If you’re in or around the New York City area, we highly recommend going to visit one or all three hand painted building murals featuring “Mr. Badass” himself, Marcus Fenix.
Three different Gears of War 2 murals have recently been hand painted on different buildings across NYC (locations after the jump) and feature Marcus and a few Locusts for aesthetic appeal. The murals will only be up through the end up the month, so hail a cab and go visit a 46 foot tall Marcus.
For those who were willing to slap down the extra cash for the Gears of War 2 Lancer bundle over at Amazon.com and were unlucky enough to receive a broken Lancer, know that manufacturer NECA will send you a fix-it kit.
NECA is reporting that some toy Lancers were manufactured incorrectly, not allowing the batteries to make proper contact which results in a less than functioning Lancer. NECA is offering a fix (a small metal plate and installation instructions), all you have to do is shoot them an email with your name and address, then they’ll send you a fix kit. Lancers without lights or sound are just not acceptable.
After a much too intense (and admittedly repetitive) weeklybrawl between Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, where each fought for Xbox Live supremacy, we are proud to bring you news that a new game has chainsawed its way to the top.
For the week of November 10th, Gears of War 2 has achieved the honor of being called the most played game on Xbox Live. Surprising, eh? Gears 2 kicked CoD4 to the second spot, Halo 3 to the third (how appropriate) and World at War to the fourth. Now we get to keep a weekly watch on the Live most played list to see how long Gears 2 can hold the number one honors. We’re guessing four months and three days. What say you?
After hearing about gamers’ anger and general confusion surrounding Gears of War 2’s online ranking system, team Epic has come to the rescue by explaining how the whole ranking thing works.
According to Gears community manager SixOkay, the Gears 2 ranking system strictly uses Microsoft’s TrueSkill which is was created using chess’ ELO rating system. This means that ranks aren’t calculated strictly by points or kills, instead a rank is determined by your wins and losses AND whether or not you were favored to win the match. Also, the five different icons used to express your rank (viewable above) are used as a general range of ranks attainable, so small fluctuations in your win / loss ration won’t instantly change your icon. Click the jump to read more about the Gears 2 ranking system and learn how it all works. Then, hopefully you’ll be one less confused gamer.
After hearing the community’s complaints and general negative feedback regarding the long wait times experienced during Gears of War 2 matchmaking, Epic’s Rod Fergusson addressed the issues over on the official Epic forums. Sadly, there is no hard fix in place.
Fergusson wants the Gears community to know that the long wait times experienced in matchmaking are limited in scale (riiiiiight) and that Epic is working with Microsoft to speed things up. While they figure out the mess, we’re given a few tips to improve the matchmaking experience, including: restart the search, avoid 1 and 4 person parties, and (our favorite) skip the whole matchmaking mess and host custom games. With a frown on our face, we await a Gears of War 2 patch …
A mysterious set of Gears of War 2 screenshots recently made their way online and look to be pictures of a never before seen multiplayer map that could release as new downloadable content.
The nine screenshots (galleried below) show what look to be a multiplayer map that is surrounded by gorgeous yellow imulsion. And from what we can tell, the screens seem legit and one could easily speculate we’ll be receiving some multiplayer map DLC in the near future. Then again, if you didn’t expect Gears 2 DLC, you’d be one silly Locust Wretch.
With the addition of the button smashing chainsaw duels in Gears of War 2, we’ve always wondered what the best strategy is for rapid B button tapping. Thanks to Chris Paladino and the Gamerscore Blog, we now have chainsaw duel strategy tips and tricks from the Epic crew. Personally, we agree with Cliff’s caffeine consumption strategy that makes one’s reflexes extra twitchy. Though, never tried the the clicky pen trick or the pinkie slide. But they don’t sound too useful.
Protip: Pirating video games just doesn’t pay. As is made evident by the recent lawsuit Epic Games filed against a St. Louis man who advertised copies of Gears of War 2 on Craigslist prior to its release along with modded Xbox consoles.
A settlement has been reached where the St. Louis Mod Shop owner agreed to never sell copies of Gears 2 or any modded Xbox hardware, turn over all modding hardware, pay an undisclosed amount in fees, help Epic identify other copyright violoators and issue a public apology. For shame! Remember kids, pirating games doesn’t pay. Ninjaing games just makes more sense.
Marcus Fenix plastered all over NYC originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Thu, 27 Nov 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
