Gears of War 2 update goes Live

By Robert Purchese Published 21 January, 2009

Online multiplayer the syllabus.

Epic has unleashed a beefy patch for Gears of War 2 that should make online multiplayer much more enjoyable.

All manner of exploits from turning invisible to shooting while Roadie Running are no longer possible, and an chunky pile of stability bugs have been stamped out.

On top of that are balancing tweaks to bring back the idea of fair play, plus a host of improvements including those seven new map pack-related Achievements we told you about earlier.

A full list ofpatch notes can be found on the official forum.

The second title update arrives as Gears of War 2 tops 4 million sales in two months and the Combustible Map Pack finishes as the "number one piece of premium downloadable content" on Xbox Live for December.

Epic is far from finished, though, and promises continued support for the Gears of War 2 community and to further address any bugs, exploits or balancing issues that arise.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ekko #1 3 years ago

    Had a few games, the tweaks seemed to have improved it slightly. Hopefully get to play a bit more tonight and see what impact they have. A tentative well done for now though.

  • mumtoucher #2 3 years ago

    anyone else still experiencing matchmaking problems.... i waited 10 mins last night without finding a single opponent/team mate, hopefully this update will improve waiting times too???

  • DFawkes #3 3 years ago

    I've never properly played online, save a quick round of Horde, which was nice. Do like the instantly shooting coming out of roadie run, apart from that, I'll trust them :)
    Edited by 1 at 21/01/09 @ 15:12

  • zuljin #4 3 years ago

    Still no fix for blasting yourself through a wall? Yeez thats one I see regularly... Bit frustrated with online comp, although I'm still enjoying horde...

  • rodpad #5 3 years ago

    Ooo, shotgun fix.

  • Eighthours #6 3 years ago

    Epic really dropped the ball with the matchmaking. They should be miles ahead on the Live charts, but they're currently languishing in 4th, and the matchmaking issues are the direct cause.

  • miiiguel #7 3 years ago

    I'd like to quote Cobain now.

    On Gears:
    "It smells like teen spirit!", and it's an awesome feeling.

  • Rich72 #8 3 years ago

    funny i think Halo 3 is vastly superior to Gears (multiplayer anyway), so who's right?

  • miiiguel #9 3 years ago

    Who's right?

    Rich72.
    But I like both games. Loads. Kicks. Thrils.

  • VampiricEye #10 3 years ago

    So far, I enjoy the Halo3 MP (it's truly ace) way more than the GoW2 counterpart. Maybe because I keep disconnecting in GoW2. Perhaps I should give it another go now, to see whether or not it has been fixed.

  • Rich72 #11 3 years ago

    in all honesty, it's because i suck balls at gears multiplayer while i'm a healthy level 40 in Halo and mostly have a fun game.

  • Bulbatron #12 3 years ago

    I like Halo and Gears, but I'm not a BIG fan of either. The playback feature on Halo 3 is great though, and I wish all multi-player games could use it. It would be great to put a feature like that in Gears of War 2. Better than just having stills.

  • JJrabbit #13 3 years ago

    There's one thing I want to see. Split screen online with ONE live account. Halo 3 managed it. I'm not going to buy another live account for myself and my brother just to play one game online together. Offline coop was amazingly good.

  • bad09 #14 3 years ago

    Luckily it's January with hardly anything to buy so I've not traded this in yet so I might check out if the online is fixed tonight.

  • neosalad #15 3 years ago

    gears 2 wasnt much good to be hones.t it just cannot compete with halo 3. i still regular play halo 3, gears 2 was about a week or two then i was bored... just like what happened with gears 1 except quicker this time!

  • miiiguel #16 3 years ago

    "There's one thing I want to see. Split screen online with ONE live account. Halo 3 managed it. I'm not going to buy another live account for myself and my brother just to play one game online together. Offline coop was amazingly good. "

    Gears doesn't do it? I'm almost 100% sure UT3 does... so Gears should to, I guess.

  • JJrabbit #17 3 years ago

    @miiiguel

    You can do it in private matches, but it's rare to have many friends online at the same time. I'd rather just join a public server against random people. I've never played it, but apparently the original GoW did it. However, the new one considers public matches as 'ranked' games, which means that guests can't play which is stupid IMO. I don't care about rank and would rather have a public unranked mode just to pick up and play.

  • miiiguel #18 3 years ago

    "I don't care about rank and would rather have a public unranked mode just to pick up and play."
    Absolutly..., stupid thing that "public = ranked". Ranked should be ranked, for the ones who dig that sort of thing, imo.

  • WiseNail #19 3 years ago

    @jjrabbit

    "There's one thing I want to see. Split screen online with ONE live account. Halo 3 managed it. I'm not going to buy another live account for myself and my brother just to play one game online together. Offline coop was amazingly good."

    Gears 2 has done this since day one, press the yellow button at the main menu to sign in as a guest profile. You might be interested to know that both Left 4 Dead also allows you to get split screen online in this way.

    Edit - just seen your updated comment - sorry.
    Edited by 1 at 21/01/09 @ 20:41

  • WillyWanka #20 3 years ago

    Do you still get "sucked into" chainsaws? For me this was the most aggravating part of GoW2 and when coupled with the underpowered and slower shotguns, made the game almost unplayable for me; so much so that I've not touched it for about a month. Will give this update a shot though to see if they're anti-b0rked it

    basically i just want the Gears 1 balance to the weapons

  • mukki #21 3 years ago

    well hopefully match making is now better

    and playing horde rules!!

    only online mode I have been playing