Annex is pretty sweet, and makes for a lot of hilairous shotgun deaths. A shame it doesn't count towards the kill achievements.

Yea I just played a few games of it and its pretty fun. We weren't exactly working as a team so there was a lot of just running around trying to kill anything that moved, but I could see it being a lot of fun if you've got competent team mates.

Personally i was getting sick and tired of Gears until i played annex yesterday. It practically reinvented the game for me; it is like a 30 minute non-stop action fest that relys more on teamwork then individual skill and i love it.

plus, defense and rushing the annex circle provides far too many legendary moments that you couldn't achieve or see in any of the other modes. All it needs now is maps specifically designed and tailored for Annex mode and the ability for host to add execution style play to annex.

As a few times on ranked, i've encountered bastards who would down 3-4 guys on the opposing time and then let them bleed out which takes like 20 seconds, so the action becomes nill for a brief period of time.

To fix this, when I was hosting ranked games of it last night, I set the bleed out time to 5 seconds, because people are cockmunchers and that's a totally lame way to play, ESPECIALLY with the circle power boost, it basically one sides the whole thing.

Why would you do that? The idea is to use stratagy in Annex. And that's a good way to go about it. Down someone and let them bleed out. It's less people to worry about when you have just three others trying to take out your node that you've captured.

It isn't strategy at all. It is called be a gutless coward who prefers to play unfair. All the people i've run into who has done this style of play are the same who exploited all the glitches before they were fixed.

Yea I don't feel that leaving someone downed for 20 seconds is part of the strategy the team was aiming for when creating Annex. The strategy part comes in 1) When defending a capture point (or w/e its called) and choosing where to position yourself in relation to teammates and weapons and 2) when charging a capture point with your team.

Get yourself a good team. Then you won't have to worry about that 20 second down time. Like the game is, if you play any of the modes, it's team based. In Annex, it's a whole different style of play. Gutless coward? Don't get mad if it happens to you. Don't hate the player. Hate the game.

Uh, no. Let's see. Host sets up bleed out time to maximum, then abuses host shotgun and circle power boost? The problem with Annex is that thanks to the altered mechanics and host advantage, the host team's innate advantage is HUGE. Abusing downs also helps people get into position to spawn kill while the other players are downed.

If you want to call it "strategy", go ahead. Team strategy isn't "let's abuse the system", it's "Let's find a way to flank them or outsmart them to capture the hill".

But hey, whatever floats your boat. I'm sure weapon sliding is a valid strategy for not getting shot too, right?

What they should do is change Annex like they changed Assassination, and make the deaths Execution style instead of Warzone style. It would have kept the pressure up on the defenders and made it more exciting.

I love this. "It's in the game, so I should be allowed to do it!". Glitchers often stick to this mantra too.

Last time I check, all the glitches are fixed. And it doesn't take a glitch to get a good head shot or bow kill ;) I don't need to glitch to win. If you don't like, then you leave the room. Find another. Go to a different mode of play. I'll say this though, after the patch there's a few things that are different. One good, the other annoying. First it's the wall issue. Too many magnet area's now that kills you to the point that you can't even escape the wall. Broken. The good thing is the Boom Shot. The splash area effect of the Boom Shot is a whole lot different. It acts more of like a UT rocket shot against the ground. It doesn't kill instantly like it used to unless hit directly. Instead it pretty much downs then. So if say you got someone behind a wall, fire at the opposite wall and 75% of the time, that shot is going to spray on them from behind and down them. If not, it's a quick swipe of your pistol and easy down.

Actually, the patch only fixed one type of weapon slide. It can still be done, although crab walking and long jumping and the like has been fixed, that's true.

The cover "fix" is terrible, but if you get used to it it's not so bad. I can now run the same runs I did before without sticking too badly. At first I was having trouble though.

The patch has left me most fustrated for the fact that I keep sticking to walls more/going into cover, I've read numerous other forums threads by other disgruntled players too. It really needs to be fixed, but I am familiarising myself truth be told. (I thought the patch meant less cover but infact NO).

Annex is ok, but useless if you don't have a good team of players or people you know. In honesty it got boring quite quickly; face it people go for the kills rather than the areas which does spoil the fun a bit and just turns into a match of 'respawn kill and repeat'

The one thing I'd love to see Epic do is release a patch so as enabling the host to give you the option of which weapons you take into the match, that would make things so much more strageic and dictate your tactics from the start rather than weapon rushing. (Having an all sniper match would be fun especially when rushing up the stairs to the mansion). And lastly some bigger maps would not go a miss.

That is why you have a friends list on Xboxlive. I never play annex or any other mode in Gears with random people as i don't find any enjoyment in it. I only play gears with a bunch of dedicated online buddies, many from here and a few not.

Hell, last night. A group of us got together and had a ball. Skills was part of the group. Some of the rounds got IN-FUCKIN-TENSE, last night. One round, it was me, Skills, Mo Black and wicked on a team and we literally took the annex circle away from the opposing team, 1 point away from them winning and ended up winning ourselves.

Another key thing to making xboxlive fun, is playing with a bunch of black dudes. It may sound strange, but it is the truth. On the mic chat, they're so much more animated and playin to have fun unlike most of the whiteys i've run into and for me personally, the mic chat is one of the key factors for me to having fun. As much as i like certain people like Devo and Mo0, i tend to avoid being on their team because they take the shit far too seriously and the voice chat is always drab and riddled with bitching.

Oh God, that was the most epic of all epicness. We are GODS. (Well, primarily Mo is but STILL. That was the craziest shit EVER.) 300-299 was just GREAT. Ahahaha.

Laughing at the black dude thing. I think it's just that Tails's friends are hilariously stereotypical black dudes, not that all black dudes are like that. Kurado isn't nearly that "animated" when he plays, for example.

Come see me on live! I'd love nothing more for you to be the first person I try the revised chainsaw glitch on. =D

Anyways, agreeing that the bleed-out tactic in Annex is the gayest thing ever. I can't even do it myself, since part of the fun of Annex is the fact that your opponent is going to respawn and you need to work together with your team to defend the point you've captured when they return. The bleed-out tactic is the biggest pussy thing I've ever seen in my life.

Take your kills, don't about the bullshit that is Warzone bleed-out style. This is why I prefer execution. If you don't take your kill, I'm going to get back up and fuck you up in no less than 5 seconds.

Protip: Try holding back on the movement stick and whatever direction you want to turn after you hit A to roadie run. Since the game checks for wall cover you're pointing at every frame, holding back nullifies it.

The man speaks the truth. This is the way of handling it. Alternatively, what I do sometimes is just hit the direction enough to turn the corner and then not hit any direction and let the guy run on his own instead of readjusting my course. I stick to shit far less that way.

WHAT? I take Gears too seriously? I need to work on that, then. ;_;

I will admit I do get frustrated. Not as much lately from my perpetual lack of skill but the fact that whenever I try to celebrate, I get shot down with "Nah Mo0, you still suck." Let me have my fun, faggots. :(

Annex would be better if it didn't sound like there was a train coming my way every time I'm about to end the damn round. It's MORE annoying on surround sound because it overlays my music playing in the background. AT LEAST have it play in the last 3 seconds or let us dim the sound. I refuse to play Annex for that reason alone.

The new patch only made the gameplay worse, IMO. Everytime I run I stick to a wall 30% of the time. I should just be able to Hold A and if I want to snap to a wall...press A again. If any of you saw the 'excuse', it was claimed that the snaps make Gears more 'realistic.' They have a point...when alien lifeforms emerge from the ground with machine guns and speak like their semi-retarded - we better be realistic and jump on every wall before we turn the corner...because the Locust behind us is doing an active reload.

One thing I would love is more sensitivity on the right stick so I can turn around faster, even on the highest sensitivity setting its really annoying that I can't turn round fast enough to shotgun the guy behind me.

Also the lancer's bullet damage needs to be more powerful; if it weren't for the chainsaw I would never use it. I've been using the pistol more of late and am surprised how powerful it is in melee and more than decent and downing in enemy, warranting upon them a curb stomp.

Been awhile since I played some gears, but If I remember right you can turn around pretty quick by rolling. Correct me If im wrong. Maybe it's because thats my first instinct when getting shot from behind.
The pistol is a beautiful thing if you can pop some headshots on a power reload. I also like how it shoots based on how fast you pull the trigger. It can be a waste when your targets moving around alot, but if you can out gun them in a straight up fire fight the pistol is perfect.

I find rolling is too slow as you have to adjust more after rolling to get the better shot, I'd just rather like the ability to be able to turn 180 degrees faster.

So how about those new maps? Worth the points they cost or no? I've hardly played since the last patch because of changes in the gameplay that I feel have hurt the experience, but perhaps the new maps make it worth playing again.

Worth it for Bullet Marsh alone, but Process and Subway are also really, really good. The Marsh is one of my favorite maps now, and Subway has been likened to a "better version of War Machine", but I don't feel that's quite an accurate description.

Garden is the only one I can't quite get behind as much. I don't think it sucks like Rooftops, but there's nothing particularily enjoyable about it either. Poisonous gas or no.

I need to get back into gears, but does it seem like you can't get into a game if you don't have the new maps? I know it was like that in GRAW. You were basically black listed if you didn't purchase the map pack.

There are plenty of matches, ranked or not, that don't have the new maps in the rotation. Granted, the new maps are plenty popular, but it's not hard to find matches that don't use them.