Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to beat the Gears of War 3 campaign on Insane difficulty by December 25th. If you succeed, you'll be awarded the "exclusive Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocoal Weapon Skin Pack," which includes five extra weapons skins: a "Ghost Protocol" Lancer, Hammerburst, Retro Lancer, Gnasher Shotgun, and Sawed-off Shotgun.

If it wasn't obvious, this free DLC giveaway is part of a promo for the new Mission: Impossible movie.

Read more: Prizes for watching a trailer »

Yet another piece of Gears of War 3 DLC has been announced today. Unlike the others announced so far, this will be the first free update for Epic's popular shooter.

The "Versus Booster Map Pack" will be available on November 24th, and will add five maps into the Gears of War 3 multiplayer mode. Its Thanksgiving Day release is intentional, as Epic says it's meant to "give thanks" to fans that have supported the franchise so far.

Read more: Horde Pack now available »

Check out the three winners below of the Gears of War 3 Gears United / Artists United contest as announced by Epic Games and deviantART today. The contest challenged artists to create a work in any desired medium featuring at least one character from the game that "captures the soul-shattering spirit of Gears of War rendered in the Entrant's own original fan art." Entries could be solo efforts--as was the case for the first and second place winners--or co-op--as was the third place winner. For his winning entry, ~Aeonsend banked a $10,000 cash prize along with some nice goods. It's a dramatic image that definitely hits the Gears feel but for my money the third place winner pulls off the graphic novel look just right for Gears. Check out all three after the jump and decide for yourself.

Read more: see the winning art and judge's comments »

Hello, World

Good, it looks like this thing is working. Welcome all to the new Shacknews! Yes, as your first look already told you, we've given the place a massive overhaul. When we started talking about redesigning the Shack, we decided to go all the way and not just slap a new coat of paint on things. The changes you see--and those you don't behind the scenes--throughout the site reflect months of work toward the goal of creating a better Shacknews experience. Read more »

The LA Times is reporting that the Gears of War movie, based on the hit game from Epic and Microsoft, is being scaled back in both scope and budget.

Citing sources within New Line, the LA Times says that work on the project "has really slowed down." The director, Lee Wiseman ("Live Free or Die Hard", "Underworld"), is also moving on to another project. Read more »

A colossal 171-video series of Unreal Development Kit tutorials is now available on FileShack, teaching everything from the user interface and creating a simple level to making your own top-down game in Epic's free standalone edition of Unreal Engine 3.

All but one are by 3D Buzz, the folks behind the 'Mastering Unreal Technology' books and the tutorial videos included with the Special Edition of Unreal Tournament 2004. Read more »

The free Unreal Development Kit has exceeded 50,000 users since its release one week ago, developer Epic Games announced today.

Providing access to the same Unreal Engine 3 tools and technology that power numerous retail titles, such as Epic's own Gears of War 2 and Unreal Tournament 3, the 563MB Unreal Development Kit is available for download from FileShack. Read more »

Gears of War and Unreal developer Epic Games today released its Unreal Engine 3 dev tools as a free download, aimed at providing noncommercial and educational use of the technology that powers many PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games.

The 563MB Unreal Development Kit can be found on FileShack, with various Unreal Tournament 3 assets included to help you get started. Two UDK-crafted sample games are also available: Psyonix's vertical puzzler Whizzle and Toltec's The Ball. Read more »

After demonstrating the latest additions to its multi-platform Unreal Engine 3 at Game Developers Conference, Epic has released a video to showcase said features.

The additions include a content browser for artists to easily find game assets, the multi-purpose Unreal Master Control Program architecture that allows users to track various online play statistics, and a new lighting feature dubbed "Unreal Lightmass." Read more »

During a panel at this year's New York Comic Con, Gears of War 2 writer Josh Ortega revealed that developer Epic has "a ten-year plan" for the action-centric franchise.

"Gears is long-term. The lancer is the new lightsaber," he added, according to IGN. The statements came in response to a question about a potential prequel. Read more »

Developers could soon hit the limits of the Xbox 360's graphics hardware, guessed senior Epic employee Rod Fergusson.

"I think we're certainly approaching the upper end of it, as far as what developers are able to do with it," Fergusson told Gamasutra. In the near term, gamers are covered: "There will be games in development that won't ship until 2010, and I'm sure they'll look killer," he assured. Read more »

Following Epic's statement that the next iteration of its popular Unreal Engine development tools will target the PlayStation 4 and next Xbox first, president Mike Capps has roughly estimated that the next generation will run from 2012 to 2018.

"We've got Unreal [Engine] 4 in production right now," Capps said at GamesFest, according to Gamasutra "It's going to be in the next console generation--our rough guess is 2012 [to] 2018." Read more »