We were seriously considering just shutting up shop today and putting up a sign saying Out to Gears Be back Monday But apparently not everyone is taking the day off and so I guess it would be rude to ignore our none Gears fans. However if you are a Gears fan then you have no excuse for being at work …

If you haven't already read yesterdays article about the free map pack codes in South Africa, you can get up to speed by clicking here. I want to make a special note of something rather strange as well. Yesterday, I received my review copy of Gears of War 2 and lo and behold, it came with a voucher for the Flashback Map Pack. This little story of mine does have some serious significance but ill get back to that later.... I have what looks to be some really great news from Epic Games President, Mike Capps. As you all know, I emailed him yesterday about the issue at hand and he promised to get a hold of Microsoft in America and then get back to me. Well can you believe it, he actually made good on his promise. Here is what he had to say: Hey - I passed this along to the MS folks and you should get a response later today. They've got some ideas on how to make it work for everyone. Some ideas how to make it work for everyone? That sounds like really great news although we have to wait and see whether or not MS pulls through. One other thing, remember my story about the voucher in my review copy? Well, long story short, I downloaded the maps and they worked without any region blocking issues, which basically means that if MS does pull through on the codes, everyone will be able to download the new maps straight away and without any issues. As soon as MS contacts me, I will let everyone know what's going on. Let's hold thumbs that this all goes the right way for us and let's not forget to take note the Epic Games cared enough about our little country to actually help us out. I gained a lot of respect for Epic over the last day, bravo to them.

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe 'Mashup' trailer HD So there’s not the same level of gore or brutality there was in previous Mortal Kombat games, sure the fatalities have been dumbed down to reach a teen rating. Still there’s no denying that this game looks like a ton of fun, and I’m going to go out on a limb here …

What would you do if you were killing time in prison for wire fraud? If you’re Johnathan Lee Riches, you apparently spend it filing rambling third-party motions to unrelated court cases. Last Updated: November 6, 2008

Gears of War 'Last Breath Machinima' You don’t have to look very hard these days to find a bad machinima, however the good ones are very few and far between, “the Last Breath” is the first in a series by TheDuoGroup and follows Colonel Victor Hoffman’s most well known exploits and the team he pulled together to make it happen. …

To promote Wii Music in America, Nintendo have released this clip of Run DMC messing around with the game. Once again, I find it really strange that all of these overly happy Wii gamers all live in houses that have white interiors as well as an odd habit of being overly excited about life. It all goes to pot when the kids arrive and everyone is swept up in the amazing experience that is Wii Music. I know I sound incredibly sarcastic about the games value but I still just cannot see the game actually being played more than a few times in most households.

If you’re a standard-definition television owner, you may want to consider canceling that pre-order for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.  Following the recent demo release, players using SDTVs noticed the text was difficult to read. This may remind you of a similar problem with Dead Rising, after which Capcom told fans they’d have to deal without a patch. A Rare community …

This has me kind of worried to be honest. Kotaku report that: "Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, noted during today's quarterly earnings conference call that the publisher may begin charging for user-generated songs uploaded through Guitar Hero World Tour's GH Tunes service. Kotick has previously stated that GH Tunes has the "potential" to be one of the 'credible alternatives to iTunes.' " I want to jump the gun here and say that Activision are just seeing nothing but dollar signs but we have yet to see if any of the users will be able to benefit from their own creations. If they don't then I am not going to be a happy camper. Profiting directly from content created by users is something that goes a little overboard in my opinion and the fact that the songs won't even have lyrics makes me wonder if it will all be worth it. As reported by Kotaku, Activision knows exactly how much money can be made from subscription based services such as World of Warcraft but I don't see this as a step forward for gamers at all. The content should be free and available to anyone who buys the game. If something like this catches on you could see scenarios were all publishers start charging for the ability to access user created content.