The official Gears of War website has the full skinny on the upcoming free title update, hitting an Xbox 360 near you on April 9th. The game will play very similar to the Halo series' Team Crazy King gametype, with a 15 second respawn time and unlimited lives. The way Annex works is that a given map will have somewhere between two to five control points, located near key weapon locations on the map. Full details available on gameplay after the break.
Control points are shown on the map with a ring around the weapon's area, and on your HUD with a waypoint, using the weapon's icon as an indicator, showing the direction, who's in control (Red: Locust, Blue: Cog, White: Neutral), and how many of the 60 points (given at a rate of 1 point/second) are available for the taking. After the points have been distributed, another "Hill" will be randomly selected next. The speed at which a team gains control of a "Hill" is dependent on how many member of the team are within the ring on screen. A full team can capture in 1 second, three in 2 seconds, half your squad in 4 and a lone cowboy with his chainsaw in 8 seconds. Once you capture it, you can defend it from wherever you see fit on the map, you're not restricted to staying in the ring of death.
The gametype is still round-based, and rounds are won when a team reaches the host determined number of points. This can be somewhere between 120 and 480 points, with increments logically being multiples of either 15, 30 or 60 points. Annex can be played in both player and ranked matches, which brings us to our next thought. How will this affect the "Seriously..." Achievement? Couldn't a group theoretically ignore the control points and simply frag each other until the cows come home? That being said, playing legitimately also seems to be an answer to expediting the process, especially if you have 19 round games at 480 points per round.
What do you think of Annex? Does it change your opinion on the Global Tournament right around the corner?
[Thanks, SubNoiZe]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-04-2007 @ 3:10PM
DjDATZ said...
WOW...i'll definetly be throwing this game back in my drive to give this mode a run...i think it might be quite fun...plus i like the respawning feature...altho...i would hate it if there were spawn campers...which there are guaranteed to be.
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4-04-2007 @ 3:13PM
mheat2k6 said...
AWESOME!
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4-04-2007 @ 3:18PM
3cubedminus3squared said...
The only problem I see with this is that most of the maps aren't that big. Maybe in the next update we'll get bigger maps.
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4-04-2007 @ 3:21PM
Hoffer said...
Sounds like headquarters in the Call of Duty games. I love that game mode.
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4-04-2007 @ 3:21PM
mike said...
I wold compare the mode to farcrys area mode. Its 100% identical. In halo 2, you have to stay inside the ring, in farcry and GOW you dont
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4-04-2007 @ 3:21PM
raymond said...
people are gonna have a problem with ammo and running out especially the shotgun.
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4-04-2007 @ 3:23PM
DC said...
lol why do you say this game will be similar to team crazy king? its a lot more like territories than team crazy king.
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4-04-2007 @ 3:25PM
Matt said...
First of all, I have to commend the xbox360fanboy bloggers. I have RSS feeds to all the major gaming websites as well as many of the other sites in the "fanboy" family and you guys are first with all the big news. It's awesome. Keep it up!
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4-04-2007 @ 3:27PM
Knuckles Dawson said...
DC (#7), Territories doesn't have alternating control points, KoTH does. I mean, it's an obvious blend of both, but the KoTH spin makes people think more about it than just saying "OMGsh Territory-cl0ne". Alright?
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4-04-2007 @ 3:36PM
erivera3 said...
Interesting how Halo 2 had this and so many other possible gametypes, and Gears of War is JUST NOW getting its second game type besides a team slayer. Just think how insanely amazing halo 3 will be!
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4-04-2007 @ 4:04PM
Dope said...
WHO CAREs about Halo when we have the BEST GAME EVER MADE!!! ***GEARS OF WAR***
This game type is gonna ROCK!!!! GOW BABY!!!
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4-04-2007 @ 5:02PM
Crazy Nut BE said...
Sounds like a good reason to play this game again. Also, this will be a great gametype to get your 10k kills achievement on (because people respawn and you can kill more in a round)
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4-04-2007 @ 7:06PM
Gemini Ace said...
When are they going to change the achievements from ranked to non-ranked games?
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4-04-2007 @ 7:43PM
FanBoyy said...
www.gearsofwartournaments.com launched today too.. w00t!
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4-04-2007 @ 8:11PM
Patrick said...
NOOOOOOOOOOOO, i already play too much!
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4-04-2007 @ 8:23PM
Killer said...
:) Now, I can have my Gears of War Addiction without those long one on one battles. 15 seconds and it's back into the fight. mmmmm....I can't wait. Crazy Nut BE is right it's perfect for "seriously..." get a bunch of people together in the game to not go for the control points and just kill each other. Just imagine, 1,000 or more kills in a single match, because people just kill each other and forget about the points. This is going to be fun. It's the unlimited shotgunfest. :)
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4-04-2007 @ 11:36PM
levon said...
damn, i was right. king of the hill style. nice.
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4-05-2007 @ 5:54AM
Boff said...
Definitely sounds more like 'conquest' in Battlefield. Which makes me very happy!!
Let the spawn killing commence!!
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4-09-2007 @ 11:24PM
Reapr 713 said...
Halo 2 is good,and im looking foward to Halo 3, but until then Gears of War steals the show from any Halo game out
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