(Apologies for the formatting will sharpen it up later)

This is the major details and announcements from the Epic Games livestream (http://www.twitch.tv/epicgamesinc) hosted by Rod aka GearsViking (EPIC Director of Production) and Flak(Epic Community manager).

I tried to highlight the main details of the livestream and it was typed hastily so forgive me if I switch randomly from a description in my own words to Rod's own words from livestream.

Gears of War 3 Q&A - 5th October

STATS:

-The most popular Horde map is Overpass

-The most popular map in development was Drydock

-1% of players have beat Campaign on Insane

-56.5% of players have beat the first ten waves of Horde

-89 million waves of Horde played

-6 million Horde matches played

Events:

-Torque bow tag is a possible upcoming event

-EPIC have more control than Gears 2 in what weapons are where, they can replace pick up weapons and starter weapons in case of events like Torque bow tag

-Shotgun only event is a possible upcoming event

-More Gears 2 XP events are likely in future

-Halloween even is a possibility

Jack in the Box Liquid Green Skins Promo:

-The original plan was to have the skins as a Microsoft employee only skin

-EPIC had planned for a promo with Jack in the Box and they had wanted to do something in-game

-Microsoft volunteered the green skins for a marketing promo

-Rod meant before when he said the skins would be accessible by everybody that they could walk into a store and pick them up easily

-Details are still being figured out for international access to the green skins

-The exclusivity of the green skins ends on January 1st and EPIC could possibly make a new giveaway for the skins

DLC1:
-The first pack is tailored for Horde

-There is a new fortification called command center which will act like a panic button for quick support

-It has three levels: Sniper->Mortar->Hammer of Dawn

-Players can call in each of these to kill enemies

-New sentry is called the Flame Sentry and slows down enemies

-Added another level to decoy, they can now become bots and run and fight as an ally

-Another layer added to the silverback, where you can upgrade it and it now fires rockets and becomes white in colour

-Rustlung - Originally designed to be a medical facility morgue, the buttons that raised cover used to raise slabs for bodies

-Rustlung is now a ship map with storms outside

-Blood Drive - It was the number 1 Horde map on Gears 2 so it will be brought back

-Rod believes it was popular on Gears 2 for Horde because of defendable rooms

-EPIC wanted a darker feel and darker maps for Gears 3 which is the reason why the new Blood Drive takes place at night

-Azura is the third new map

-The new maps can't be played in Quick Match or Ranked they are only available in Private Versus, Horde and Beast

-To play the new Horde maps only the Host needs the DLC

-The DLC pack contains all new maps, fortifications and characters

-The characters are Onyx Guard, Big Rig Dizzy and Bernadette Mataki (Bernie)

-The characters will be available in all modes

-Once purchased they are automatically unlocked you do not need to work to unlock them

-New weapon skins are Team Plasma and Jungle Camo

-Any weapon labelled "Team" means the colour changes on who uses it, so for COG it is blue and for Locust it is red

-The DLC pack will release on November 1st

Achievements:

-250 Gamerscore added

-All in Horde except for one which is a beast mode achievement, there are five in total

-Host with the most - Host a private horde match 25 GS

-Places to see things to destroy - Host a private beast match 25 GS

-What does this button do? - 500 kills with rocket upgrade silverback 50 GS

-Hammertime - Level 4 Command Center 50 GS

-Kill Locust like a boss - Complete a hardcore or above boss wave with five Onyx Guards 100 GS

Other Questions:

-Latin American Gears complained there was no option to play in Spanish on the US disc. EPIC are considering a language pack for this.

-Vengeful medal was designed as a leg up for new palyer

-In beta Nemesis was killed 3 times by an enemy which was changed to killed 5 times by an enemy

-Vengeful requires Nemesis and for good players it is difficult to get since they die less so requirements will be softened for Vengeful

-Skins for weapons besides the five starter weapons? not possible

-Adding Shriekers to Beast? it was difficult to add flying characters and resulted in glitches and players getting out of map, so no

-Difficulty choice for Horde and Beast on public? for matchmaking you need the biggest pool of people, EPIC however can change the default matchmaking difficulty to make everyone play it

-Possibly hardcore Beast or Horde event in future

-Quick match Horde? The problem is new people joining might join in progress even at wave 50, again the problem is segmentation of the pool of gamers. It would mean people don't get to choose map or wave if they join in progress

-Season Pass Confusion - It is like a preorder for the DLC, you purchase Season pass and you get the DLC packs for free as they are released. If you plan on getting 4 DLCs you get a 33% discount if you buy Season Pass over purchasing them separately.

-At some point it will not make sense for the Season Pass to still be there so possibly after all 4 DLC packs are released it will be removed

-Sawed-off - We hear you and we are looking into it. We want to see if the shotguns are meeting their roles

-EPIC will continue to make changes and experiment on maps, pick up weapons and damage values. They did not want to respond to the knee jerk reaction and wanted to make changes after testing and make sure changes are deliberate

-Australian and New Zealanders have had their ping area expanded so it is easier to find dedicated servers

Unlocks:

-The time stamp requirement for Domination weapon skin unlocks will be removed

-Beta unlock fix patch is on the way

Team Epic Gamers:

-These gamers got early access to the game

-You can be an a team epic gamer by helping the community, being a valued member and having a high level of interaction

-Rods words: don't be an asshat

Just got my Cosmos Black 3DS delivered and I'm nerdgasming over how cool it is! (In case you couldn't tell this is more of an excitement blog post than an in-depth analysis of the 3DS).

So far I've played around with it a bit and made my Mii in the Mii Maker, then had a bit of play with SFIV 3D Edition and in a minute I'm going to have a go at playing Ghost Recon Shadow Wars.

You really have to see the 3D for yourself, it's amazing. I found it slightly disorientating at first because it just activates the 3D on full bar but I turned it down slightly and it's looking pretty sweet.

Nintendo handheld fans are in for a treat.

I don't plan on writing any reviews up for the 3DS or the games but I might review Dead or Alive 3DS for a laugh, cause of dat 3D jiggle physics.

(If anyone wants to add me my friend code is 0430-8261-0632)

yay kids! with the release of the highly anticipated Crysis 2 right around the corner Crytek have gifted us with their shiny new multiplayer experience in an Xbox exclusive demo, lets jump right in with the details!

Let’s begin with the handling and controls. I know what people want to know most of all is how does a hardcore PC shooter handle when you bring it to a console? fairly well actually in the case of Crysis.
If you’re a Call of Duty fan you will find familiarity with the controls: reloading, jumping, ADSing, shooting it’s near enough the same layout, the differences lie in the additional control that Crysis allows you.

Your mighty nanosuit powers are mapped to the shoulder buttons allowing you to hit RB for Stealth and LB for Armour. Stealth allows you to become partially invisible with a slight shimmer Halo-style and Armour just allows you to soak up a bit more damage. In the full multiplayer you will be able to swap these out for different powers but at the moment the demo restricts these features.

A great part of the multiplayer is how Crysis 2 gives you freedom to move about the map. When you sprint you move like lightning, you can moon jump like Halo and ground pound in mid air with a tap of B, if you jump and you’re facing a high wall you will smoothly mantle over it, and if you tap B while sprinting forward you can execute a cool ground slide during which you can fire your gun making pew pew pew noises (pew pew noises are optional).

It’s a really satisfying way to move around the map and really suits the hard and fast gameplay of the multiplayer but it’s definitely not on the level of smoothness as Brink’s SMART movement system.

The next thing on the fps checklist is progression. In the demo there is a couple things to progress through and unlock: ranks, 4 classes + 1 custom class, extra weapons, add-ons for your weapons like silencers (pussy), extra skills called nanosuit modules similar to Call of Duty perks which either effect armour, stealth or your power (damage and accuracy), so Crytek have given players a fair bit of customization and choice of options to augment their playstyle. To top it off you also got your tag background which is like CoD tags and a nice little clan tag feature.

So I heard you like game modes? So does Crytek. You got 6 game modes in the full game but only Team Instant Action and Crash Site are enabled in the demo. Team Instant Action is team deathmatch till you reach a kill score and Crash Site is CoD headquarters where an alien drops some sort of radioactive alien device, so of course the objective is to run in there and rub yourself all over it, just be careful because after a time it will explode.

If you’re a bit of an fps fan you might wonder about balance. In terms of guns the shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle and machine gun are all fairly balanced and have their pros and cons, I can’t really judge the level 50 unlocks as these are the only guns available to you in the demo.

One major flaw I can talk about is melee damage, in Crysis 2 you can smack your enemy with a melee attack and it will kill them in one hit, I kid you not. The melee damage works like this: one hit kill without armour on and two hit kill with armour on, except in the case of if you are already damaged or they melee you from behind initiating a Halo-style assassination which will kill you regardless of whether you have armour on. I have no idea if Crytek intended this but at lower levels if you’re close enough you might as well just run around using melee.

Another problem is the spawn points, on occasions you will spawn within spitting distance of the enemy which needs to be fixed so you don’t spawn and get a bullet in the back of the head. One game of Crash Site a guy spawned right in front of me in the green house allowing me to take him out within a few seconds into the game

The last thing I can say, which isn’t a huge deal to be fair, is the demo gun sounds are kind of weak as the assault rifle has a pathetic rattle and the shotgun sounds like you’re kicking a coke can, of course the following unlockable guns maybe a bit more boomstick for player tastes but for futuristic weapons they leave a bit to be desired.

All in all it’s a solid and enjoyable multiplayer experience, a few tweaks and fixes might be in order to maintain a bit of balance but if you’re a fan of shooters like Call of Duty or Halo you might find Crysis 2 offers you something new from both worlds.

I don’t really like rating things on numerical scales but here goes. I give the multiplayer a 4/5.