Did the patch fix the chainsaw? As in, does it stun the player if the player is shot while the shotgun is revved?

Nope because that shit still happened to me at least 4 or 5 times last night.

Next they need to fix these weird lag issues. Sometimes it felt like in some matches my bullets weren't doing any damage so I had to rely on my chainsaw to get at least one or two kills. =\ I mean shit, on Avalanche Tails and I were both shooting the same guy with our shotguns (after I shot him like 3 times and he downed me(and tails picked me up<3)) and the bastard still killed us both. Funky game.

I had very little online experiences with the thing yesterday, in your experience, how much has been improved, Miles? Did you notice any change?

I dunno Miles, a lot of that can be chalked up to the fact we were playing past Midnight. The patch can't fix my inability to land all my shots when I'm tired. There's been noticeably less bullshit in my experience, really.

I'm trying to get the firing from the hip thing down again. That was my favorite part about Gears 1. Played Territories a bit this morning and there was a guy on my team that had gone back to the good old shotty dance as well, we spent most of the match blasting the fuck out of the people that were still aiming with the left trigger making them unable to keep up with us.

Just a little more, it's all coming back to me. =DDD

Lowering the chainsaw actually works now, but obviously if the person is RIGHT IN YOUR FACE when you're hitting the left trigger to square up and fire there's a high change you're fucked. Unless you are the host, in which case their pitiful chainsaw disintegrates along with the rest of their body every time.

For US based Gears 2 players, you might want to pay a visit to this page and sign up for a new competition thing they're going to be running at the beginning of February: 13 Days of Gears.

Has anyone else had problems with the game freezing after the patch, or know someone who has? Ever since the patch, my game has frozen within 20 minutes of starting. And it's not just a normal freeze, it's a freeze so bad that I can't even turn the system off by hitting the power button; I have to unplug it.

That actually happened to me the other day, but only once. Otherwise, I've had no problems.

I'm still having problems with bullet lag, or my blindfire not even working during matches.

Actually my game has been freezing less since the newest patch. The last patch in December that was supposed to make matchmaking better caused my game to freeze often when joining a game but now it rarely happens anymore.

Mo0 just has terrible luck with having his consoles not work properly.

I hope they get Title Update 3 out the door soon. The region filter for multiplayer is really the only thing I'd really like to see now. Everything else about the game is decent at the moment.

There's a Title Update 3 in the works? Is there info floating about anywhere on what might be in that, or are you just saying you'd like a region filter?

Apparently they started working on it shortly after Title Update 2 hit.

So it looks like Epic are adding XP/levels to the multiplayer, and bots to deal with dropouts:
[ source ]

Awesome. More shit that means nothing for the idiot masses to fawn over. "OMG HIGHER EXP THAN U SCRUB".

Also the AI thing is a nice idea on paper, but Insane level AIs are capable of killing you across the map with their shotgun for some retarded reason. I hope they fine tune that a little bit before the TU hits.

I will just join your games and then immediately drop out for work conference calls so you guys can get miracle shotty bots. You can thank me later.

I can't stand the idea of bots in public matches let alone private (takes the fun out of xbox live). I don't really have a reason other than the fact that it takes forever for bots to finish a round if left with no human players.

If the XP is implemented it might draw more people to the game because it'll give them the sense they are accomplishing something; but then again they'll quit because they don't want to loose it.

Clearly you've never played a game that actually does stick bots in when people leave. Sticking in bots prevents the cascading quits that happen in games like Gears when one person leaves. One person might lag out or have a legitimate reason to leave, but within 2 rounds other people quit because they'd rather not play on a shorthanded team and then you're left with 5v1. It makes the rounds a lot less stunted after someone lags out.

Also, it wasn't mentioned in the article Omagnus posted, but they are talking about having an XP penalty for leaving matches early.

Holy crap your signature hurts my eyes :(

Yeah I rarely choose to play games were there is bots, but that's just personally opinion. Good point with the cascading quitting (didn't even think about that). I just don't feel any satisfaction in killing a bot in a ranked game. Also a lot of people just quit because they're losing. If you're on the team that is pwning it's kinda satisfying to win and get on with another game.

Sorry about the signature, It's the first one I've ever made.

It's just that random fuzzing action going on, it's so fast that it kinda hurts.

I see your point about killing bots being less satisfying than killing actual people, but between the bots keeping the teams from being lopsided and the XP penalty for quitting I think the odds of bots showing up is going to be reduced compared to the ridiculous number of games that crap out now.

So Title Update 3 is on its way soon, 11 days in fact, and soon after will be some new maps:

[ source ]

It would seem that to Microsoft charging 800 points and piece for 2 (light on the maps) map packs isn't quite taking the piss enough, so they have more up their sleeve with some new DLC heading to Gears 2 in the near future (July 28th):

[ source ]

So anyone foolish enough to have paid for both those current map packs is about to get a swift sharp kick to the bollocks (and wallet) if they want this new DLC too.

I also have a feeling that $20 is going to translate to a slightly less reasonable £20 (or more) over here in the UK, making it slightly less value, and still only really worthwhile if a whole bunch of us were to get it.

Joystiq says it's going to be £15 here, which isn't too bad.

For people who've not bought any of the map packs yet, this is an absolutely fantastic deal - £15 for new campaign content and fifteen maps holy shit. Picking this up without hesitation.

Too bad nobody really plays anymore. I bought the Snowblind Maps because they're decent, but I've heard the Combustible Maps are pretty shit.

Way late on the ball here, Epic. I doubt anybody will give a fuck by the time this comes out.

Also can they stop making all these shit new maps and just re-release War Machine already.

Yeah, I stayed away from the map packs because they were way too pricey. £15 for all fifteen maps and all the extra stuff is ney bad, so I might give that a pop. But yeah, the lack of interest as Tails points out is the real issue it faces.