There’s something rather unusual appearing in the latest Gears of War game: women. More specifically, Gears of War 3 is the first game in the series to feature female characters who aren’t simply NPCs. Kotaku was quick to point out that, according to the universe’s lore, women have been primarily required to pump out babies in order to replace those lost in the Locust invasions (those women that do take part in any fighting tend to only do so as they can’t have kids); nice. Gears of War 3, however, is to feature Anya Stroud, daughter of Major Helena Stroud. Raised by her mother, Anya is, sure enough, one of the aforementioned women who is unable to have kids and…

After a week of big releases including Fable 3, Star Wars: Force Unleashed 2 and Rock Band 3, it seems that the most recent game in the Fable franchise, Fable 3 has rose to the top, claiming top spot on the UK software charts just after one week. Selling over 128,000 copies in the first week of sales has pushed the game to the top of the charts, despite the game only being available on the Xbox 360, quite an achievement I would say. Other top charters includes Fallout: New Vegas which came in at third, falling down from the top spot last week. FIFA 11 also did well by reclaiming it’s spot at number 2. On a side note,…

Are you planning on getting the latest game in the Rock Band series, Rock Band 3, when it’s released this Friday? Well one great feature that was first introduced in Rock Band 2 is the ability to export all the songs from the previous Rock Band games to the latest release. Well with this 3rd game in the series, nothing has changed. When the game’s released this Friday, you’ll be able to import the songs from Rock Band 2 to the new game allowing you to play them in the quickplay and online modes. I should note, if you’ve already imported the songs from the original Rock Band to Rock Band 2, you don’t need to re-do the process as…

We all knew it was coming, the first Halo: Reach map pack has been announced today by Bungie. The map pack, named as the Noble Map Pack, will be released on November 30th and brings with it the first Xbox Live achievements update, adding an extra 250 points for all you point hores out there, bringing the grand total up to 1250. Alongside the points increase, the map pack also brings with it 3 new online multiplayer maps for gamers to enjoy: Tempest – an 8-16 player map set in around an abandoned facility situated on the shoreline. Anchor 9 – set in a UNSC controlled orbital dry-dock, this is a cosy 2-8 player map. Breakpoint – another 8-16 player…

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Gears of War 3′s release date was being pushed back from April 2011, to an undisclosed date during the holiday season 2011. Well today, to fill the void between April and the new release date, Microsoft announced that a public multiplayer beta will be made available in 2011. We plan to host a public multiplayer beta for Gears of War 3 in 2011 featuring dedicated servers. This public beta should hopefully mean that the game is even better when released as they will have the time to make any improvements based on gamer feedback. Lots to look forward to next year!

Bungies second Halo: Reach weekly update has brought more astounding stats plus some more news about the upcoming October updates. In their first weekly update, Bungie announced that over 950 years had been spent playing the online matchmaking modes and over 1360 years had been spent on the single player campaign missions. Although they haven’t given a single player update, Bungie have announced that in just two weeks of the game’s release, over 5900 years have been spent playing the online matchmaking modes, amazing! Alongside the stats announced, Bungie also spoke more about the October updates which mainly consist of bug fixes and tweaks to the system, however, they also mentioned there will be a few extra game modes being…

Halo: Reach has been out for just under 1 week now and in that short time, some crazy statistics have been released by Bungie in their first weekly update. As of last Friday, over8 million daily challenges have been completed and over 78 billion credits have been earned. These two statistics are pretty impressive, however, my personal favourites are that over 950 years have been spent in matchmaking, and over an absolutely massive 1360 years have been spent playing the campaign. You’ll notice that these statistics were as of Friday 17th, so you can expect these to have rose drastically over the weekend, being the first weekend after release. In Bungie’s first weekly update they also announced that they will…

2K Games, makers of American crime game Mafia II, have been keeping themselves very busy recently. First the release of Mafia II which quickly rose to the top of the charts and stayed there for a good 3 weeks atleast. Then just a week after release, they released their first DLC pack, Jimmy’s Vendetta. The first DLC pack followed a totally new character, Jimmy, who works as the Mafia’s clean-up man. You take on the role as Jimmy and work through over 30 new missions ranging from high speed car chases to bloody assassinations. Unfortunately for 2K Games, Jimmy’s Vendetta didn’t really prove such as big a hit as the game itself. However, 2K are springing back with the announcement…

When it comes to installing a game to your Xbox 360 hard drive, it’s always a bit hit and miss as to whether it will actually speed up the game, or just slow it down. For example, many gamers found that installing Halo 3 to their consoles actually slowed the load times down. So with the release of Halo: Reach, is it safe to install or not? Well, Examiner.com have conducted some tests and they’ve found that installing the game onto your hard drive will save you valuable seconds when it comes to load times, giving you more time to shoot and less time staring at a dark screen. The tests found that when loading a standard mission on an…

For a third week in a row, Take-Two have proved that crime really does pay with Mafia II topping the UK software charts for a third week. Despite having a drop in sales of 58%, the American based crime game managed to hold off against Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X 2 which was released the week before. In terms of other notable ranking, as I just said, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X 2 managed to get up to number 2, the biggest jump of the week of 8 places after it’s first week of release. It managed to fly just over Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, knocking it down to third place for this week, don’t expect that one to fight back up….