The fate of Carmine lies in your hands! For the first time in franchise history, Epic Games and Microsoft are giving fans the chance to decide the fate of a character in Gears of War 3. By purchasing avatar gear on Xbox LIVE Marketplace, fans and gaming communities around the globe will decide the destiny of the newest Carmine brother set to appear in Gears of War 3, with all the proceeds going to the Child’s Play Charity.

The Xbox community will choose whether Carmine lives or dies by purchasing special Gears of War 3 avatar gear on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Starting July 29, two new avatar t-shirts will be available on the Avatar Marketplace on Xbox LIVE—one shirt reads “Save Carmine,” and the other reads “Carmine Must Die.” By purchasing the “Save Carmine” shirt, you’re casting your vote to let Carmine live in Gears of War 3. Conversely, purchasing the “Carmine Must Die” shirt means you want to see Clayton follow the fate of his brothers.

Fans attending Comic-Con International in San Diego this week will also be able to cast their votes early by purchasing real-life limited edition “Save Carmine” or “Carmine Must Die” t-shirts at the NECA booth (#3145) for $20.00.

Personally, I’ve always loved the Carmines. Yeah, they’re stupid, and their carelessness and excitement to fight usually results in their untimely death, but they add a certain level of charm to the game. I also like the fact that both Benjamin and Anthony wore Sub-Zero style helmets (although it didn’t help Anthony) and didn’t fit the hulked up mold of other main characters in Gears. Seems like they’re going a new direction with the latest Carmine brother, Clayton, who looks like he’s been hitting the gym and is even bigger and badder than Marcus himself. I’m not sure if I’m going to purchase a shirt for my avatar on Xbox Live, but I’d like to Clayton live, save Marcus towards the end of the game, and bring glory to the Carmine family name.

And of course, good ol’ CliffyB wasn’t just going to debut his new baby without showing off one new trick. Gears 2 had human meat shields and plantable grenades; Gears 3 combines the two and gives players the ability to grab enemies as meat shields, plant grenades on them, then kick them away before they explode. Check out IGN’s footage of the demo below.

The Pros

• Epic boss fights with behemoth-sized monsters in every mission.
• 4-player co-op that works flawlessly and actually requires players to work together.
• Stunning visuals that play with smooth frame rates even during the most chaotic fights.
• Leveling system with hundreds of new characters, outfits, weapons, abilities, emotes and call signs that can be unlocked gives the game great replayablity.

The Cons

• Dated controls and other small flaws that should have been fixed since the original are still present.
• New unique co-op campaign style and level design make playing the game alone frustrating.
• Competitive multiplayer feels sluggish and lacks essential features from co-op.

The story's prologue is one of the only times you'll see snow in the sequel.

The first thing players will notice when booting up Lost Planet 2 is a completely revamped way of starting a campaign. Following the latest trend of Monster Hunter-style RPG games overseas, Lost Planet 2 uses a unique system for story mode where players no longer have the option to jump right into a single player campaign; instead, players must now set up a game similar to setting up a multiplayer game, select an episode/chapter and select if they would like to play the game cooperatively with three other people online or play alone with bots as teammates. There’s no way to play the game completely by yourself; whether you play with other people or computer replacements, you’ll always be in a squad of four.

Despite the fact that the new campaign system isn’t a bad thing for a game that’s focused on co-op, it causes Lost Planet 2 to fall into the same category as Capcom’s other franchise, Resident Evil 5, which featured a terrible A.I. partner that ruined the experience when playing without another person online. Playing with friends is fun, which is Capcom’s point, but playing alone with the computer as a partner will drive a player furious as the computer “partner” stands around contributing almost nothing to fights, using items incorrectly and worst of all, not adjusting its own line of sight and repeatedly firing shots into walls.

Whereas the computer squad members are nowhere near as bad as Resident Evil 5′s, they’re still no match for playing with real people and take away from the fun “OMG! WTF is that?” moments that players experience when discovering giant Cloverfield-size monsters with others online for the first time. I had no problem finding others online wanting to play the same levels as me; however, sometimes a player would leave, resulting in a bot taking his place and certain areas becoming more difficult to clear due to having no control over the bots and them being unreliable.

"Oh my God! Oh my God! What is that?" (Cloverfield voice)

Another big difference players will notice is the new level style that is also similar to the Monster Hunter series. Some levels are very short with only one objective; after completing a level the game will take all players back to a lobby with a loading screen where they can review their stats and have the option to leave the game. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about this new Monster Hunter-inspired level style, but I must say, I like it. Though I wouldn’t want every video game I play to have the same short level style of Capcom’s Lost Planet 2 and Monster Hunter, I think it works well for both games and gives them a fun arcade-like feel where you can quickly jump in and out of games and compare stats with the people you’re playing with to see who’s kicking the most ass and who’s trailing behind.

Lost Planet 2 is definitely a solid game with plenty of fine changes, but there are still many flaws that keep it from being a great game which should have been fixed since the first game. The first problem with LP2 is that it lacks any real story. None of the characters you play as have names and even if they did, you wouldn’t have time to learn them as the game jumps around, switching you to a new faction with new main characters at the start of every new chapter. Famous characters from other games such as Gears of War, Resident Evil, Dead Rising and Killzone can be unlocked after beating the game and used in the co-op campaign and multiplayer modes, but their actual use in the story adds nothing besides a different skin over the original character.

Even though they may not add anything to the plot, playing as characters like Marcus Fenix from Gears of War and Frank West from Dead Rising is one of the many unique options that gives LP2 such great replayability. Enemies that are killed in the campaign drop boxes which reward players with currency and other items. Currency that is collected by players can be used to play a slot machine that rewards players by unlocking hundreds of new characters, outfits, weapons, abilities, emotes and call signs — all of which are available to use in both co-op and multiplayer.

Marcus and Dom from Gears of War are both characters that can be unlocked and used after beating the game.

The second problem is the controls: there really haven’t been any improvements since the first game was released over three years ago, making character movement have the same sluggish feel of the original. Although the clunky controls are acceptable when fighting slow enemies in co-op, multiplayer is a whole ‘nother story. The controls of LP2 just don’t cut it when compared to other similar multiplayer games on the market today with controls that allow for more fast-paced and precise gameplay.

While the controls aren’t the best, the main problem with mutliplayer is the unique damage/health system. Weapons like the machine gun take way too many bullets to kill someone; you’ll literally see players chasing each other around the map unloading full clips into each other and neither player dying. To make the damage system even more bizarre, the health recovery system from co-op has been completely removed from multiplayer, which leaves players with no means to recover health no matter how low their current health may be. The only way to recover health in multiplayer is by unlocking the Regen Grenade or Injection Gun, both of which I wasn’t lucky enough to win from the slot machine and unlock in my 14 hours of playtime and 90 levels of grinding.

The last problem I had with multiplayer were the different game modes. There seem to be seven different game modes for players to choose from, yet the only mode with actual people playing it is Team Elimination, which is just a typical team deathmatch where each team races to reach a predetermined kill count. It’s not really Capcom’s fault that nobody is choosing to play the other modes; I guess they could try to make them better, but one of the main problems that can be attributed to the lack of people playing other modes is that the multiplayer game modes have no descriptions next to their names. What the hell is Akrid Egg Battle? I have no idea and I’d like to find out, but there’s zero people playing it and while you can play co-op with bots, there’s no option to play mutliplayer with bots. I had to google “Akrid Egg Battle” to find out that it’s supposed to be a Capture the Flag-style game, which sounds like the most fun mode of the seven to choose from — shame there’s never one game available to play and nobody joins if you create one on Xbox Live.

Cropping an image to get both the players and a boss all in one shot to show scale was no easy task.

All in all; Lost Planet 2 is worth renting, the unique level style allows casual players with limited time to hop in and out of games, and at the same time the new advanced player customization and leveling system make the game’s co-op story mode have great replayability. If you’re looking for a detailed story with memorable main characters, then Lost Planet 2 isn’t for you; however, if you’re looking for a fun game full of big challenges and even bigger alien monsters to fight, then LP2 is the game for you. The large scale, epic boss battles alone are better than any video game to date and make Lost Planet 2 worth checking out.



Guinness polled gamers between January and August 2009, and here are the results:

• 1. Halo
• 2. Call of Duty
• 3. The Legend of Zelda
• 4. Guitar Hero
• 5. Metal Gear
• 6. Super Mario Bros.
• 7. World of Warcraft
• 8. Gears of War
• 9. Super Smash Bros.
• 10. Grand Theft Auto
• 11. Pokémon
• 12. Resident Evil
• 13. Fallout
• 14. Half-Life
• 15. Sonic the Hedgehog
• 16. Counter-Strike
• 17. Runescape
• 18. FIFA
• 19. Kingdom Hearts
• 20. Final Fantasy
• 21. Pac-Man
• 22. Madden NFL
• 23. The Sims
• 24. Tomb Raider
• 25. WWE Smackdown Vs. RAW
• 26. Rock Band
• 27. LittleBigPlanet
• 28. Saints Row
• 29. The Elder Scrolls
• 30. God of War
• 31. GoldenEye 007
• 32. Bioshock
• 33. KillZone
• 34. Skate
• 35. Left 4 Dead
• 36. Need for Speed
• 37. Chrono Trigger
• 38. Gran Turismo
• 39. StarCraft
• 40. Ratchet & Clank
• 41. Pong
• 42. Tom Clancy’s…
• 43. Star Wars: Battlefront
• 44. Battlefield
• 45. Diablo
• 46. Lego Batman
• 47. Mario Kart
• 48. Burnout
• 49. Crash Bandicoot
• 50. Pro Evolution Soccer

The trailer shows off many new features such as a female COG character, a double barrel shotgun and a new tentacle-based lambent enemy. Out of all the new changes in the trailer, the most chilling is Dom’s new look. Many who watch the trailer might not even recognize the once clean-shaven friend of Marcus Fenix.

While running from Locust gunfire, Dom plows through the ash statues and ends up getting knocked down by an explosion, the camera pans in on his face to reveal a broken down changed man. Dom looks across the battlefield and sees the ash statues of a woman and her child, reminding him of his wife and family that he lost in previous games. As Dom is focused on the statue a Locust comes plowing through it. Instead of getting up and fighting back, Dom lowers his head as if he is tired of fighting and ready to die. Man, this game is going to be dark and I can’t wait for April 2011!

Today, it looks like Microsoft aren’t the only people who like to spoil surprises. When going to the official Late Night with Jimmy Fallon website (here) to make sure CliffyB wasn’t bumped again from tonight’s show, I happened to notice the first blog post on the front page showing a random man wielding a giant Lancer. The post states:

“Oh no big deal. Just a Lancer Assualt Rifle from the all new Gears Of War 3 produced by Project Triforce. Oh, and there’s a Locust Drone behind me. You know, normal Monday. Tune in tonight to see more Gears of War 3 news and see some exclusive footage from GOW3. Yes? YES.”

So much for surprises right? RIGHT. I guess Cory Cavin, blogger for Fallon didn’t get the memo that CliffyB and Epic Games have still not officially announced what exactly they will be showing off tonight on the show.

Unfortunately, CliffyB never made his appearance when Epic Games and Late Night made the decision early Thursday morning to postpone the appearance so Epic Games could polish whatever it is they plan to show.

While most people knew that CliffyB was bumped for Justin Bieber and would not be on Thursday’s Late Night, somebody at Microsoft didn’t get the memo and allowed a Gears of War 3 ad to display Friday morning on Xbox Live that confirms Gears of War 3 will be released April 2011. The ad was quickly pulled but the guys over at All Games Beta were able to take a few screenshots as evidence of the leak.

CliffyB is now scheduled to appear on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this Monday and announce not one, but TWO new upcoming games. It is rumored that the second game will be Bulletstorm, described by Game Informer as a new game where “players will take on hideous mutants in a flurry of lead, all the while racking up combos that encourage variety over headshot after headshot.” Check out pictures of the leaked Gears of War 3 ad and Bulletstorm in the May edition of Game Informer below.

The developer’s tournament is currently in round 2 and already has two #1 seeds (in my opinion) going head to head. Epic Games (4), creators of the Unreal and Gears of War series that revolutionized the gaming industry, and current top dog, Naughty Dog (5) whose Uncharted 2 just won pretty much every Game of the Year award possible.

Even the developers themselves are getting in on the action with CliffyB from Epic Games tweeting to Naughty Dog:

@Naughty_Dog YOU’RE GOING DOWN! IT’S ON!

and Naughty Dog responding back:

@therealcliffyb We’ll offer up hugs too if that’s what it takes! We have two fuzzy, cuddly dogs for hugs!

I find myself torn between voting for my two favorite developers Epic Games and Naughty Dog, especially so soon in a bracket. On one hand Epic did create Unreal and the Gears of War series, two of my favorite franchises of all time. Although I loved Gears of War 2, the multiplayer was plagued with problems at launch that prevented me from playing with my friends or even connecting to games.

So my vote has to go Naughty Dog for Uncharted 2, not only because it won every Game of the Year award in 2009, but because I believe it’s the superior game at the moment. Hopefully there is more to CliffyB’s “IT’S ON” comment and we’ll see at E3 2010 with the rumored announcement of Gears of War 3. Check out Epic’s latest tech demo shown at GDC 2010 after the jump that shows off what new features Gears of War 3 may include. And be sure to vote for your favorite developers over on The Escapist website.

Now, Capcom has released a teaser trailer that shows Marcus Fenix and Dom Santiago from the Gears of War series fighting in the Lost Planet 2 universe. The trailer ends with the Gears of War logo behind the Lost Planet 2 logo. Will this be a feature that comes standard with the game, be downloadble content or online multiplayer only? Your guess is as good as mine cause this trailer has me left scratching my head and wondering why all these games are turning into next-gen Super Smash Bros. Check out the trailer after the break.