While a lot of us have been enjoying Gears of War 2 this week, there are many fans out there who do not feel the same way.... Pump-Action Peanut Lobber While it becomes pretty obvious from the start that Gears of War 2 is far from perfect in terms of bugs and glitches, the main beef seems to be with the weapon balancing and how the games pace has been slowed down significantly. A lot of "Shotgun Bunnies" as I like to call them, are not happy with the fact that the good ol' shotty has been nerfed (weakened) significantly, especially since the introduction of stopping power has already made it so difficult for shotgun runners to get closer to their enemies.... If you rev up a chainsaw and walk towards someone you can walk through a whole bunch of lancer fire and even a take a couple of shotgun hits without too much issue, leaving the enemy almost defenseless against your incoming saw attack. A glitch in the matrix We have heard that glitches like the "crabwalk" have already been discovered as well as some issues that we have personally experienced with players starting rounds with no weapons in their hands, as well as the inability to select a different one or pretty much make any use of themselves whatsoever. Leave the matchmaking to Cupid With Gears of War 2, Epic also decided to switch from the simple multiplayer and lobby interface of the first game and change over to a matchmaking system not unlike the ones seen in Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4.... A lot of the fun was had in the fact that there was no real lobby, maps would load up one after the other and everyone was able to have fun playing the game, or enjoy chatting to their friends if they were out for the round.... I am going to assume that the reason that dead people and live people cannot chat to each other after each round is simply a bug and not a choice made by Epic and I hope it gets fixed soon.... Once the host accepts the settings, you sit through another loading screen to get to another lobby, which allows map, character and team selection (no invites can be sent from this lobby).... After the loading is done you are taken into the map but still sit in a lobby waiting for textures (and if needed, bots) to load up as well. After all of that, you then get given a 10 second countdown to the start of the match, as if everyone wasn't ready 2 minutes ago. This new lobby system really breaks the flow of the game and has frustrated some players to no end.... Gears of War 2 is a fantastic game, however there are no doubts there but it has become heavily apparent that Epic needs to make a few major changes to the game if they want the game to be as addictive and successful as the first. While a lot of people played the original Gears of War's multiplayer right up until the day of the sequels release, this weekend, only one week later had a lot of people on my friends list playing other games and even some who had jumped back into Gears of War 1 to get a bit more of the action that they are used to. If Epic are smart, they will listen to their fans because no matter which way you look at it, it is them who will keep the game going strong for years to come. While I personally do enjoy the multiplayer I do have to accept that deep down, it doesn't have the same appeal as the first game and I do kind of wish that they would release a patch to change a couple of things.

Unfortunately we don’t have great news but it’s news at least. Nick (who is busy sunning himself in Sun City) has just received another response from Epic and Microsoft about this issue. We are now chatting with Guy Welch from Microsoft themselves as it isn’t an Epic issue really. Guy had the following to say Last Updated: November 11, 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. …

I really hope that I get proven wrong on this one because if I don't, it will be a pretty sad piece of news for us South Africans. As you all know, a few South Africans have been able to get their hands on copies of Gears of War 2 a few days early. I got the chance to speak to someone who has already gotten a copy and has played a sneaky multiplayer session with a few other of the lucky folks who got it early as well. The problem is that none of them could find the "Flashback Map Pack" code in their Gears of War 2 boxes. Say it ain't so. More after the jump. While there is a small chance that the early copies didn't have the codes, I very highly doubt that there is any difference between those copies and the ones that will be available on Friday. If this is true, it may mean that South Africans are going to completely miss out on the recreated maps from the original Gears of War. The truth is that South Africa isn't officially supported for Xbox Live but one would think that because we get the same stock as Europe, we would have the codes packaged in. At this point I am just sincerely hoping that the guys I spoke to were just hopelessly blind and couldn't find the codes that are actually there. Problem is that it isn't really likely. If we are lucky, the maps will become available over Xbox Live to everyone after a short while, even though a lot of South Africans will need to resort to special measures to bypass the region block on all of the Gears of War 2 content.

Whilst browsing around the gametrailers.com website, I happened to find a neat little video in the user uploads section of a graphics comparison between Gears of War 1 and Gears of War 2. While it is initially difficult to see the major differences between the two games, you will find that a short while later it becomes heavily apparent that the upgrade to the Unreal 3 engine has really spruced the games visuals quite nicely. The original Gears of War already had some very impressive graphics to start with, so the fact the Epic was able to actually make it look even better whilst keeping the framerate the same or even better is quite a feat in itself. Well, it's only a short while now until we all get to see for ourselves, so let the excitement begin. I hate all of the people that have already got a copy, only because I am not one of them.

The Sci-Fi channel is going to be airing a Gears of War 2 documentary about Delta Squad this Friday. The preview is looking really great and seems to go quite in depth on a lot of the characters and the roles that they play in the game. They also discuss the locust attack as well as the entire story in general.

This is sad. A reality TV show is coming to Spike in the US and is going to be "based" on Gear of War 2. The show will have two teams going through hell and performing acts from the game as well as learning to work together as team. If you ask me, this is nothing more than a seriously lame cash-in on the franchises success as well as nothing more than a promotional tool to sell the game, as it is airing the day before Gears of War 2's release. It doesn't really look like its going to be anything like the game and I really think that Epic has sold out on this one.

There is currently a popular story doing the rounds about how Epic Games think that Microsoft is winning the online battle due to their added content. In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, Epic's Mike Capps says that it's due to Microsoft's policy of adding of constantly "adding cool stuff". That's all good and well but it's the next part of the interview that got my interest. More after the jump. He goes on to say the that: "But I love the fact that you boot through the dashboard now - I understand how some gamers might not like it so much, but that's how you join into the Xbox Live experience - your dashboard comes up, you get to see what's new, hey, there's some free stuff you didn't know about - instead of just booting into your game and missing the community." It never ceases to amaze me how people can so easily soften words to try and make something hugely profitable look like it is something that has been done as a favour to us, the gamers. He speaks about missing the community and seeing that there is free stuff available, when in truth, it's actually just all about pushing as much money-making DLC down our throats as possible. This reminds me of the famous quote, "out of sight, out of mind".