If you have not watched our Gears of War Lessons series, please take the time to watch the latest Episode.  Skyllus’ Metagame and Adjustments focuses on rapid, on-the-fly changes that can be made during and in between Execution rounds on Gears of War 2.   One of the biggest factors in the development of our strategies was knowing what and how our opponents were going to react to each strategy we ran.  In this instance, we dictated Vision’s reactions because we masked what strategy we were truly running each round.  We executed this by beginning each round with the same setup and making small role changes, largely based on my own actions.

As always, please help us improve by leaving feedback for improvements you would like to see in the series.  This is all in preparation of the Gears of War 3 beta where we plan to truly show you how games can be much more than point and shoot.

Gears of War Lessons:

My complete review of the Turtle Beach Earforce X11 headset has arrived!  The Ear Force  Headset lineup has been around for quite some time and are, what I consider, the most popular headsets among Xbox 360 users.  The Ear Force X11′s find themselves at an entry level price point, typically in the range of $49.99 – $59.99 and can found in a variety of retail outlets including: Best Buy, Walmart, Gamestop and others.

I primarily played with the X11 headsets using an HDMI setup, but also used it with the out-of-the-box Red/White Stereo Connect Cables.  I logged roughly 35 hours of game time, playing the following:

I did not listen to any music, however I did watch Karate Kid and several episodes of Heroes though Netflix on the Xbox 360.  Is the Turtle Beach Ear Force X11 the best entry-level console headset on the market?  Continue reading to view the full review!

This is one of the craziest, legit (no hacking involved) videos I have ever seen on  Call of Duty — hell any game!  Some guy from the Evil clan goes 501-8 by organizing a “spawn trap” against the other team on Demolition.  I have been a part of some pretty wicked, organized spawn traps on many a games:

Never have I witnessed a massacre on this scale — Five Hundred Kills!?  Skyllus and I discussed some of the issues with developers creating the spawn systems in a way that become easy to “trap” and the negative effects it has on the casual players.  If this video isn’t an eye opener to spawn camping, I don’t know what is? Obviously the opposing team is not very good, but I can’t imagine being utterly destroyed like that — just ridiculous.

Competitive or hardcore gamers, whatever the hell you want to call us, are destroying the casual gaming experience. I think we should be involved with the game testing process a wee bit more.

This fine gentleman here attempts to show that the 501-8 video has boosters! I don’t dispute that they were boosting, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Spawn system is broken.

These kicks are pretty fresh!  Meet the new collaboration sneakers  between Star Wars x and adidas Originals. One of the new sneakers is this new iteration of the popular Stan Smith 80s shown above.  The “Imperial Guards” feature predominately red colorway with Read the rest of this entry »

You might remember our post for the Conan the Barbarian Musical from awhile back.  This is another video from the same guys (John and Al Kaplan) and it is just as amazing.  Enjoy!

Microsoft released the big Gears of War 3 information which includes:

First things first, I am pretty excited to see the release date slated for September.  It was widely speculated that the  game release would fall sometime in November due to the release dates of previous titles in the Gears series.  Seems eerily similar to Halo’s release schedule (Beta in spring, release in September).

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Our recent articles discerning some of the current problems with the Gamebattles’ Online Tournaments reminded me of the inherent problem with online gaming — cheating.  Much has been discussed in the efforts to thwart or severely limit the amount of cheating that goes on in online tournaments, however, at least in the Console domain, not very much action has been taken to solve the problem.  In an effort to increase participation, prize payouts, and the overall experience of online console tournaments what needs to happen to make those things possible?

My article will examine some of the reasons why people continue to cheat in Online gaming and a few of my extreme ideas I have to minimize the problem.  I also took the opportunity to include the opinions of my Twitter pals, whose tweets are also mixed into the article.

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This week’s Question of the Week is all about the Call of Duty series.  I know that Modern Warfare really paved the way for the introduction of the “Perk” system and in many ways provided one the best multiplayer experiences, but Call of Duty 2 is, to this day, my favorite in the series.  I felt like the maps and weapons provided a better balance in gameplay.  As GoldenboyFTW tweeted:

Just a dude and his gun, my friends…just a dude and his gun.  What’s your favorite Call of Duty in the series?