Jason, JayFresh and more hailing from California representing the 1UP Community.  Also by my side for the night was our good friend N'Gai Croal from Newsweek's LevelUp blog and my Wingman partner 'till the end, Chantal who kept me company for the hour or so we tried to get Xbox Live to work. (And who left me ammo-less ;)

This was a night of laughs, stolen ammo, 28 rounds of Horde on hardcore, bloody locusts and broken internetz...Truly, only Avatars could have made this experience more enjoyable.

But the best part was going to bed around 4:30 AM and still seeing 14 GearHeads online playing Gears 2. Oooooh yeaah baby!

I've got some hilarious stories and cool pics from the night inside.
So, what's your story?

Gearheads, I finished Gears of War 2's campaign last night.  Yes, I did.  And wow, I'll just say that it was amazing.  I'll have a review coming sometime next week.  I'm trying to hold off writing the review until I think that everyone here has completed the game because I want to talk about the story in great detail.

So that leaves the campaign co-op on insane with a willing participant, Horde and multiplayer.  I want to experience more Horde this Friday.  I did it on Normal last week with Kenai, silent strike and tyrus.  I figure I want to up the experience to hardcore this time and start from the beginning.  So if that sounds good to you, sign up below for that.  Or if you'd rather play some of the other MP modes, you can sign up for that too.  But I really want to do more Horde this week now that I've beaten the campaign.

I'll be on starting around 8-8:30 p.m. PST as usual.  Oh and congrats to my bro and the entire Epic team for having epic sales of Gears.  The game has already surpassed two million sold.  It took about a full month to do that last time.  I couldn't be more proud of my little bro.