Emergence Day 2006

...and once all the celebrations cool down, all the prizes are gone, only then will the rest of us in the UK and Europe get our chance to actually BUY and PLAY Gears of War.

Another kick in the nuts for non-American gamers. Would it have killed them to wait another week? Would it have killed them to released GoW at the same time?

Thanks Epic.

yep i agree m8...same day release would be better ...fingers cross someone jumps gun and sells game on wednesday.

I can do nothing but agree with Insomnious

i really hope so but game are actually gay

But it happened and it is better!

It's odd that today is technically the launch date of GoW but Epic did a very rare thing, actually allowed people to sell it when they received it (Nov. 7).

But today is definitely an important day for the Xbox 360, because this game is a definite reason to own an Xbox 360, and the more attention GoW gets, the more attention the Xbox 360 will get during the holiday shopping rush (especially since we ALL know the PS3 will have a massive shortage (predictably bigger than the 360's) because of only having 400,000 units, which will give the 360 a huge advantage). It also shows current Xbox 360 owners that this game is a game that you MUST have, a game that completes your Xbox 360, like with Halo on the original Xbox.

Also, I am sure Epic will do a "European Emergence Day" celebration as well.

This game deserves all this attention and the hype it got, its an extremely good game and an excellent piece of work.

I was hoping to join in on this fun but GoW killed my XBox, and now I have to wait 2 weeks for it to get repaired.

The only 'bonus' that I can see for UK gamers is the deal on trade-in's they have for the Gears of War release; bring back one of a selection of games and get £30 off. Not bad I suppose. Similar to these deals;

http://www.game.co.uk/lowdown.aspx?lid=6673

I received a leaflet with my purchase of CoD3 today at Game in Dundee.

i should get the game on tuesday as i work in a games shop. cant wait

I was playing a bit, but got tired of having to try to join a game, only to get kicked off again, and again and again, this whole "Lost connection with Host" thing is annoying as hell...seriously, it's about 80% of the time, it really gets on my nerves.

I agree with # 10. I havent been able to enjoy online play due to "lost connection with host" happening over and over.

I guess I was expecting more from Emergence Day. Let's see, there is a leaderboard tournament, a chance to win a surround sound system (which I already have),a chance to game with Megadeth (do I really care?), some gamerpics, and a video for CliffyB.

Come on Microsoft he can do better than this!

We've gone through the game 3 times; once on each difficulty. I must say that while the game is good...it's extremely short. The graphics are good, but not as amazing as I had thought they would be.

Multiplayer? I haven't been able to connect. I'm getting really tired of this "be a host or find a host manually" crap. Why does no other game use Halo 2's style of matchmaking? Searching for a "good lobby" gets really old. Sure, there's usually a "quickmatch" option but it's not as effective.

I tried to avoid diving head-first into the media about the game because that just sets someone up for disappointment (*cough* Final Fantasy XII *cough*). I'm glad I did, otherwise, I might be somewhat disappointed. Personally, I think Dead Rising is the better game this year.

*sigh* the wait for Halo 3...

For all of you saying that you keep getting connection lost, it's because you are trying to join a room that is full try to join one that is about half full so that it hasn't filled up since you refreshed the list and when you try to join the game.

im there

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who can't get into a multiplayer match.

Hey Nutman - thanks for the completely useless piece of advice. It doesn't matter how full the room is when you join - it just boots you anyways. Don't defend a system that is completely effed up.

I can't believe that Epic didn't emulate Bungie's matchmaking system. Not being able to play ranked games with friends is so effing lame.....

for those who can't get in a multiplayer game... STOP USING THE "QUICK MATCH" OPTION!!!

Just search for a game manually, and select a game with a lot of open spaces... problem solved. I had the exact same problem with the multiplayer that all of you are talking about, once I started doing a manual search, i've had probably an 80-90% successful connection rate.

Yea it's got nothing to do with rooms being full. I mean if you try and join a quick match and you still get that problem hen there is a problem.

The game is amazing though. The singleplayer is awesome, the amount of detail is astonishing and the polish on this title really shines through. Haven't gone deep into coop yet, waiting for friends to get the game and/or come over to give that a go. I just tried multiplayer today thinking it would be simple deathmatch that wouldn't resemble the singleplayer one bit (ala Splinter Cell) but to my surprise everything is there. The cover system, the awesome graphics and the hectic firefights. So I'm really digging that, though I too am having a problem connecting to many games.

Great job Epic.

well crono,
quick match is an option... so it should work. yes, searching for an open game works a bit better but it still has a higher failure rate than any other game i've played online. maybe a day of the development team playing with the owners of this game complaining about this will prompt them to try and do something about it.
if everyone just shuts up and accepts it and tries to work around it they have no reason to fix the system

Here in the UK it's much less exciting i'm afraid.

By now you've had your copy of Gears of War for a few days. -Nope not out here yet...

You've been summoned to play 24 hours of Gears of War on Xbox Live. Jump online, win some cool prizes.

- Our Xbox live is much crapper, we don't get exclusive prizes, were not worthy, but hey at least we still pay more for the same game.

- download exclusive content and most importantly kick the Epic development team's ass.

No exclusive content from us, well maybe on OUR emergence day we may get a free gamer pic... if were lucky.

/Rant

This game looks amazing, and plays amazing, but most already know that. I was going to try to play for the full 24hours but I had give up the big TV, and didnt want to move my 360 into my room, as my TV only has mono in/out >.

@#6

"6. I was hoping to join in on this fun but GoW killed my XBox, and now I have to wait 2 weeks for it to get repaired."

How did it kill your XBOX? I was playing mine last night and my disc all of a sudden couldn't be read. I had to take my 360 to Best Buy and exchange it since I just bought it a couple of weeks ago and it was covered with the 30-day store warranty. Luckily they let me keep my Hard Drive and forgot to take it off the new one so I got a HDD for my problems. I wonder if anybody else got the same problem...?

First of all, this game could give Halo 3 a run for its money. Not quite as deep or involving of a storyline, but gameplay (campaign) I think bests Halo 2. Multiplayer is right up there, but the matchmaking lacks Halo's ease and simplicity. However don't blame Epic for not having ranked buddy matches, that was Microsoft's call. But Epic IS to blame for the bad host connection errors. However, I found it only to be the case with the "Quickmatch" option. Every time I hosted a game it worked fine. This game should have some great legs on it and I'm looking forward to being able to compare it with PS3's Resistance. I can't imagine R:FoM looking any better or playing any better. Gears is simply a stunning and addicting game. Mad props to Epic on a new IP that did just about everything right.

Odd. I've played Gears with no problems on my launch day 360. In fact, I've NEVER had a problem with my 360 besides a power surge that gave me the red ring of death. After a quick reboot it was fine again. I figure if anyone would be having problems it would be me...

GRAW which is simular to GOW is actualy a better game. Dont get me wrong I like GOW, but I think they had plenty of time to put more into the game than what they did. And I thought there was more true shadowing in the game, all the rendered shadowing is on the characters only, everything else is drawn in. So it really isnt that much better than resistance on the ps3. And whats up with the maps that have rain in them, rain falls on everything but the characters, no water droplets. If you asked me this should of came out last year at launch, and we should be playin Halo 3 right now. We have to deal with more overkill hype and wait till next November for that.

Oh yeah, I would think that M$ would be giving away a SUV or something for Emergence day...

The game is great - we all know that but the whole Emergence Day thing was a let down. One free theme and a pic? The fact that you can't play ranked matches with your own team of friends is a serious hit to this game. Emergence Day was pretty much a whole day dedicated to playing ranked matches with mouthy children striving to win a guitar from wal-mart with a GEARS sticker on it. I was hoping for a little more...some scheduled team tournaments at the very least would have been nice.