Here we were thinking the battle for humanity was wrapped up in the Gears of War universe and Epic Games goes and ruins our celebration with new downloadable content! Revealed on GTTV tonight [via Side Mission], the "Forces of Nature" DLC will add three new maps to Gears of War 3 dubbed Aftermath, Artillery, and Cove along with two returning locales, Jacinto and Raven Down.

Revealed by Epic executive produce Rod Fergusson, each map is described as taking place in the middle of or in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Gears of War 3 'Season Pass' holders will get the content free when it launches on March 27. No price was established for the DLC, but previous multiplayer DLC was made available for 800MS Points ($10).

In addition to the maps, the DLC includes four character models, which were previously available as a pre-order bonus (seen after the break); five new weapon skins for immediate use; and two skins only unlockable via the Forces of Nature content. It's a good thing we didn't bronze our Lancers, because it looks like more grubs need killing.

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[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/gztmPtazTN8 ]

Tapping into the rich vein of lonely people playing video games and their desire to establish world records, Rift -- which recently just added a free-to-play option -- held a day-long event on Valentine's Day seeking to marry as many in-game characters as possible. It was a success, and now Rift has the Guinness World Record for most in-game marriages in a 24-hour period.

21,879 marriages took place on February 14, starting at 9am PST. Marriage was introduced in Rift's seventh major update, Carnival of the Ascended. Each participating player earned a unique in-game title, "The Avowed," and quite possibly a nagging significant other.

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What's your game called and what's it about?

It's called DLC Quest, and it's about a quest for DLC. No, really! It's a satirical look at what happens when DLC goes too far, forcing the player to "buy" DLC (using in-game coins) to unlock core features like animation, pausing and moving to the left.

What inspired you to make DLC Quest?

DLC practices throughout the gaming industry have been rubbing consumers the wrong way for a while now and seem to be getting worse. I wanted to make a dig at some of the worst offenders but by the time I got around to it, there was enough material to make a whole game about the topic.

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Massachusetts is the fifth largest state for game industry employment in spite of better developer incentives in other states. Nearly 1,300 industry jobs exist in the Commonwealth, but a recent profile of Irrational Games by The Improper Bostonian covers how the state's grip on gaming could slip if it doesn't step up studio stimulus.

A bill for game developer incentives has been floating around the Mass. legislature for about a year, but hasn't gained traction with lawmakers. The state currently provides heavy cuts for the movie industry, despite the game industry pumping more cash into local economies.

"It's ironic," Irrational Games' director of product development Tim Gerritsen said. "If you look at it, where do you want to put your money? We've got 120 permanent employees. They spend all their money here. They pay their rent here. They pay their taxes here. Do you want Dane Cook? He's here for two weeks doing a film, and he's gone."

"When you talk about tax incentives, that's less revenue that you're receiving, so I think any kind of incentive would have to be linked to hard commitments from the private sector," said Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray, who is coming off a win by keeping PAX East in Boston until 2023. The convention will also make donations totaling $325,000 over the next 11 years to MassDiGI.

The state did lose a major studio last year when former Red Sox player Curt Schilling's 38 Studios moved to neighboring Rhode Island for a $75 million loan. The state isn't likely to lose established studios like Harmonix, Demiurge and Turbine. The problem comes with incubating brand new studios without concessions.

Developers must have Kickstarter fever right now. After one of the most successful campaigns ever with Double Fine, inXile Entertainment has announced intentions to start its own Kickstarter fundraiser.

The Hunted: The Demon's Forge developer wants to use Kickstarter to fund a reboot of Wasteland, CEO Brian Fargo told IGN. Fargo, who recently acquired the rights to the classic PC RPG, is one of the creators -- apparently fans have been bugging him for a new game since they saw Double Fine achieve success. Soon after, Fargo was having meetings and mapping out a production schedule.

The idea is only 48 hours old at this point, but Fargo is on board. He likes the Kickstarter model since it would eradicate publisher influence on the project, but warns that a reboot would likely need a million dollars.

Fargo hopes to launch the Kickstarter campaign sometime next month.

When we all saw the teaser for Halo 4, our first question was: "What is up with that armor?" Last time we checked, he didn't have a jetpack. Could Master Chief actually be Barry Steakfries?

Nope, it's all part of 343 Industries' plan to update the Master Chief's armor for Halo 4. A blog post on Halo Waypoint discusses the "800 pounds of tank and jet fighter" strapped to Chief's frame. "So we pulled that design into the armor and HUD. When you play Halo 4, it's important you understand that you're more than just a gun on the screen. To give you that feeling, we have represented that weight with player physics, without interrupting crosshair and shooting accuracy."

Despite Chief's bulk, 343 describes him in Halo 4 as "a nimble yet heavy superhero." His design will contrast against the bulky Spartan armor design seen in Bungie's last effort, Halo: Reach. "When we first looked at the Chief's armor, we studied what was done in Reach. We knew he needed to be understood as a nimble yet heavy superhero, and contrast that with Reach armor design that was more on the bulky side. Our goal is to hit that sweet spot where we represent what is fictionally true about the Chief while making sure you feel like you're a super-powerful human being when you're playing him."

In short, 343 is aiming to better convey his physical weight to the players -- and it sounds like his movement and characteristics will reflect that. Whether it'll come with a more complex, busier HUD remains to be seen.

[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/b8MhLvjoBTs ]

People love buying unfinished Mojang games -- so how about a game that hasn't even started yet? That's the premise of the Humble Bundle Mojam, the new Humble Indie Bundle going up tomorrow at 10AM CET (which is 4AM EST!) You'll find it on humblebundle.com when it's live.

Minecraft creator Mojang is planning on making a game live over the course of 60 hours --streamed live on the Humble Bundle site -- and everyone who donates will get the resulting game. So what's this game going to be? That's at the mercy of the fans. Mojang is letting people vote on the genre and theme, and both the highest and lowest-scored of each will become the game. So the team could be at work on a "Peter Molyneux Racing Game in a Fantasy World War II setting."

Incentives will also be offered for certain amounts. For example, in the video above, Notch promises to let Jakob Porser shave his beard for a million dollars. "With my fists," Porser added. There'll probably be some real ones too.

This is a weekly column focusing on "Western" role-playing games: their stories, their histories, their mechanics, their insanity, and their inanity.

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"Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," - Rudyard Kipling

Conventional wisdom holds that role-playing games are easily divided into two categories: Japanese and Western, or, before the technical lines got blurred a decade ago, console and computer games. We can name the stereotypes easily. JRPGs are story-based, WRPGs are system-based. JRPGs are action-based, fast, and simple, whereas WRPGs are strategic, slow, and complex. JRPGs have bright, cartoonish graphics and catchy music, WRPGs have realistic graphics and darker music. JRPGs linear, WRPGs open. In JRPGs, your characters are given to you, in WRPGS you create your characters. And so on.

It's not true, though. What's more, it never was.

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Xbox users may have noticed a mandatory patch preempting their power-up procedures today, the effects of which were either immediately apparent or completely unnoticeable, depending on whether a certain color display issue had reared its head. The patch doesn't apply to apps, however, so developers will have to implement the fix independently; a process that will take place "over the coming months," according to Major Nelson.

Technically speaking, "over the coming months" could mean any time between now and the heat death of the universe, but the fact that Microsoft has corrected its own services is a promising start.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 players will have a little more afro in their lives come February 28, when Square Enix releases its latest episodic DLC event, "Sazh: Heads or Tails?" Players take on the role of Sazh Katzroy in an adventure that takes place concurrently with FFXIII-2's main story. Once completed, players will be able to add Sazh into their party, as is the way with these things.

The 400 MSP/$4.99 episode also includes two new card games for Serendipity: Chronobind and Serendipity Poker. Noel's "Spacetime Guardian" outfit and Serah's "Beachware" regalia will also be available that day, bundled together for 240 MSP/$2.99 and a silent confession to yourself that it's okay to play dress-up with your JRPG people.

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There was a time when I would have thought Shinobido 2: Revenge of Zen was the greatest game ever made -- a very specific time, as a matter of fact. The year was 1998, back when Shinobido 2 was released for the original PlayStation. Of course, back then it was called Tenchu.

That's a bit of snark, but it's also accurate. Developed by Acquire, the same studio behind the Tenchu series, Shinobido 2 bears a strong resemblance to its ninja granddaddy, albeit with a few new wrinkles.

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Monumental Games is no more, selling off all its intellectual property, office supplies and tech. Develop reports the Nottingham UK studio, developer of the MotoGP series, currently has "several parties interested in buying" the remains of the studio. It will be fully dissolved by the end of the year.

Monumental's final operating business was its Prime engine, which apparently didn't gain traction. Last month the company fired its remaining staff, after attempts to restructure since December 2010. Back then it committed massive cuts to the staff when an unannounced project for a major publisher didn't work out.

We're of the firm opinion that your time is too precious, too valuable to be spent reading a full review for a game that was already reviewed many, many years ago. What's the point of applying a score to a game that's old enough to be enrolled in the sixth grade? That's why we invented Deja Review: A quick look at the new features and relative agelessness of remade, revived and re-released games.

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Alan Wake's development tale was almost as troubled as the ordeal faced by the game's titular character. After a long creation process, which included ditching a PC version that was always planned, Remedy's first original title since 2003 failed to light up sales charts (despite critical praise).

For fans of Wake's story, its inability to reach 'best-seller' status raised fears of an end to his fiction. Developer Remedy Entertainment defied that notion, announcing Alan Wake's American Nightmare, which is set to hit Xbox Live Arcade later this month. Retaining rights from Microsoft -- its original partner in Wake's release -- Remedy finally made good on its promise to bring Wake to the PC, and Alan Wake's second-printing does little to disappoint.

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Razer is releasing a series of Mass Effect 3-branded peripherals, and you'd better believe every single thing in the product line comes with DLC codes. The wares include N7-themed versions of the BlackWidow Ultimate keyboard, the Imperator mouse, the Onza Tournament Edition 360 controller, the Chimera 360 headset and the Vespula mousepad. There's also an iPhone 4(S) case and messenger bag available to "protect and safeguard peripherals and gadgets from the intensity of the intergalactic warfare in Mass Effect 3."

Available for pre-order now and shipping sometime in March, each piece of kit comes with a code for a "Collector Assault Rifle" and "multiplayer content packs," although the contents of those content packs remain a mystery. We don't know about you guys, but playing a video game has never caused our cell phone to spontaneously suffer extensive physical abuse.

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You guys know about Mass Effect 3, right? EA really wants you to know that Mass Effect 3 exists. Like, so bad. The publisher's fervor for raising awareness about ME3 is so great that it's strapping six copies of the game to six high-altitude weather balloons spread across the globe, and launching them into the literal stratosphere, which is effectively space when spoken in the same sentence as "balloons" and "video games."

Paris, London, Berlin, New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas will all play host to one of these advertising airships, which are set to launch next week. Eventually though, these puppies are coming back down.

Each copy of the game is equipped with a GPS tracking device, and crazy people will be able to monitor the games' positions on the official Mass Effect website. Once they land, whoever scrambles to a crash site first will get to keep the copy and play the game a week early, assuming the damn thing is still somehow intact. Here's hoping that the balloons are just as involved in the descent as they are in the flight, but just to be safe we're going to calculate the terminal velocity of a 360 case and call our insurance company.

The Max Payne series, originally created by Alan Wake's Remedy Entertainment, follows a few traditions -- no driving, no brawling, and an emphasis on blazing noir-style gunplay. None of this is going to change in Max Payne 3, Rockstar said in this week's Asked & Answered session.

"As we've stated in the past, we're working very hard to ensure that we're being faithful and true to the heritage of Max Payne -- and the heart and soul of Max Payne gameplay has always been as a pure shooter," Rockstar said. Max will have melee opportunities in close-quarter combat, but otherwise Rockstar has "no intention of betraying that to introduce driving/racing or brawling elements."

Rockstar also provided a brief update on its mobile installment of the original Max Payne, saying it should see an official launch in the next couple months, with a release date to be announced soon.

Rockstar fields more questions about Remedy and Max Payne 3 on its Asked & Answered page.