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OMGZERRZ MEGA TON! I almost soiled myself, just read the below from IGN.com

The November 7 release date of Gears of War 2 is steadily approaching and that means that the hype train is steadily starting to pick up steam. As with every massive holiday release, Gears 2 has some serious expectations to live up to. The first game has sold more than five million copies and with Epic’s Design Director, Cliff Bleszinski throwing around the phrase “bigger, better, more” at every turn, gamers the world over are expecting a lot from the second entry.

Luckily it seems that Microsoft’s biggest game of the year is poised to deliver. While there’s little doubt that you’re going to be blown away by the single-player and multiplayer trimmings, Gears 2 isn’t forgetting about the details. Linked Achievements were first announced at Comic-Con but now we’ve got the skinny on all three of the newly created rewards. Here’s what to expect:

Complete Act 1 in Gears of War: Unlock Anthony Carmine multiplayer skin in Gears of War 2.

Find 10 COG tags in Gears of War: Unlock Minh Young Kim multiplayer skin in Gears of War 2.

Defeat RAAM in Gears of War: Unlock RAAM multiplayer skin in Gears of War 2.

RAAM is back.

For a look at all three unlockable player models, be sure to check out our full image gallery.

Now on to the real list of achievements.

Gears of War 2 Achievements
Green as Grass	Train the rook (any difficulty)	10
It’s a Trap!	Story progression in Act 1, Chapter 2	10
Escort Service	Story progression in Act 1, Chapter 4	10
Girl About Town	Story progression in Act 1, Chapter 6	10
That Sinking Feeling	Story progression in Act 2, Chapter 4	10
Freebaird!	Story progression in Act 2, Chapter 5	10
Heartbroken	Story progression in Act 2, Chapter 6	10
Longitude and Attitude	Story progression in Act 3, Chapter 3	10
Tanks for the Memories	Story progression in Act 3, Chapter 4	10
Water Sports	Story progression in Act 3, Chapter 6	10
There’s a Time for Us	Story progression in Act 4, Chapter 2	10
Better Wrapped in Beacon	Story progression in Act 4, Chapter 3	10
Have Fun Storming the Castle	Story progression in Act 4, Chapter 6	10
And the Horse You Rode in On	Story progression in Act 5, Chapter 1	10
You Are the Support, Son	Story progression in Act 5, Chapter 2	10
Brumak Rodeo	Story progression in Act 5, Chapter 4	10
Does This Look Infected to You?	Story progression in Act 5, Chapter 5	10
Tourist of Duty	Complete all campaign acts on Casual Difficulty	25
Guerilla Tactician	Complete all campaign acts on Normal Difficulty	50
Artist of War	Complete all campaign acts on Hardcore Difficulty	75
Suicide Missionary	Complete all campaign acts on Insane Difficulty	150
Collector	Recover 5 collectibles (any difficulty)	5
Pack Rat	Recover 20 collectibles (any difficulty)	15
Completionist	Recover all 41 collectibles (any difficulty)	30
One-Night Stand	Complete 1 chapter in co-op on any difficulty (Marcus or Dom)	10
Open Relationship	Complete 10 chapters in co-op on any difficulty (Marcus or Dom)	30
Friends with Benefits	Complete all acts in co-op on any difficulty (Marcus or Dom)	50
Once More, With Feeling	Perform 30 perfect active reloads (any mode)	10
Takes a Licking	Melee 30 Tickers (any mode)	30
Organ Grinder	Kill 30 enemies with a cover mounted Mulcher (any mode)	10
Shock and Awe	Kill 30 enemies with the heavy Mortar (any mode)	10
Said the Spider to the Fly	Kill 10 enemies with a planted grenade (any mode)	10
Crowd Control	Melee 10 enemies down with the Boomshield equipped (any mode)	10
Smells Like Victory	Kill 30 enemies with the Scorcher Flamethrower (any mode)	10
Variety Is the Spice of Death	Kill an enemy with every weapon in the game (any mode)	30
Seriously 2.0	Kill 100,000 enemies (any mode)	50
Standing Here, Beside Myself	Win 3 matches of Wingman (public)	10
Beat the Meatflag	Capture 10 meatflags in Submission (public)	10
It’s Good to be the King	Win 10 rounds of Guardian as the leader (public)	10
You Go Ahead, I’ll Be Fine	Win three matches of King of the Hill (public)	10
Back to Basic	Successfully complete the 5 lessons of multiplayer Training Grounds	10
Party Like It’s 1999	Play 1999 rounds of multiplayer (any mode)	30
Around the World, Again	Win a multiplayer match on each map (any mode)	30
Dirty, Dirty Horde	Survive the first 10 waves of Horde (any difficulty, any map)	20
Hoard the Horde	Survive all 50 waves of Horde (any difficulty, any map)	30

You might notice that there are five achievements missing from our list. Check out GearsofWar.com for the remaining handful. Also, click through to the second page for a chat with Cliff Bleszinski where he reveals other unlockables in Gears 2 as well as the fate of the PC version of Gears of War 2.

At Comic-Con in San Diego, you announced “Linked Achievements” and gave three examples of unlockable content in “Gears of War 2“: the characters Anthony Carmine, Minh Young Kim and General RAAM. Will these be characters in the campaign or for multiplayer only?

Cliff: Well considering that those characters were killed in the first Gears of War, I’d say it’s pretty hard to bring them back for the campaign! Seriously though, these three characters will be unlocked for play in all of the multiplayer modes in Gears 2.

You also revealed the mystery behind the return of Carmine. Speculation ranged from “he was cloned!” to “he wasn’t really dead!” but now you revealed in “Gears of War 2″ that Carmine is in fact his brother, Benjamin. How many brothers does Carmine have? Will we see “Charlie Carmine” up next (A, B, C…)?

Cliff: That’s an interesting idea! To be honest I was surprised that players thought we’d clone Carmine or that we’d somehow claim that the bullet through the head didn’t kill him; the answer always seemed so obvious to us that it’s his brother. Benjamin Carmine is just as green and gung-ho as his brother, in fact, he’s even a bit more excitable. Ben has some great lines and moments in Gears 2. His family is a military family and it remains to be revealed exactly how large his clan is.

“Linked Achievements” makes it sound like earning Achievements in “Gears of War” unlocks Achievements in “Gears of War 2″ automatically. Is this the case?

Cliff: No. Players’ Achievements in Gears 1 will unlock content in Gears 2, but they won’t automatically give you Achievements in Gears 2.

Do you need to earn these Achievements in “Gears of War” on Xbox 360, or can you earn them in “Gears of War” for Windows?

Unlockable Carmine

Cliff You can unlock these characters in Gears 2 if you earn the Achievements in Gears 1 through Xbox 360 or PC, provided you are using the same Gamertag.

Does this mean you are planning a Windows version of “Gears of War 2″?

Cliff: Gears of War is a great franchise first and foremost for Xbox 360, and therefore we’re focusing on that platform for Gears of War 2. We’ve decided we’re not going to do a PC version this time around.

What was the motivation to offer these unlockable multiplayer characters in “Gears of War 2″?

Cliff: We know that fans really liked these characters and thought ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we rewarded Gears fans by letting them play the characters who died in the first game?’

Will there be other ways to unlock these characters apart from completing the necessary Achievements in “Gears of War”?

Cliff: We really wanted to reward the fans who unlocked certain Achievements in Gears 1. This content is truly exclusive and you’re not going to unlock it any other way. Which means no, we’re not going to make you pay for the unlockables - it’s strictly a reward for Gears 1 fans.

There’s been a lot of speculation about those three unlockable characters and if those were just examples of “Linked Achievements” or if there’s more in store. Can you tell us anything more?

Unlockable Minh

Cliff: Yes, the unlockable Carmine, Kim and RAAM characters constitute all of the unlockable content awarded for progress made in Gears 1. We didn’t want to go overboard and create 100 things that you get for playing the first game, but just provide a nice little bonus to those who did play through the first game.

Will there be any unlockable content in “Gears of War 2″ earned for playing through “Gears of War 2″ itself then?

Cliff: Yes, just like the first game, players can unlock the “Insane” difficulty level by completing the game. I can’t wait for everyone to try out Horde mode on Insane, it is truly one of the most challenging feats you’ll ever play. Also, as players progress through Gears 2 they will have the opportunity to unlock additional characters for multiplayer, including:

Ben Carmine

Dizzy Wallin

Tai Kaliso

Locust Kantus

Flame Grenadier

A new villain that we’ll reveal very soon. He makes RAAM look like a pussy cat.

Check back to IGN.com for more coverage on Gears of War 2 as we draw closer to E-Day Part Deux.

Unfortunately, Thickcowhideshoes is no longer apart of our site, it was a mutual agreement upon both sides and we both understood that he wasn’t comfortable here, he was a pretty decent writer, this decision is unfortunate, but necessary, but there are many more writers, so, if you’d like to apply to The360Extreme.com, send you’re applications to brentcheetham@the360extreme.com…

I’m looking back into hiring some of the other applicants who were denied because we chose thick, but we’ll be hiring so send us an application.

As many of you know I have been hard at work with the Dark Sector walkthrough, I’ll be finishing it this week and then I’ll be doing a brief video and written review, so look forward to that.

ALSO! THE 360 EXTREME PODCAST IS COMING BACK THIS WEEK! WE ARE RECORDING MONDAY AND HAVE A GREAT PANEL! PLEASE TUNE IN!

Although I have only played the demo, Castle Crashers looks to be a worthy game to finish the summer of arcade. Though I currently lack the points, I look forward to taking advantage of the local co-op in this teenage mutant turtle-esque brawler set in a medieval locale.

Given the option of playing board games or video games parents nationwide will almost always pick board games to give to or to play with their children. Why? Because in some strange way parents feel better having their kids play board games. There has to be a source to this method of thinking, and based on many years of trying to get my parents to play games, here is my analysis on the subject. Firstly many parents don’t know the first thing about video games and they grew up playing board games so they automatically feel secure with their children playing board games. Having this sort of nostalgia also may lead parents to believe that board games are actually superior in the amount of fun that one can derive from them, which as many of us know is not necessarily true. There is also the fear of innapropriate content that arises in parents that do not have the ability to read the ESRB rating on a box. Many adults also believe that board games are more of a social experience than multiplayer games such as Halo, Boom Blox, Smash bros. or even Wii sports. Once at a party at which there were some people on one television playing Wii sports, and still others on another tv playing rock band, an adult had the naivete to remark, “why don’t these kids play a board game, or something social?”. This never ceases to amaze me, do they not see the people laughing, bantering, and almost always wearing smiles? Would they be more comfortable if the video game required one to roll a die and scream out “Jenga Hungry Hungry Hippoes!”, probably, and thats the sad part. So be it through nostalgia, fear of the unknown, and a general phobia of anything not created in the 70’s, many parents have arrived at the sad conclusion that board games are literally good for you, and video games are the sugar coated candies of the fun world to be avoided and looked upon with a discerning eye.

Now I am not saying that all parents are like this, of course not, this mostly applies to the older crowd. The new wave of parents in America game much much more because they grew up with systems like the Atari and commodore 64, this is fortunate for the newest generations of Americans. I am also not saying that board games are not fun, I had my share of fun with monopoly and clue growing up, I just always had to gaze longingly at the lonely console in the corner.

Not a piece of 360 news, I know, yet we cannot ignore the belated surfacing of one of my favorite fighting series on the Nintendo virtual console. The game will run you 9 dollars, and I have yet to download it but rest assured once I clean out the fridge there will be ample space for this fighting favorite.

Lets face it, our Xbox 360s are not anywhere near as powerful as the most recent top of the line PCs, heck my somewhat dated PC can run circles around my 360. Yet we are seeing a major shift to having the lead platform for development be a console, games such as Fallout 3 are being primarily developed for the 360, and Far Cry 2 was put off just so the console versions could be optimized, why is this? Certainly more people own PCs than consoles, not necessarily a gaming rig but as we have seen with the Wii graphics don’t necessarily dictate success. In fact, we are seeing more graphically intense games coming out on console, and more graphics lite games (see: World of Warcraft, Battlefield Heroes) coming out for the PC. Why is it that there is a major shift towards developing these AAA games for consoles? Well according to Crytec, the makers of Crysis, it is piracy. Piracy is a much smaller problem on the consoles, and as such developers such as Crytec have declared the shift to making console games primarily. Already we are seeing that games such as Devil May Cry, Burnout Paradise, and GTA all come out on the PC months after their console releases. So are console owners actually benefiting from piracy? I would most certainly say so, developers are very hesitant to publish on PC nowadays, most of us are aware of the lawsuit that occurred because of the leaked copy of Assassins’ Creed PC and the sales lost because of that. It is just plain safer to release a game on a console as opposed to risking it out on the wide open seas of the PC. This is annoying to PC owners, because now my copy of Fallout 3 won’t look much better than the 360 version, but at the same time if PC technology becomes locked to the console cycles we as PC owners may have less of a need to upgrade. Crytec has already made it known that their new engine wont be out for several years now, so now there is time to just focus on making better physics, AI, and gameplay. So while there is a clear limit to the graphics that the current generation of consoles can produce, I think that by focusing on making this generation better we are going to see some pretty amazing games on the consoles in the coming years.

To download the software for Windows Movie Maker, go to this site, I’ll be happy to answer any questions (brentcheetham@the360extreme.com):
http://rehanfx.org/split_video.htm

This was done on the hard difficulty…

People ask me what other hacks I know for windows movie maker, I know how to do a blue screen effect, and watermark, they were both custom XML files…

I’m EXTREMELY sorry, but I have been so busy lately, I have to read 3 books in less than 4 days, and I’ve also been trying to keep the Dark Sector walkthrough coming along smoothly.

But I’d like to thank our other writers so much for stepping it up. As soon as I get some free time I’ll post some articles!