April 18th, 2011 - The Day we go a Thrashing!

As many of you may already know, the much anticipated Gears of War 3 Beta is being released next Monday. "What is Gears of War 3," you may ask? I wont criticize, because you have probably recently been neuralized ala Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith style. Whoever gave Treyarch this technology is beyond me, but apparently it is helping to keep the number of people on Epic's servers down.

All jokes aside, there are some things you must know about the beta before you decide to wait it out until the full release, come September 20th:

1) If you haven't already, you must have purchased Bulletstorm: Epic Edition, or preordered Gears of War 3 to receive access to the beta. If you haven't already, or are tight on cash, recently, a lot of giveaways have been happening online on sites such as Twitter.

2) The beta is open from April 25th until May 15th.

3) There are a few incentives to having a copy your Bulletstorm: Epic Edition as an outlet for playing Gears of War 3. One, the beta is available one week earlier, starting April 18th. And two, there is one more unlockable available during this week that normal people that have won a code, or received one during the preorders will not be able to receive. This brings me to point number...

4) Unlockables Galore! There are many many many unlockables available for the Gears of War 3 Beta, but many of these do not transfer over the the final version of the game. There are however quite a few available that do transfer over to your Gears of War 3 profile. This way you can brag to other players, assuring them that you are better than they are simply because you have more bad-ass items. I for one hated the people in Gears of War 2 that bragged about their Golden Hammerburst or Golden Lancer even though I had one myself. There are also still those gamers that look up to you as if you are God simply because you have these weapons. We have all seen it, but it says absolutely nothing of your skill as they were simple cosmetic Collectors Edition and preorder incentives.

Now that I can successfully take a step down from my soap-box, here is a list of the Beta unlockables (via The Gears of War 3 - Official Forums)

- Flaming Hammerburst
Complete one match by Sunday, April 24 to permanently unlock.
(This is exclusive to the Bulletstorm early beta access week)
- Flaming Lancer
Complete one match during the week of April 25 to permanently unlock.
- Flaming Sawed-Off Shotgun
Complete one match during the week of May 2 to permanently unlock.
- Flaming Gnasher Shotgun
Complete one match during the week of May 9 to permanently unlock.
- Beta Tester Medal
Complete one match in the Beta to permanently unlock.
- Thrashball Cole
Unlocked by Complete 50 matches in any game type to unlock for the Beta period.
To permanently unlock, complete 10 matches as Thrashball Cole during the Beta.
- Gold-Plated Retro Lancer
Complete 90 matches in any game type to unlock for the Beta period.
To permanently unlock, score 100 kills with the Gold-Plated Retro Lancer during the Beta.

As I mentioned before, each of these unlockables are purely cosmetic and do not exhibit anything more than the normal weapons of the Final Gears of War 3 build. They are just there to make you look awesome! I am most excited just to play the game... sure, the unlockables are there to give you more of an incentive...but hell, who wouldn't want to play 90+ matches to get one of those fancy "gold-plated stabby guns."


Until then, rev up those chainsaws, tighten up your thrashball laces, and be ready to see me and the thousands of others online at 2am, April 18th, when this thing drops to the public!

-Disc