Considering how well Gears of War sold, it came as no surprise that Gears of War 2 was announced at the Game Developers’ Conference a few weeks ago. That’s lead designer Cliff Bleszinski as he tore a paper wall to make the announcement.

Gears was more than just a game for me. It was a gathering of friends and a social experience. This was a dinner in Koreatown, Los Angeles organized by Jennie and Tom.

Granted, Gears 2 will come out in November. It’s a ways off and I will definitely be quite busy then, but I’ll be sure to have a copy and join them again… if everyone’s playing it :)

I’ve been playing N+ on Xbox Live Arcade. I wasn’t aware of the PC/Mac versions at all, and even though they are free I opted to play the console version.

N+ is an addictive platformer. It’s simple presentation is the draw- a stick-figured Ninja, shades of grey and bits of gold strewn throughout each level.

The game has 50 single-player episodes, each one comprising of five stages. It starts off easy enough to familiarize players with controls, jumping, wall-sliding and so on.

All is not fun though, I will admit. Maybe I should say the game gets pretty challenging, enough to have me cuss quite a few times. Oops.

If you guys are wondering what the secret Achievement is in N+, die 1000 times and get 15 gamerscore points. This is an awesome achievement, simply because it popped up as I was naturally progressing (and dying) during play. It’s nice to know that even when sucking at the game so badly, the developers still had the persistent in mind…