You will only be able to be the One, once per week unless everyone has already been the One. This will be available to all gold members however, you can also play with silver members locally as well but they will not be eligible to win any prizes. The Canadian Beta starts Friday May 8th 2009 and runs to Sunday May 24th 2009. During the last weekend of the Canadian beta Xbox will open up the beta to all gold and silver members. A season of 1 vs. 100 live will be 13 weeks and 200 gamerscore available for those 13 weeks. There are also advertisements in the game; yes there is a mini television screen in the mob that will display advertisements from Nike, Sympatico and Zuma. Will these advertising dollars pay for the prizes? Sure seems like it. The programming schedule will be Friday Nights at 10pm EST and Saturday Nights at 7 and 10pm.

There is also another version of 1 vs. 100 call extended play. Extended play will not be live and available 7 days a week. You and thousands of Xbox live members play as the mob and battle it out for top score. 1 vs. 100 extended play features themed trivia every weeknight for the ultimate variety. Some examples mentioned were battle of the sexes and with the possibility of doing an Olympic themed night when the 2010 winter games draw closer.

1 vs. 100 features 12 achievements worth 200 gamerscore per season. The achievements are:
Low Rider – Answer instantly and incorrectly three times in a row 5G
Showboating Specialist – In a single 1 vs. 100 live round max our your avatar action 10 times 10G
Thrifty Skipper Extended play: In a single round, save up the maximum of 3 skips 10G
Speedy Delivery – In a single round, score a total of 1300 points through time bonuses 20G
Game Show Guru – In any single round, achieve a streak of 12 consecutive correct answers 25G
Quick Draw – In a single round, receive six consecutive instant answer bonuses – 25G
Hair Trigger – Get three consecutive questions right while receiving an instant answer bonus for each. 15 G
Golden Century – answer a total of 100 questions correctly 25G
Trivia Fanatic – Answer a total of 500 questions 30G
Go Streaking! – In a single round, achieved a streak of five consecutive answers 15G
Group Hug – Your team of four achieved a simultaneous streak of three consecutive correct answers 10 G
Quarter Century – Answer 25 correct answers correctly 10G
They didn’t discuss very much regarding what the prizes will be but it looked
like each round awards a prize to the top 3 high scoring crowd or mob members. For every 10 mob members eliminated, the prizing ladder moves up a level. The top prize is reached when all mob members are eliminated. If the One answers incorrectly, the prize ladder is divided among the remaining mob members. For the Canadian beta every correct answer earns you an entry into a sweepstakes to win Acer Aspire laptop, a Xbox 360 Elite with extra controller, and Xbox LIVE Arcade games. There are a maximum of 500 entries per person per season. As I stated above there seems to be some sort of use of Microsoft points, but they aren’t available during the Canadian beta. Using those MS points to buy arcade games or DLC would be cool!

The Canadian beta starts this week (on Friday May 8th 2009 at 10pm EST) and hopefully thousands of Canadians hop on to play 1 vs. 100 live with host Chris Cashman. This Canadian beta should allow Microsoft to stress-test the technology, to ensure there are no hiccups come launch date. I would expect some sort of announcement to come out of E3.

Teh Bad:
More Variety in race modes
Why is Avril Lavigne in this sound track? Like seriously!
I would prefer is the game didn’t take forever to start up at the beginning. I do not need to go my junk yard and see all the new cars at the start-up of the game. It’s quite annoying.

For $20 bucks how you can not pick up this game. Its a ton of fun and continues to get a massive of free updates.

Teh bad:
Can’t skip cut scenes
You can’t play with a controller. Buy a fight pad or a Fight stick
Matchmaking I never seem to get paired up to someone with similar abilities as me, thus facing superior opponents on a constant basis is frustrating.

I had to put Street Fighter aside for now, I just can`t play with a controller and I am on the hunt for a fight stick. If you can play with a controller I`d recommend picking this up.

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