Gears of War: Judgment shakes up the Gears formula on the multiplayer side, adding a host of new weapons and tweaking established ones. For example, grenades now stick to enemies when tossed. The video above showcases some of the content found in the upcoming prequel, including OverRun and Domination, a capture-point game type where two teams battle to control three different rings in the environment.
Narrated by Baird, the video gives us a look at the new prize box system, which yields XP bonuses, characters and weapon skins after each multiplayer match based on performance. As you get more ribbons in a multiplayer match, you improve your odds when it comes to opening the prize box.
The last big change is the multi-storied maps. In Gears of War: Judgment, maps aren't as flat as they've been in the past, and players will need to keep an eye out for other players dropping in and, in the case of the video above, firing off a boomshot in their faces.
Gears of War: Judgment has reportedly leaked to torrent sites on the web a full month before the game's March 19 release date. "We are aware of isolated cases in which 'Gears of War: Judgment' content has been propped on the Web and are working closely with our security teams and law enforcement to address the situation immediately," a Microsoft spokesperson told Joystiq.
It's unclear just how finished the pirated version of the game is. According to Eurogamer, the copy of the game leaked is "apparently complete."
"Consumers should be aware that piracy is illegal and we take vigorous action against illegal activity related to our products and services. Playing pirated copies of games, such as 'Gears of War: Judgment,' is a violation of the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use and will result in enforcement action, such as account and console bans," Microsoft added.
Toy Fair 2013 is happening up in New York this week, and in addition to those Tomb Raider minimates we spotted earlier, there are a bevy of various playthings, action figures, and replica items available from a number of famous video game franchises and settings. Just down below, we've compiled a few galleries of the video game-related toys on display for you to browse through at your leisure.
Thrill, for example, at the newly revealed Motorized Patriot figure from Bioshock Infinite. Gaze upon the (still boxed!) figures from Batman: Arkham City, including Talia Shire, Deadshot, and Bats himself. Or if full-sized replicas are more your thing, you can see some closeup shots of the Gears of War Judgement "Taxi Lancer," as seen above. Sure, your significant other may exclaim that you're too old to play with these toys, but they didn't say you couldn't look through a few galleries of them, right?
Those who purchase Gears of War: Judgment will score a copy of the original Gears of War gratis, this much we know; however, Walmart is further sweetening the deal for those who pre-order through the retailer by offering Gears of War 2 or Gears of War 3 free as well.
If you're on the fence, a public demo of the new OverRun mode will be made available to Xbox Live Gold subscribers on March 19, but that just so happens to also be the launch date for Gears of War: Judgment - so that won't be much help for your decision. If you want to score the additional two free games and included Classic Hammerburst skin from Walmart, you're going to have to pre-order before then.
Gears of War: Judgment will showcase its new OverRun mode in a public demo beginning March 19. COGs who pre-order the prequel from GameStop will gain access to the demo on March 15. Those who previously pre-ordered at GameStop will also be grandfathered in.
A nice bonus of playing the demo is that multiplayer XP earned will transfer over to the final game for those who purchase Judgment in the first week after launch.
If you enjoy Gears on any level, you'll definitely want to try out OverRun when it's publicly available. The class-based team was a standout feature of Judgment when we played it.
#money
The first wave of "launch" copies of March 19th's $60 Gears of War: Judgment will come bundled with a bonus $19.99 "value", according to a Microsoft press release e-mailed this morning. More »
Tokens for the original Gears of War will be included in early copies of Gears of War: Judgement. Initial launch copies of Judgment will include a Games on Demand Xbox Live code in all regions except Germany (the first two games are still banned there).
According to Epic, over half of Gears of War 3 players never played the original game. The original Gears is a 6.3GB download valued at $20. Gears of War: Judgment will launch on March 19.
Gears of War: Judgment has a slew of retailer-specific pre-order bonuses for players around the world, covering the US, UK, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands. In the US, those who order from the Microsoft Store get the Classic Hammerburst weapon and Gears of War comic heroine Alex Brand as a playable character. In the UK, order from Shop To and get the same goodies.
Order from EB Games in Canada to grab the Hammerburst, Alex Brand skin and the "Young Marcus" skin, which allows players to be Marcus Fenix as he appeared six weeks after the end of the Pendulum Wars. Australians can pre-order the Special Edition from EB Games to get the game, a steelbook case and the Alex Brand and Anya Stroud skin unlocks. Players in the Netherlands who order from Game Mania get the Hammerburst, Alex Brand and Young Marcus skins.
As noted previously, pre-orders from Amazon get the Hammerburst and the "Young Dom" multiplayer skin.
If you're keen on getting a replica of a fictional weapon - but don't feel like making it out of Legos - GameStop is offering a less laborious option. The "Car No. 13" Lancer, yellow with checkered taxi cab accents, is now visible on the pre-order page at GameStop. The replica is being sold for $99.99 and wil go on sale through GameStop in February.
We've also got four new gameplay videos from Gears of War Judgment. Above, you'll see some campaign in the Mansion level, followed by campaign footage from the Museum level just past the break, followed by two multiplayer videos.
Gears of War: Judgment still includes the series standard "Down But Not Out" (DBNO) mechanic in some modes, Epic Games clarified today. The Gears of War community forums went into a downward spiral after Gears Senior Producer Chris Wynn tweeted, "DBNO is not in any of the [multiplayer] modes." We knew this to be inaccurate as of last week, when we played Judgment's enjoyable OverRun multiplayer mode, so we contacted the studio for clarification.
"DBNO (Down, But Not Out) is featured in the Gears of War: Judgment campaign. As for competitive and co-op multiplayer, a DBNO-like feature exists in OverRun, wherein the Medic class has the ability to revive teammates who are downed with our new stim grenade. The difference is they are stationary and are not crawling around. Grenadiers on the Locust side can go DBNO and then be revived by another Grenadier or a Kantus," Epic informed Joystiq. "And for obvious reasons, our new Free-For-All mode doesn't feature any sort of DBNO. We have more modes to announce in the future, so we can only comment on the modes we've announced so far."
The fact that the company won't comment on modes it hasn't officially announced yet is what is complicating this issue. During our visit last week, the company wouldn't acknowledge Horde mode was part of Judgment either. Gears fans will have to take a "wait and see" approach to what's actually going on, since Epic doesn't want to deviate from the marketing plan.
I do enjoy a nice surprise and Gears of War: Judgment's 'OverRun' mode was the highlight of my recent visit to Epic Games. The mode combines Gears of War 3's team-defense Horde mode and team-offense Beast mode, with a dash of Battlefield's objective-destroying Rush variant, to create another compelling team experience within the Gears universe.
Although Epic still isn't talking about the changes to the cooperative defense-focused Horde mode for Judgment, OverRun feels more like an evolution of Beast mode. Here's the basics: two class-based teams of five, one side COG and the other Locust, face off with the COGs defending and the locust destroying a sequence of objectives. The team with the most points after playing both roles wins.
The maps for OverRun are custom made for the mode, with each objective in the chain becoming more difficult for the Locust to destroy. I played the Junkyard map for about two hours and, much like Horde, you're going to need to play this mode with a group of friends. Without proper communication, it will be nearly impossible to win against a team that's using basic coordination.
#preview
I'm no lawyer, but I've watched enough TV to think I know how to coach a witness. Mostly, shut up. Answer the question and don't say any more than you have to. Don't volunteer anything. It'll only make things harder for you later. More »
Gears of War: Judgment comes from a good "'F' it, what we wanna do?" place. With Epic having concluded the core Gears of War trilogy last year (and this console generation concluding next), People Can Fly's Judgment embraces its Bravo team status of having something to prove, playing with franchise formulas, but staying true to the franchise's established rules.
Despite being a prequel to the events of the trilogy, Judgment works off the Gears 3 playbook of stronger storytelling and gender recognition. The levels of bro-tosity are tolerable with the soldiers of Kilo Squad, Judgment's protagonists. Kilo is lead by series favorites Baird and Cole, who are joined by a former UIR (enemy of the COG during the Pendulum Wars) major Garron Paduk and the book smart, but not yet battle hardened, Sofia Hendrick.
Judgment's story opens with the members of Kilo Squad brought in chains to a military tribunal of one, led by Colonel Ezra Loomis. Kilo must testify to and defend their actions that are played out through the game. Loomis is sleazy to the point of being a caricature, an old Pendulum Wars vet injected into a new type of war. With the game taking place a mere 30 days after Emergence Day, the implication is that Kilo Squad did something super bad to convene a trial as the planet Sera is overrun.
Having survived Emergence Day on Sera, the COGs have apparently decided bureaucracy must live on! Here's the VGA trailer for Gears of War: Judgment, which finds Damon Baird and Kilo Squad put on trial by an evil Tony Stark.
#gearsofwar
The key takeaway to this prequel to Epic Games' sci-fi shooter series is the idea that the humans of Sera thought they could win a fight against the Locust. You've got Delta Squad's Baird and Cole front and center as the Slugs start to break through the surface. Giant subterranean lifeforms? Check. Cover combat. Check. A sense of scale bigger thane we've seen in previous Gears games? It's got that, too. Look for Gear of Wars: Judgment to hit next March. More »
Paul Meegan has returned to the Epic Games fold as its new vice president of product development. He'll work out of the Epic headquarters in Cary, North Carolina, not far from where his career started at Sinister Games.
After Sinister was bought by Ubisoft in 2000, he went on to Ubisoft as Executive VP of production, then bouncing around behind the scenes until he helped establish Epic Games China. He held that job for four years, before bouncing in and out of LucasArts.
"Epic's business has evolved incredibly over the past two decades, and throughout that time, our hiring philosophy has remained constant: 'hire the best and the brightest,'" said Epic president Mike Capps.
Epic Games has been making a ton of high-profile game development moves over the past year. Most recently it found a lead for its Seattle Studio, fully bought People Can Fly, set up Impossible Games out of the ashes of Big Huge Games, and then there's that whole relationship with China's Tencent.
Gears of War: Judgment is available now for pre-order at "participating retailers." We've scoped out GameStop, Amazon and Best Buy, and all three have Judgment open for pre-order online.
Pre-orders of Judgment get the Classic Hammerburst in-game weapon, a standard-issue assault rifle of the Locust Army during the E-Day attack. Epic hints at retailer-specific bonuses, but so far of the big three, only Amazon provides details about a perk: Pre-orders on Amazon get the "Young Dom" competitive multiplayer character skin alongside the Hammerburst.
Check with your retailer of choice for potential pre-order info. Judgment is set to launch on March 19.
We haven't heard anything about the Gears of War movie since back in 2010, when it was said that production was being scaled back. Today it seems the project has new life and is being shopped around, thanks in part to the impending release of Gears of War: Judgment.
Creative Artists Agency is currently looking for producers, Variety reports. The most recent version of the film's script was penned by Stuart Beattie, who also wrote Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. CAA represents both Beattie and Epic Games, the latter of which suffered two high-profile departures recently, both tied to the Gears of War franchise: Rod Fergusson and Cliff Bleszinski.
The "Free-For-All" mode coming to Gears of War: Judgment will be playable at this weekend's PAX Prime show in Seattle. As you can tell by the name, the mode is essentially a full deathmatch, pitting each player against everyone else in a race for most kills.
The PAX demo will offer two new maps as well: Gondola features a series of apartments in the Agora foothills, with players fighting it out on various balconies and yards in a luxury living community; while Library is a huge archival building set in the Gears universe, featuring austere hallways and what are sure to be plenty of lore references to the setting of the game.
We'll definitely play through both this weekend at PAX, and you'll be able to play them yourself when the game arrives on March 19 next year.
#gearsofwar
Sure, the gross, gruff Locust in the Gears of War games have always been squishy and fun to kill. Multiplayer matches in Epic's successful shooter series have generally pit the subterranean enemies against humanity's COG soldiers. But sometimes you just get the urge to give Cole Train an lethal Lancer massage, if only to shut the guy up. More »
For the first time in Gears of War history, a free-for-all multiplayer mode will be included when Gears of War: Judgment launches on March 19, 2013, OXM reports. The first exclusive screen shot above gives us our first taste of Seran-on-Seran combat.
It's part of an overhaul that newly-owned subsidiary studio People Can Fly is bringing to the franchise with Gears of War: Judgment - the first new additions shown during E3 were OverRun mode and a revamped control scheme. Gears of War: Judgment, the fourth installment in Epic's saw-em-up series under publisher Microsoft Studios, stands as a prequel and tells the story of Baird and Cole, both on trial for treason, during the war with the Locust.
When Epic Games subsidiary People Can Fly lost three senior employees this past week, Epic Games apparently purchased the rest of the Poland-based development studio. "One of the things that got missed with that story was that we bought the rest of People Can Fly that we didn't own. We didn't announce that, so that was also part of it," Epic Games VP Mark Rein told us this afternoon at GDC Europe.
"But now we own it all. We had a controlling stake, but the owner still owned a fairly large piece of it," he said. As it turns out, those owners were the folks who left to do something different - despite being in the middle of developing the next Gears of War game, Judgment. "They left, they're gonna do their own thing. They have something cool they're gonna do, and we'll be very supportive of it," Rein added.
It's unknown how much Epic Games paid for the rest of its stake in People Can Fly.
Gears of War: Judgment creative lead Adrian Chmielarz exited Poland-based Epic Games subsidiary People Can Fly this past week. In fact, a trio of management is out at the studio. Epic Games president Mike Capps confirmed the news in a prepared statement: "Adrian Chmielarz, Andrzej Poznanski and Michal Kosieradzki have parted ways with People Can Fly and Epic Games in order to pursue other opportunities, which they will announce of their own accord. Over the past decade, they have been instrumental in building People Can Fly into the talented team that it is today. We wish them well in their future endeavors. People Can Fly remains excited to release Gears of War: Judgment to fans early next year."Chmielarz also reassured fans via Twitter that Judgment is "in great hands," and that we'll hear more about where he's headed next "soon enough." No word on the other two gentlemen, unfortunately, but it sounds like a group effort if you ask us. We're in Europe all this week, which is where Poland is based, so we're hoping to stumble upon his secret plans.
