Out of nowhere, MLG has added Gears of War as a main title to their tour. Over the course of the 2007 Boost Mobile MLG Pro Circuit, MLG will be awarding over $140,000 in Gears of War prize money and pro player benefits, with the National Championship first place prize weighing in at $25,000!

MLG’s GoW tournament rules:

1. No leaving the normal boundaries of a Map.
2. No shooting while Roadie Running.
3. No use of the Chainsaw on yourself.
4. No Land Surfing
5. No Skydiving
6. No Airwalking
7. No Instant Chainsaw.
8. No Remote Control Chainsaw.
9. No Canceling the Chainsaw Animation.
10. No looking at an opposing Team’s TV or projected screens by Players or Coaches.
11. No starting Games until all Player’s status has been Set to Ready.
12. Breaking any of the above rules will result in a Forfeit of the Game.
13. Any sign of cheating may result in a Forfeit of the Game and possible ejection.
14. The Team that doesn’t Host will choose to play as the COG or Locust for each Game.
15. Quitting out of a Game will be considered a suicide. If the Host quits out of a Game their Team will forfeit the Game.
16. All Players must play as a different COG or Locust character.
17. Players must use their registered MLG Login Name during all Games. No Team Name abbreviations are allowed.
18. No Warm-Up Games may be played outside of scheduled Warm-Up periods.
19. During scheduled Warm-Up periods the winners can stay, but the losers must get up.
20. During scheduled Warm-Up periods, Teams still active in the Event have priority over open Stations.
21. When Players are given the option of using a Full-Screen, Teams can use 2-4 TVs.
22. Players may not raise the volume of a TV above 50. This rule doesn’t apply to Station 1 or Players using headphones.
23. In the case of an Xbox 360/TV malfunction, the Game will be restarted from the beginning.
24. Games started without the approval of a referee will be restarted.
25. If a Team fails to report to their Station within 5 minutes of the announcement, they will Forfeit the first Game. 10 minutes after the announcement, a Team will Forfeit their Best of 3 Game Match or the 2nd Game of their Best of 5 Game Match. 15 minutes after the announcement, a Team will Forfeit their Best of 5 Game Match.

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currently playing: Catan, HALO 3 beta, Guitar Hero II
anticipating: Shadowrun, HALO 2 (PC), HALO 3, Quake Wars (in that order)
rest in peace: GoW, CoD3
Shadowrun rocks!

Wow, this is awesome! StarCraft II is official!!! Finally, a PC game I can look forward to!

Check it out at http://www.starcraft2.com.

You can download the cinematic trailer here.

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StarCraft II continues the epic saga of the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg. These three distinct and powerful races will clash once again in the fast-paced real-time strategy sequel to the legendary original, StarCraft. Legions of veteran, upgraded, and brand-new unit types will do battle across the galaxy, as each faction struggles for survival.

Featuring a unique single-player campaign that picks up where StarCraft: Brood War left off, StarCraft II will present a cast of new heroes and familiar faces in an edgy sci-fi story filled with adventure and intrigue. In addition, Blizzard will again offer unparalleled online play through Battle.net, the company’s world-renowned gaming service, with several enhancements and new features to make StarCraft II the ultimate competitive real-time strategy game.

Features:

* Fast-paced, hard-hitting, tightly balanced competitive real-time strategy gameplay that recaptures and improves on the magic of the original game
* Three completely distinct races: Protoss, Terran, and Zerg
* New units and gameplay mechanics further distinguish each race
* Groundbreaking single-player “story-mode” campaign
* Vibrant new 3D-graphics engine with support for dazzling visual effects and massive unit and army sizes
* Full multiplayer support, with new competitive features and matchmaking utilities available through Battle.net
* Full map-making and scripting tools to give players incredible freedom in customizing and personalizing their gameplay experience.
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Haven’t played Wideload Games’ debut effort, Stubbs the Zombie? Maybe you’ve never seen it in stores. Well, that’s no longer an excuse; for $19.95 you can get a digital delivery of Stubbs via Steam.

It looks like HALO 3 will ship with some never-before-seen gametype settings that are sure to drastically change the way we can play HALO. Want to run faster? Want to be immune to headshots? Want to tweak the radar sensitivity or have infinite ammo? It’s all in there (and a lot more) coming to a custom game near you in September.

The custom screen is built into the HALO 3 beta but getting into takes a bit of luck and (from what I can tell) a network error. It appears that the custom games menu option becomes available when someone tries joining up to a party host with someone how has incompatible NAT settings. Several THX’ers have experienced this.

By the way, you CAN NOT play custom games in the HALO 3 beta via this menu. It’s still neat to poke around, though. Some settings in those menus:

• Damage resistance
• Shield multiplier
• Shield recharge rate
• Immune to headshots
• Grenade counts
• Infinite ammo
• Weapon pickup disabled
• Player speed (25%, 50%, 75%, 90%, 100%, 110%, 125%, 150%, 200%, 300%)
• Player gravity (50%, 100%, 200%)
• Vehicle use (passenger only)
• Motion tracker range (10m, 25m, 75m, 100m, 150m)
• Appearance
  • Vis effects (black glow, team glow, white glow)
  • Active camo (good camo that might fool and elite, poor camo that might fool a grunt, invisible)
• Indestructible vehicles (on, off)

Those are some of the more standout settings. Each gametype has several variants and several settings underneath it. Object carriers, VIP’s, can have custom settings while the rest of the team can have different settings. It looks like there are a few new gametypes heading our way including Tank Ball and Tank Flag (I always wanted to play a HALO version of Crimson Skies where Banshees could play CTF).

Punk Rly was thrown into the custom games menu also and has posted a video of this menu to YouTube:

I can say that I’d like to play HALO at a little faster pace. Perhaps the 110 speed WILL work. (Trivia: Gearbox Software wanted to change the running speed of Master Chief in HALO PC to 110% which is why the map Infinity is so large).

Uber special bonus coverage just in from the rumor department: XBOX360faboy is reporting that somebody said that he said that Games Radar is reporting that modders have found new equipment and vehicles that are hidden in the HALO 3 beta. They probably got their information from this thread on HaloMods.com. (Disclosure: Modding your XBOX 360 will get you banned from XBOX Live). Stuff that MAY or MAY NOT be in HALO 3 in September.

New equipment:
Instacover
Smoke (suggested this might be a smoke grenade?)
Jammer

New vehicles:
Chopper
Pelican
Shadow

New weapons:
Flamethrower
Claymore Grenade

New mode:
Infection (described as “Destroy the Flood or become infected. Score points for killing flood or big points for infecting a human. The player with the most points wins.”)

New rankings:
The highest rankings are now Killpocalypse and Killionaire, instead of Double Kill and Triple Kill.

What? No Kestrel? I guess it was too slow anyway.

currently playing: Catan, HALO 3 beta, Guitar Hero II
anticipating: Shadowrun, HALO 2 (PC), HALO 3, Quake Wars (in that order)
rest in peace: GoW, CoD3

Shadowrun rocks!