Back In Gear

In the odd chance that you've managed to complete all the games you planned to play this week, i thought i'd throw this piece of news out that has been mostly overlooked but might provide entertainment for people looking to get back to some old habits. Title Update 6 for Gears of War 2 is now live. Why would anyone be interested in playing Gears 2 you ask? The new title update includes the usual fixes to remove glitches and balance gameplay, but for anyone who owns the 'All Fronts' map pack, The people over at Epic have also randomly decided to add in new social matches. There is a list a mile long of what these social matches do but the short version is that you (or your party) can join and drop out of matches at will without sacrificing XP. You can join a match in progress and jump straight into the action and should anyone leave, A bot will take their place until a new player is found or the round ends, at which point the teams will automatically be rebalanced based on XP without splitting parties, The game will cycle to the next map and the new round kicks off. Basically this means better flowing social matches with little to no matchmaking required and balanced teams. Other changes include improved host selection with bandwidth testing, Improved precision when selecting weapons with the D-Pad and Improvements to client-side hit detection for ballistic weapons. So if you're looking for something to play and are about to throw in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 or Modern Warfare 2 for the billionth time, maybe you might wanna give Gears another chance. Keep in mind though, you will need the 'All Fronts' map pack, which is available on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 800 points (Yes, it's seen a price reduction to coincide with the new update... Aren't Epic thoughtful).