The original Gears of War is still one of the more popular games being played on Xbox Live to date, and those that stuck around with it after Halo 3 came out love every second of it, for the exception of one thing, host advantage. If you are one of the many games who play Gears of War online, you know what I mean. If you are a guest to the host server, there is a second delay that gets your teeth crunching and stomach to lift when you wonder whether that shotgun shot registered as a hit or not.
They call this host advantage because even though the guests of the server have this problem, the host plays the matches flawlessly, giving him the advantage over other players. In Gears of War 2. CliffyB hopes to annihilate this problem, so all players can have a flawless, seemless experience online.
What feedback did you receive from the multiplayer modes in Gears 1?
People loved it but they didn’t like the host advantage. They got tired of the shotgun inconsistencies. We’re fixing all of that. They didn’t like the randomness of the chainsaw, so we put the chainsaw duel in — may the best man win! A lot of players wanted respawning, but we added in some modes for downloadable content on Gears 1 that added respawning, but even then it was a 15-second cue. So we have game modes now, like Guardian, where players cycle in and out a lot more often. And Wingman, which is kind of like our version of Last Man Standing Free-for-All, where you have five teams of two each. So it’s you and a buddy versus the world, which feels really good. We’ve added a lot more depth to the multiplayer.
Is Epic streamlining or refining the controls in Gears of War 2?
Eight billion tasks have been cycled on for improving the cover system. You can interrupt the swat turn and go right into a roady run so you’re not stuck swat turning. The angle of cover entry for roady run has been tweaked so you don’t necessarily get cuked into cover as often when you roady run. Mantling’s a little more crisp. Just evading into cover is more crisp. Every single last action has been tweaked. The angle at which you cover slip when you move forward has been tweaked. Every single bit of the cover system has been massaged this time. I went back and played Gears 1 and I still think it’s a great cover system, but what I missed was tremendous and I’m so happy with a lot of the results that have come out of the tweaking for Gears 2.
[via Kombo]
