Gears of War Update!

Epic is working hard to bring 360 owners its much anticipated title, Gears Of War. This 3rd person shooter has been followed very closely, and any bit of news is going to cause excitement throughout the gaming community.

In a behind closed doors theater presentation during the first day of this year's Game Developers Conference, Epic vice president Mark Rein showed off a few new bits and pieces of the company's upcoming products -- most notably, an update on Unreal Engine 3 and a new demonstration of Epic's Xbox 360 title, Gears of War.

Well, perhaps we should pick our words more carefully than just calling it "new." The demo began exactly as the previous Gears of War demo shown at Microsoft's X05 event did, with one of the game's vehicles roaring through a rain-soaked forest before letting its passengers out to inspect the forest and an industrial factory on foot. The difference with this newer version of the demo is that instead of the characters entering a room and coming across dead bodies and creepy looking enemies towards the end, the characters took a different path to reveal a few new bits and pieces of the game.

Towards the end of this new version of the demo, we got a glimpse at one of the enemy types in the game -- while it doesn't have a name just yet, this type is very similar to the grunt in Halo due to the fact that it is very short, looks like a half animal/half alien, and features a blue and yellow color scheme. We still don't know a lot about the various enemies players will come across in the game, but it's clear from checking out these little guys that not everyone you come across will be a big hulking monster like those we've seen in previous demonstrations.

Most of the other details we noticed in this new demo are related to the game's presentation. Apart from a slightly nicer framerate than we've seen in the past, the demo showcased some of the more minor details like steam escaping from the characters' guns after they fire them and music starting up in appropriately rocking fashion when enemies show up for battle.

Additionally, the characters can now 'snap' quickly into walls when they get close to them. One of Gears of War's key features is how it allows players to use cover, and Epic has frequently said that this would be done in a particularly user-friendly setup by allowing a player to hide behind a wall just by pushing the joystick forward so the character can move up next to it. When we tried this in an earlier version of the game we were able to play, however, it felt a bit annoying to have to keep pushing the analog stick towards the wall before it actually 'clicked' and worked properly, so it's nice to see this mechanic working in a quick and snappy animation that should make the game control better.

But you know there wasn't a whole ton of new information revealed about the game when the longest paragraph in our preview focuses on one minor control mechanic, so it looks like we'll have to wait until E3 (where the game will be available for everyone to get their hands on) for the next big chunk of news to come along. There's still plenty to be revealed on the multiplayer front especially, so look for this to be one of Microsoft's big games at the show.

Sourse: 1UP.com