Gears of War

1001 Video Games

Gears of War appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Novels

To date, five books based on the Gears of War universe have been written. All five are written by Karen Traviss and are canon material:

• The first, Aspho Fields, bridges the gap between the first and the second game, as well as the battle of Aspho Fields, with takes place pre E-day during the Pendulum Wars.
• The second, Jacintos Remnant, takes place after Gears of War 2, as well as one year after E-day.
• The third book, Anvil Gate follows up from the ending of Jacintos Remnant, as well as the siege of Anvil Gate during the Pendulum Wars, during which Col. Hoffman was in command of the COG forces involved.
• The fourth, Coalitions End, continues the story of Jacinto's Remnant and Anvil Gate, as well as bridging the gap between the books and Gears of War 3
• The fifth, The Slab, deals with Marcus Fenix's time in Jacinto Maximum Security prison.

References

• The achievement unlocked by defeating a berserker on hardcore difficulty is called My Love for You Is Like a Truck. That is a reference to the film Clerks (1994) where it is used as a line in a fictional, Russian metal song: "My love for you is like a truck, Berserker!"
• The character of Augustus Cole (the "Cole Train") shares a name with a character to have appeared on the X-Files television show. The season two episode, Sleepless features a super-soldier of the name Augustus D. Cole, portrayed by Tony Todd, who has been modified to never require sleep. It is unknown if this is a coincidence or deliberate.

References to the game

The game is referenced in the movie Live Free or Die Hard where one of the characters is playing it at the beginning. It also appears in Disturbia where a teenager is killing some time with it.

Technology

According a news item from TeamXbox.com, and as mentioned in a podcast interview with Epic's VP Mark Rein, this game is the reason the 360 has 512 MB of RAM instead of the planned 256 MB. This modification of the system's hardware cost Microsoft an alleged $ 1 billion.

To convince Microsoft that the change was worth it, the guys at Epic took a screenshot of the game as if it were running using 256 MB.

Apparently the Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft Game Studios called Mark Rein to tell him that they had cost Microsoft one billion dollars, to which Mark Rein replied "we did a favor for a billion gamers".

To see the whole news item, click here.

Trailer

The game's teaser trailed used Gary Jules' Mad World as the soundtrack. That sequence was later spoofed through a teaser trailer of Battlefield: Bad Company titled Bad World. A link to the clip is available in the related links section.

Awards

• 4Players
  • 2006 – Best Xbox 360 Game of the Year
  • 2006 – Best Graphics of the Year
• GameSpy
  • 2006 – #4 Game of the Year
  • 2006 – #3 Console Game of the Year
  • 2006 – Xbox 360 Game of the Year
  • 2006 – Xbox 360 Game of the Year (Gamers' Vote)
  • 2006 – Multiplayer Game of the Year
  • 2006 – Offline Multiplayer Game of the Year
  • 2006 – #3 Online Multiplayer Game of the Year
  • 2006 – Xbox 360 Action Game of the Year
  • 2006 – Xbox 360 Offline Multiplayer Game of the Year
• Golden Joystick Awards
  • 2007 - Ultimate Game of the Year
  • 2007 - Xbox Game of the Year
  • 2007 - Editor's Choice Award
  • 2007 - All Nighter Award

Information also contributed by havoc of smeg, PhoenixFire, piltdown man and Tracy Poff.