On your way to reach level 100? I know I am and the team over at Epic has planned a double XP weekend.

Details:

Got plans for this Labor Day weekend? Cancel them, because you’re going to be busy gearing up for battle in a Gears 2 multiplayer double XP event! From September 4 through 8, earn double experience for all games, plus an experience bonus of 500 for the winning team in a Public competitive multiplayer match. Plus, in Horde, matches default to Hardcore difficulty, with every tenth wave populated entirely by Sires. Get ready for action!

Source:  Gearsofwar.xbox.com

I’m happy to announce that Title Update 2 for Gears of War 2 is now available. It went live this morning at 2 AM PST (5 AM EST) and as you can see from the detailed release notes below, it’s a significant update. It addresses a large number of multiplayer exploits and issues as well as makes some balancing tweaks, includes a couple of new features and even adds 7 new DLC-based achievements. Four of the new achievements require the Flashback Map Pack that came free with your new copy of the game, so don’t forget to redeem your code inside the box!

Once again, I want to thank our community for their patience while we finished this title update and I want to thank everyone for their ongoing support of the game. Gears 2 sales topped over 4 million copies sold in just two months and when we released the Combustible Map Pack in December, it became the number one piece of premium downloadable content for that month.

We’re continuing to work hard supporting the game and you, the community, and we look forward to seeing you online.

Gears of War 2 Title Update 2 Detailed Release Notes

The following fixes and improvements are included in Title Update 2.

Exploit Fixes

Title Update 2 fixes these possible exploits, where under certain circumstances:

• A player could melee or grenade tag through certain walls.
• A player could equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously.
• A player could make their shield invisible.
• A player could become invisible.
• A player could do a “super” mantle or “kung fu flip,” flying high into the air.
• A player could gain unlimited ammo with the Lancer Assault Rifle.
• A player could fire while roadie running (also known as “crabwalking”).
• A player could pick up a weapon while sliding into cover.
• A player could walk forward while firing a deployed mortar.
• A player could force an opponent to be stuck in the down but not out (DBNO) position.
• A player could prevent other players from picking up a heavy weapon.
• A player could pick up a dropped meatflag without having to knock him down.
• A ragdolled player could be killed without ever going DBNO.
• A player could roadie run while firing the Scorcher Flamethrower.
• A player could get stuck while evading, though they could continue shooting in any direction.
• A player could concuss themselves under the stairs on the River map.

General Fixes

Title Update 2 fixes these other issues as well:

• An issue with client-side hit detection of the Gnasher Shotgun. The fix makes the shotgun more reliable in high-latency situations.
• An issue where players could have shotgun or Boomshot rounds fire into the ground when shooting from the hip.
• A split-screen issue where one player transitioning to the death battle camera disrupted input from the other player.
• An issue that could cause players’ Look sensitivity to be changed to their Zoom sensitivity while zooming in, zooming out, and firing.
• An issue that could cause players to get stuck if they tried to pick up a heavy weapon while firing the shotgun at the same time.
• An issue where players could become stuck if they kicked over a shield while ragdolled from a smoke grenade.
• An issue where bots were unable to kick over a shield that was planted backward.
• An issue where players who quit during voting didn’t show up in the end game stats, which meant other players couldn’t easily provide negative feedback on them.
• An issue where players couldn’t chainsaw enemy meatshields if the meatshields were already damaged.
• An issue where some players would not see the animation of a meatshield being chainsawed.
• An issue where players could not chainsaw an opposing team meatshield in a game type that doesn’t allow respawns (for example, Warzone and Execution).
• An issue where a player partway through the act of raising or lowering the chainsaw did not transition into a duel when attacked from the front with a chainsaw.
• An issue where occasionally a player waiting to respawn could not respawn when repeatedly hitting the left trigger to switch cameras.
• An issue where some teammates couldn’t communicate between rounds in games type that don’t allow respawns, because dead team members were left in the dead radio channel until the next round started.
• An issue where a DBNO player could be seen as standing if knocked DBNO while reloading the mortar.
• An issue where a player joining a Private Xbox LIVE game in progress from another specific type of game could potentially lose HUD functionality.
• An issue on the Flood map where a player’s dying from Imulsion did not trigger a death message or penalize the player as other environmental deaths did.
• An issue with Guardian games where if the leader is the last player killed on a team, the round may not end, due to the respawn timer.
• A campaign issue where the gamer picture would not be awarded when the game is completed on Insane.
• An issue where a player would continue to fire the flamethrower and damage other players if that player was knocked DBNO while firing it.
• An issue that could cause a player to get stuck while moving and quickly attempting to aim the mortar at the same time.
• An issue with Horde games where clients didn’t receive the “waiting for host” message after they failed a wave.
• A Horde split-screen issue that could cause a team to get -2 billion in score, which when posted to the leaderboards looked like +2 billion.
• An issue where dead players may not show up in the metadata for multiplayer photos.
• A system link issue where if a multiplayer match and a co-op game were hosted at the same time on the same LAN, neither could be joined.
• Additional miscellaneous bug fixes.

Balancing

Title Update 2 makes these balancing changes:

• Made planted proximity grenade mines much easier to shoot off the surface they’re planted on, by giving them 50 percent less health.
• Set grenades to respawn less frequently. When a player picks up grenades from a spawned location, a new set of grenades does not respawn until the previous grenades have been used.
• Increased the penalty to rank for players who quit Public Xbox LIVE matches early.
• Buffed the flamethrower to have stopping power (to slow a charging enemy) and to cause a chainsaw interrupt (to force the opponent to lower a revved chainsaw).
• Removed the ability to instantly shoot coming out of a roadie run.
• Added additional spawn protection to prevent proximity grenade mines and chainsaws from killing a player within 5 seconds after spawning.
• Balanced grenade spawn cycling on the Hail map so that both teams have equal access to both types of grenades.

We continue to test internally and monitor online gameplay to determine what else may need adjusting.

Improvements

Title Update 2 makes these new improvements:

• Changed Annex games to use execution rules, to prevent players from leaving DBNO opponents on the ground to bleed out.
• Made Horde waves count toward the “Party Like It’s 1999″ achievement. Each wave is counted as one round.
• Added the ability, during Submission games, to see the flag’s final destination by using Tac/Com.
• Increased the frequency of most of the toasts for in-game achievement progression.
• Added achievement progression numbers to the War Journal.
• Added 7 new DLC-based achievements worth 175 points (progress toward them starts after Title Update 2 is applied):
  • “Skeletons in Your Closet” (20 points): Complete waves 1 through 10 on all Flashback Map Pack maps in Horde (any difficulty).
  • “Trial by, and on, Fire” (20 points): Complete waves 1 through 10 on all Combustible Map Pack maps in Horde (any difficulty).
  • “More Mystery, Less History” (15 points): Win a multiplayer match on each of the 5 Flashback Map Pack maps (any mode except Wingman).
  • “The Roof! The Roof! The Roof…” (15 points): Win a multiplayer match on each of the 3 Combustible Map Pack maps (any mode except Wingman).
  • “Bound by a Shared Past” (15 points): Win a Wingman match on each of the 5 Flashback Map Pack maps.
  • “Forged in the Fire” (15 points): Win a Wingman match on each of the 3 Combustible Map Pack maps.
  • “Annex: Now with Execution Rules” (75 points): Win an Annex match on each of the Flashback and Combustible Map Pack maps (Public only).

More can be found here

Tehflakes.ca is hosting a Gears of War 2 Community night! More information will be available at http://gearsofwar.xbox.com/Templates/CMBlog.aspx?id=1326
Here is the important info about this community night:

This Saturday, January 17, you can test your skills against DarthAlbert III and Tehflakes

Date: Saturday, January17, 2009
Time: 9pm – 12pm EST

Come out and test your skills against Tehflakes.ca (and maybe win some cool Gears stuff), add the gamertags below to your friends list, and join them for a game this weekend!

Tehflakes

DarthAlbert III

I hope to see and play with as many of you as possible. So send us some friend’s requests, leave a message in this thread or send us an Xbox live message.

To be entered into the giveaways come out and play some GoW2 with us and you will automatically be entered to win some very cool prizes. Once the night is over we will collect all names and put them in a random draw for the prizes. We have 2 t-shirts and 2 golden weapon codes.Winners will be notified by Xbox Live message that they have won.

Check out SilverSnail on At www.silversnail.com

First of all I hope all of you had a safe and happy holiday season.

As I mentioned before the break we’ve been working on a major title update for Gears of War 2. This update will address bugs and exploits as well as add some new achievements related to downloadable content. We don’t have an exact date for it but all indicators are it will go live within January. If that changes we’ll let you know.

We’re fixing a whole bunch of online exploits. For example we’ve fixed the ability to wield an invisible shield, melee through some walls, gain infinite Lancer ammo and equip a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously plus many more.

We’re also making several small changes to improve the overall online gameplay experience. A few of the ones that might interest you are; increased penalties for quitting matches early, adding additional spawn protection against planted grenades and chainsaw attacks, and adding the ability to see the Submission flag carrier destination by using Tac/Com.

We know you folks love achievements so on the achievement side we’re adding achievement progress numbers to the War Journal, increasing the frequency of in-game Achievement progression notifications and adding some new Achievements for DLC.

This is just a very small list of some of the things that will be in the next title update but one more item which has been talked about a lot in our forums deserves a special call out…

About that shotgun…

We fixed the client side hit detection on the shotgun so that in a high-latency (i.e. “laggy”) match, the shotgun will be more reliable. We’ve also fixed another bug whereby shotgun and boomshot rounds could strike the ground when firing from the hip.

So there’s a brief status report on the next title update. At some point I expect we’ll post a more detailed list but I assure you we’re working hard to get this out the door and once it’s done we’ll start working on the next update. We’ll try to do a better job keeping you informed of our progress on future updates and we’ll try to be a little more active in the forums once this update is released.

Source Epic Games – More information can be found here.

Last night, in the tunnels that run deep under Toronto, Xbox Canada and High Road Communications hosted the Gears of War 2 launch event. The evening started with community members and press meeting at Bay subway station. Attendees were greeted by Xbox Canada’s own JadeLive. After receiving guest badges, we were escorted down into the bowels of Toronto’s Lower Bay subway station. Yes, that’s right… the GoW2 launch event was held at the abandoned subway station.

On the way in, we each received a swag bag containing a copy of Gears of War 2 and a Gears of War t-shirt. Swag in hand, we descended the stairs and found ourselves on a dimly lit subway platform flanked by two subway cars. Between the cars were dozens of wide screen televisions displaying Gears of War 2 start screens.

I headed to the back and started playing the five player horde mode with fellow community members KowZ and The Forum Troll with a few other folks. Horde is all about teamwork and communication. Considering all we could hear was the rumbling of the subways above us, we still managed to fight off the Locust and make it to wave thirty five. I avoided checking out any of the television sets with the GoW2 campaign mode going on as I didn’t want to see any spoilers! Also of note, was the set of ten televisions back to back (five on each side) where people were playing 5 on 5 COG versus Locust. Ridiculously fun. DarthAlbert III and Mister Switch of ohmpage.ca played on opposing teams with much smack talk between the two.

Thanks again to Jade and her team for inviting us to their brilliantly planned and executed launch party.

Some quick thoughts about Gears in this special edition of Quick & Dirty for GoW2:

Gears of War 2

Teh Good

- Horde mode

- Better cover system including meat shield (use your dead opponent as cover)

- Improved graphics and audio

Teh Bad

- The controls when driving vehicles are still a bit wonky

- Voice “acting”

- There’s still nothing you can do should a team member go rogue and chainsaw you from behind. I’m looking at you HalfLife84!

Teh Verdict

If you enjoyed Gears 1 you will love Gears 2. More than just Gears 1.5, the new weapons (mortar!), enemies, and multiplayer modes create a brand new Gears experience. This game will account for a ton of time on Xbox Live for me and many other gamers. Gears of War 2 is a must buy this holiday season, make sure to pick up and join in on killing the Locust!

CONTEST TIME!

EDIT: CONTEST IS CLOSED folks.  Congrats to Carnage1975.  Hopefully your golden Hammerburst will still look nice and sparkly when it’s on the ground beside your freshly chainsawed corpse.

Img source: IGN.com

I know you want this sweet gold-plated HammerBurst firearm. Well, thanks to our good friend JakenBear at Xbox Canada, tehflakes.ca has a code to give away for one. All you have to do is respond to this post with your comments and one lucky winner will be chosen at random to win the code. Good luck!

Photos by okaybuddy. More pics available here.