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.

Just yesterday, I wrote an article about how Fable 2 broke the one million copies sold mark in it’s first week on the shelves. As you all know, Fable 2 has a huge fanbase and is proving to be immensely successful. The smile on Lionhead’s faces can only go so far then they find out this next bit of news. …

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.

Could everyone please give a round of applause to CNA for breaking a street date on an important title yet again. News came in yesterday via the Prophecy forums when forum member "Thrawn" posted that while out having dinner with his fiancee at Centurion Mall, they wondered into the local CNA only to find Gears of War 2 sitting on the shelves. Is it really that difficult to keep a couple of games in a storeroom until the release date. I can understand that mistakes happen but why does it always turn out to be CNA? Are they doing it on purpose or are the staff really just incapable of understanding how street dates work. All I know is that Microsoft should lay down a hefty fine on them to make them learn their lesson. For all of you that are already halfway out the door, the forum member reckons that the game will probably be off the shelves by 10:00 - 10:30AM so don't get your hopes up.

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".

When I first got the early build of Scene-It , I have to admit that I wasn't really that excited to give it a go. I mean, I am quite a bit of a movie buff and I do love movie trivia, but these games weren't made for people like me were they? These games are made for those odd happy families that you see in Nintendo adverts aren't they, surely I would find it to be a little lame? Well, myself and a friend sat down to give it a go and we landed up being more than pleasantly surprised.... If you didn't know, Scene It is a trivia game similar to the Buzz series that has been seen in the past, except with a focus on movies. The game usually comes with four buzzer devices that allow players to hit the big red button and then select their answer with one of the colour coded buttons. We didn't get any buzzers for the early code, so we had to make do with the standard Xbox 360 controller. You go through a variety of multiple choice questions that are presented to you in a number of ways. There are complete movie scenes that play out, followed by questions about the scene or the actors that played in them, then you get a whole bunch of other fun questions, like a children's drawing of a movie scene that slowly gets drawn out, or photos from a movie that get revealed on by one. The quicker you are able to figure out what the scene is, the more points you get for the correct answer. Because of the game, we also got to see how the new NXE avatars fit into the whole scheme of things and on the whole, they seemed to do their job just fine, with nothing that special added but a nice touch at the end of the day, further softening up and the game and giving it a more casual feel. At the end of the day, we sat down to just see how the game was. So we tried to play through another round and then another and another until we had to force ourselves to put it down. The truth is that the game is actually a lot of fun to pretty much anyone who has ever watched a couple of movies in their life, and that's pretty much all of us isn't it? With games like this popping up, boardgames better start watching themselves because a game like this makes for a really wonderful social event with some friends and family.

Nintendo DSi 'Introduction' trailer This official video shows off all the DSi’s new toys like the camera and sound playback functionality. The video is Japanese but its pretty easy to understand what they are showing you.The photo, music and voice features all seem neat although there’s nothing new there. Honestly, till they can show me some good games that take …