Source: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/884/884154p1.html

Gears of War 2 Multiplayer Hands-On

Like a Fenix from the flames, Marcus raises the meatflag as we blow the lid off GOW2's multiplayer.

by Andrew Stanton, IGN UK

UK, June 25, 2008 - "This is where the magic happens." For some reason this truism rattled unshakably around my head like beans in a tin can over the entire day spent at Epic Games. We'd been flown to the US to be the first journalists in the world to get hands on with Gears of War 2 multiplayer. My strange mantra was often a reminding prompt – there's absolutely nothing cool whatsoever about Epic's HQ.

Based in the beautiful, but nothingy backwoods of Cary, North Carolina (Wiki it: there's lashings of green, wide roads and naff all else), it's a bland, beige building nestling amongst similarly uninspiring science park real estate. But the mantra also came back as a whooping endorsement when we finally picked up a controller and the fragging began.

Some flavour: Epic truly is indistinguishable from just about every other developer we've visited. Two storey, science park monochrome blahchitecture. A reception bristling with heavy, crystal blob game of the year awards and life-size character figure detritus. The desks of the developer staff are strewn with comic book, anime and geek movie vinyl figures. There's a kitchen creaking at the seams with free sugar and caffeine-rich snacks – the ADHD-inspiring engine room. A rank of arcade machines line up next to the most pristine gym I've ever seen in my life (make of that what you will) and positively cathedral-like, gargantuan loos, with magazine racks of game mag serving as "inspirational" reading. It's tidier than most, but that's no great endorsement. And they knew we were coming, so nagging had probably ensued.

Gears 2 promises to be "bigger, better and more badass", plus now it also includes flamethrowers.

Someone made a pretty sweet remix of CoD4 gun sounds to make an impressive song.

On March 12th, I purchased, played, and subsequently beat Mass Effect's first round of downloadable content in about two hours. The ferocious alien shown above is a member of the Batarian species within Mass Effect's world, and this DLC is the first time you encounter them. The first time you see this guy bare his teeth (pictured) is pretty phenomenal. Killing him is just as much fun, even though he's just a grunt.

MTV Games' Stephen Totilo has some reservations against Mass Effect's side quests, and rightly so. Each side quest drops you on a barren world, devoid of trees and birds, prompts you to enter a facility that had the same architect as the rest of the galaxy, and kill everyone. A handful stray from this formula, but sadly, most follow those simple guidelines. Bioware points fingers at the development time of the game's technology, leaving little time to actually flesh out comprehensive side quests. They are, after all side quests. Bioware promises they'll make it up to us in Mass Effect 2, though.

So five bucks essentially bought me two hours of the best side-quest Mass Effect has to offer. Was it worth it? Rationally, I spend more money for the same amount of entertainment at the movie theater. Also rationally, Mass Effect cost me $60, and it has more than 12 side quests. Being a fan of Mass Effect's universe, I would say the purchase made sense for me. The chance to interact with a new species and get more intel added to my in-game journal helps add even more depth to an already complex universe. Oh, and the chance to save millions of people from a 16km-wide asteroid crashing into a planet was pretty fun, too. That's twice the size of the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, in case you didn't already have that committed to memory.

I talk about the new Mass Effect DLC on my blog.

http://mintz.hushedcasket.com/mass-effect-dlc-1-batarians/

Anyone else play it?

I would like to buy 30mins - 1hr of playtime on your Xbox360. I would like to purchase it after December 3rd.

I need closure on this mission of Mass Effect. Is the evidence enough to convince the Council to take action against Saren?? I don't know! I don't like not knowing. I hadn't even owned the damn game for 24hrs before my 360 died. I have to know.

In exchange, I have a coupon for a free chicken sandwich from Chik-Fil-A, the presence of my company, and some funny jokes. Some people pay a lot of money for a comedian, but I only want to play your Xbox.

Please.

From Gamerscore blog:

As the Tokyo Game Show approaches, we're making a few announcements that we're excited about. At the press conference held today by the Japan team, we announced that Team NINJA will develop NINJA GAIDEN 2, the true sequel to the Xbox original, exclusively for Xbox 360.

We also announced that Mistwalker’s Lost Odyssey will be available Dec. 6, 2007, in Japan, and around the world in early 2008, and SQUARE ENIX talked about two new games for Xbox 360: INFINITE UNDISCOVERY and THE LAST REMNANT.

We announced several new games coming to Xbox LIVE Arcade, including “Every Extend Extra Extreme” (Q Entertainment), “EXIT” (Taito), “Ikaruga” (Treasure Co. Ltd.), “OMEGA FIVE” (Hudson Entertainment), “Rez” (Q Entertainment), “Triggerheart Exelica” (Warashi), “Braid” (Number None Inc.), “Castlecrashers” (The Behemoth), and “Schizoid” (Torpex Games LLC).

And once again, Microsoft will bring the Tokyo Game Show experience into living rooms worldwide as it offers its “TGS Bring It Home” programming, with hours of coverage from the press briefing, highlights from the show floor, interviews with developers, gameplay videos, exclusive trailers and a variety of Xbox 360 content for gamers to download over Xbox LIVE Marketplace, beginning Sept. 13, 2007.

More information is in the press release we just sent out.

If you're a fan of skateboarding or Tony Hawk, you owe it to yourself to try the Skate demo on Xbox Live marketplace right now. I was surprised how natural the controls felt, and the physics were spot on.

EA also had the balls to implement an amazing web feature. I went into the game, skated a little run, went into the reply editor, changed a few camera angles, video filters, speeds, etc., and was able to upload the final product to their website! You can view the video at the following link.

http://skate.share.ea.com/profiles/7639/posts/81522.aspx

Yes, that is me playing :)

The video tool is intuitive and easy to use, and getting my vid online was as easy as linking my EA.com profile to my gamertag, then selecting "Upload Vid" from the Skate demo.

AND the game is a blast to play, too!