Xbox Gaming in South Africa

Epic Games is rewarding loyal gamers with some special treats in Gears of War 3. Cliff Blezsinski tweeted last night that players should, "Look for special unlocks in Gears 3 for those of you who have played other Epic games such as Shadow Complex, UT3, Gears, and Bulletstorm."

As for me, that's a check, check, and soon-to-be check. I hope there's a lifesize inflatable General RAAM. It's just what my virtual lounge needs.

In somewhat related - and rather bizarre - news, game level designer Jim Brown revealed in a recent interview with OXM UK that less than 30% of Gears of War 2 buyers downloaded the free DLC included with the game.

"It's interesting because DLC does well but the numbers of DLC are never going to compare to the number of people who purchased the game. Our Flashback Map Pack, we gave away five or six maps completely free when you bought the game and I think it was less than 30% of people downloaded it," he said.

Perhaps it's so low because they forgot to exclude the copies sold in non-Xbox LIVE countries, which  didn't have any DLC to start with.

Anyways, in the same interview, senior gameplay designer Lee Perry says that "brighter" maps proved more popular than their drearier counterparts.

"You can almost rank how much [maps are] played by how bright they are. The darker, dreary, more depressing maps tend to be on the bottom," he explained,  adding that they "came out swinging on that front in Gears 3 because we have a whole new lighting model and a lot of our maps are brighter, so we try to take that into account. Even the maps that are 'dark', they're movie dark. It just means they're more blue than dark."

In the meantime, don't forget that the Epic Edition of Bulletstorm ships with early access to the Gears of War 3 beta, due sometime around April 2011.