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.

We’ve had some great help reviewing games lately. Big thanks to Ophidion and eleTodd for their well written reviews. I have opinions too, which I would love to share in review format. That being said, the gaming gods clearly hate me and have decided to release every game I’ve ever wanted all at once so that I will NEVER HAVE FREE TIME EVER AGAIN. Therefore, with no further ado, I introduce you to my newest feature: Quick & Dirty where I review games in 7 easy points: 3 good, 3 bad, and a quick verdict. My opinions are my own and may differ from yours. If you don’t agree with my review, make it known in the comments! I love a healthy argument debate.

Stay tuned.  Quick & Dirty #1 coming later today!

• Nintendo is doing Karaoke right on the Wii.  Joysound will provide online subscriptions to millions of songs rather than individually downloaded tracks.  Japan only for now.  If this comes to North America, I’ll get tons more use out of my dust collector Wii. 
• Speaking of Nintendo, they’ve announced the DSi.  Main features include bigger dual touch screens (3.25″), a .3 megapixel camera, and built-in memory.  They’ve also removed the GBA cartridge slot to incorporate a sleeker design.  Wait, doesn’t Guitar Hero: On Tour require that slot to work? 
• Punch-Out!!! for the Wii.  You read that right.  Punch-Out!!! for the Wii.  *drool*
• According to this thread on Rockband.com, there is a SERIOUS bug in Rock Band 2.  When playing World Tour with the leader signed in as an Xbox Live member and a second player signed in as a non-Xbox Live member (2 different profiles), many users report losing some or all of their save data between sets.  Hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’ll be cautious from here out.  17 pages at time of publishing and no response from Harmonix yet. 

Thursday marks the start of the Tokyo Gaming Show, which I intend to follow.  I promise to cover as much of it here as I can (truly flakes… I will).