Gears of War 2

[peeveen]

The (second) flying bit reminded me of the speeder bike chase through the Endor forest in Star Wars Return of the Jedi.

Correct, i mentioned this to the dude I was playing co-op with. I was watching for some Ewok traps that i could fly through

[teddymeow]

Why does the matchmaking in this take an age to find anyone to play against?

I just seem to be sitting, waiting for the bloody game to find someone for me to play against rather than actually playing the game.

I swear that the first game wasn't this bad for setting up an MP game!

I've added loads of you now from the onlince challenges bit so I don't see much of a problem going forward but, what if you guys aren't online? Do I have to revert back to being able to write a sonnet while I wait for matchmaking to select 4 random people to play with (and then wait a similar amount of time for it to pick a rival team!?)

[saturn-gamer]

I hate matchmaking. I hate it in CoD, Halo, GoW2. Wherever. I'm old skool and fancy good ol serverbrowser like UT3, GoW1, Warhawk..

[ezee ryder]

Multiplayer is broken at the moment, until they sort out the chainsaw and give the shotgun back some of its power I refuse to play. Stopping power just doesn't seem to apply to a person charging at you with a chainsaw. I hate to say it but I miss Gears 1 multiplayer

[taurusnipple]

Oh I agree with you. Horde seem's to be the best part of multiplayer, matches still take about 8 minutes to get together but sorting out regular warzone matches are horrible! Who thought that searching for a team and then searching for another team and then hitting the lobby was a good idea? I've been waiting upto 15minutes with the whole thing restarting because people quit out from that length of time. Don't you learn from the successs of the original rather than making a rat's arse out of the sequel? Having friends is the only way to go on this.

The story is a cheap cop out though. It's like they pinched ideas from Halo 1/2/3. They couldn't get more original than that? Pathetic.

If Gears 2 didn't have Horde Gears 1 would piss from a great height on it.

Oh and the shield glitch already! Holding an invisible shield and a boomshot anyone? Jesus, sure the expected 'fix' will only make thing's worse. Massive roll eyes!

[Charlie]

Yeah, matchmaking is currently pretty broken and very tedious. The original's lobby system was almost perfect so I don't understand why they decided to change it in favour of a crappy Halo 3-style matchmaking system.

I hate to say it but I miss Gears 1 multiplayer

I agree. I miss the less diluted one-on-one combat it provided. In some ways I appreciate Epic have tried expanding multiplayer with new modes and new weapons but, personally, I'm not keen on most of what they added. Nearly all the new modes include repawning and Gears, in my mind, has always been about having one life per round and and making the most of it. I don't particularly like the new heavy weapons (mortar and cannon) as, unlike the sniper rifle, long distance kills can be achieved with very little skill. I don't like how grenades now can be tagged to walls as campers just stay in one place and stick 2 or 3 grenades around them safe in the knowledge nobody can get to them and that fundamentally changes the way the game is played. And chainsaw duels will almost certainly (if they aren't already) be overrun with those using modded rapidfire controllers.

It's still good fun but just doesn't feel as pure or satisfying as Gears 1.

[nonny]

I dont really miss the GOW1 multiplayer. If you go back you'll soon find yourself appreciating the differences in this sequel more.

Yes I agree the chainsaw is broken as is the shotty. One needs to be completely overhauled so stopping power actually works and the other needs a slight boost in power. They're both tweaks though and I think on the whole the gameplay in GOW2 is better and more balanced.

Only things I would like to see:

- Ability to make a custom maplist. It was in GOW now its absent, why?
- Ability to not drop back to the lobby after every round. Maybe a skip to next map option just for the host would be better.
- Ability to turn off the extra weapons. The mulcher/mortar/shield, these extra weapons you carry outside your default 4-way slot. Just an option to turn them off in one hit.
- Ability to select vanilla GOW1 weapons balance, like a config toggle option

I think if it had that for the host to pick before the match it would be superb. At the end of the day in terms of configuration/setup pre-match they've given us more but taken away a few options that are now sorely missing.

I'd also love to have the option to record video in spectator mode. Screenshots are fine but given how visceral people die in this game a video would be excellent.

As it is I think GOW2 is great in multiplayer, a few tweaks here and there in a patch and it'll be even better.

[El Leone]

People who claim that the shotgun is now "useless" must be pretty bad at using it. Its still my primary weapon in mutiplayer and I have gotten loads of kills with it. Infact, I'm probably better with the Gears 2 shotgun than I am with the Gears 1 shotgun!

The shotgun in G2 however much I 'love' it at moment does have a bug that cripples its abillity. If you shoot from the hip all the shots hit the ground, sometimes they'll hit the ground right in front of you while others will go alot further but if you switch to aiming they'll go straight onwards. If they fixed that then hip firing will become a little bit more managable. If they could sort that bug out the shotgun would be fine and I'd feel alot of the G1 shotgunners who are having a hard time with it would feel more at home. I would also bet that if they fix the chainsaw the majority of the shotgun complaints would disappear.

Grenades do need balancing, although I do love the mine feature. All they need to do is tone down the detonation radius and the stun radius and it should be more fairer.

Another complaints: Weapons and especially grenades respawn way too fast. Its open to abuse (campers and grenades for example) and in some games it takes away from the combat and makes it a power weapon struggle.

[ezee ryder]

Nah I know what I am doing with it mate

Shooting from the hip, as you mention, is useless cos your shots don't go where you want them to. To be more effective with it you have to aim and the shotgun is not really a weapon you wanna be aiming with.

The way I see it is that Epic wanted to fix certain minor issues from Gears 1 so badly and add new "cool things" (they have succeeded in that a little) that in doing that they have actually taken away what made the original Gears multiplayer so good and addictive. You no longer have the up close and personal feel in multiplayer, it feels like everyone is just running (chainsawing people) and around hoping for the best. The idea of tagging grenades on walls is a good one in theory but put it into practice in Gears multiplayer and what you get is people hoarding up grenades, tagging walls (and floors) then pretty much just camping out. The multiplayer initially started out as fun but now I actually despise it, which is something I never thought I would say about Gears 2.

[NecronomiconUK]

I'm on El Leone's side, but then he did shoot the **** out of me a bit last night :P

[rmoxon]

Am I the only one who thinks having the horde leaderboards based on only the team score (unless I'm missing an option somewhere) is wrong?

It basicaly means I could go online and play it with 4 other people, let them kill all the enemies while I hide in a corner like a liitle girl, let them complete wave 50 and I could be top of the leaderboard with them.

What is the point in that?, surley there should be a leaderboard with each players solo scores too?

[El Leone]

Nah I know what I am doing with it mate

My post wasn't aimed at you. Its just more of a observation of alot of the comments floating around, especially on the EPIC forums. I'm sorry to hear that you're not having a good time though.

Also,

http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=637410

Hi all,

We're aware that some folks are experiencing longer-than-ideal wait times while using the skill-based Public matchmaking in Gears 2 multiplayer. We're working on some solutions but it's a complicated issue as there isn't any one problem; it's a combination of factors. Clearly, scale is one of them as we've had millions of successful matches played online so far, however a small percentage of players are having issues, which is unacceptable. We're working closely with Microsoft to address the matchmaking issues, I promise you that it is our #1 priority, and we hope to have an update soon.

In the meantime, I would like to suggest some workarounds:

If you're experiencing long delays (longer than 2 minutes) or you're seeing your matchmaking search restarting over and over again, please try a different playlist as that indicates a possible population issue with the currently selected one.

The problem seems to be heightened for parties of 1 and parties of 4 so please try to invite at least one friend into your party before matchmaking. And of course the fastest way to play is to have a full 5 person party before looking for a match since you won't have to find any teammates beforehand. Fortunately our new "What's Up" feature makes finding Friends who're playing Gears 2 online easier.

Also, after a match, if you'd like to continue to play with the 9 people you just played with, simply press Y to look at the previous match stats and press X to invite them all to your party so you can continue to play in a Private match if they accept. Private matches, while not arbitrated, gives you the flexibility to set exactly which map and mode you want to play along with customizing other aspects of the game.

And as always, please ensure that your router is set correctly so that your NAT is considered "Open" by Xbox LIVE as "Moderate" and "Strict" NATs make Xbox LIVE matchmaking more difficult. There are many guides available online to walk you through the process of correctly configuring your router for Xbox LIVE so I won't go into the specific details here.

Also, in case you're curious, a few interesting facts about Gears 2 multiplayer so far:

• Almost 3 million multiplayer matches (excluding Private) have been played.
• Almost 1 million screenshot photos have been uploaded to gearsofwar.com
• The most popular multiplayer mode is Horde.
• The most popular multiplayer map across all modes is River.
• The most lethal weapon is the Gnasher shotgun with almost 29% of all kills.

Again, I apologize for any issues you may be having and I hope the above workarounds give you a better experience until we are able to correct the issues we're seeing.

Thanks,

Rod.

Just thought I'd post that in here. I had my suspicions and this pretty much confirms it in my mind. We'll probably have to wait untill the second patch untill we get any gameplay fixes.

[SuperBeatBoy]

Now that i'm back online, i entered my code which i recieved in my limited edition.I got all the maps but i can't see my gold lancer on multiplayer anywhere, does it only apply to human characters, i have the maps though... I've got the gold hammerburst that ezee kindly gave me. :/

Am i missing something?

[Uli]

finished act 2 and i am beginning to enjoy the game. if this is getting even better later on i can maybe agree with the critics praise.

how many acts are there?

[peeveen]

how many acts are there?

Five.