Life and Leisure. Tech and Toys.

The Gears of War update that we’ve all been waiting for is finally out but I’ve been too stupid to try it yet. After reading the description of the bug fixes and balancing changes on the official forum, I have to say I’m quite pleased. It seems to me like the guys at Epic really [...]

I got a chance to sit down and play with the Gears of War 2 Combustible Map Pack that was released earlier this week. Overall I think they’re a nice edition to the maps that shipped with the game. Again Epic trying to make maps where the environment plays a factor. On Flood the emulsion [...]

According to an article on Joystiq.com, Epic the creators of Gears of War 2 are increasing the number of their matchmaking servers. With the holiday season in full effect this couldn’t come at a better time. Currently matchmaking is the most time consuming and frustrating part of playing Gears of War 2 online (along with [...]

Last night during the Gears of War 2 mayhem my friends and I noticed some strange disconnects while playing online. Normally when this happens I jump online and head to xbox.com to check the status of Xbox Live. To my dismay I found that the support page has been completely redesigned and you can no [...]

Major Gripe
First of all like many others I tried to get into a public game with a guest but I couldn’t because in Gears 2 a guest must have their own Xbox Live Gold Account to get into a public game. Since they took away the separation between regular matches and ranked matches, I’m guessing [...]

In the first edition of Gears of War the closest thing we got to a female character was the narrating voice of the Locusts. It sounded oddly similar to Galadriel(Cate Blanchett) from the Lord of the Rings. Maybe Carmine was actually a chick under that mask à la Bounty Hunter Leia.
Anyway, in the first [...]

I’m pretty impressed. Dan Hsu asks some pretty tough questions but Cliff brushes them off and answers them with composure. Aside from blaming things like the lack of a partying system on Xbox Live and lack of clan support it all sounds like they’re trying hard to do multiplayer the right way in Gears 2.
The [...]

So one of my main gripes with Gears of War was the multiplayer flaws that you just had to eventually let go of if you seriously wanted to play the game. I’ve never heard such screams of “Host Advantage” before this game hit Xbox Live. Why can other games balance multiplayer lag issues while Gears [...]

Gears of War 2 was announced for November 2008 at the GDC Keynote today. We all knew a sequel was coming but I for one didn’t expect it coming out this year. And the fact that it’s an Xbox 360 exclusive might be enough to keep the console alive until 2009. The teaser trailer below [...]

I finally got some time to sit down and play Halo 3 online for some countless hours. The first gripe I have is the match making. I really wish I could pick exactly what type of game I want to play. The lack of hosting is also intermixed into the problem. No single person sets [...]