Xbox Gaming in South Africa

While you read this, the latest Gears of War 2 update is working its way through Microsoft certification (and maybe a Riftworm). In the meantime, Epic has dropped all the important infos over on the Gears of War 2 forum.

For starters, they're adding XP to Horde mode. That's 50, 75, 100, and 125 points per completed wave in each increasing difficulty tier respectively. It's not yet confirmed, however, whether this is extended to local and player matches.

Next up are the exploit fixes:

• A player could copy game progression data from one profile to another.
• A team could use the 50-point revive bonus to artificially increase its score in Horde. Going down but not out (DBNO) in Horde now subtracts 50 points, so there is no advantage to using the revive-bonus technique.
• A player could get 2 points for each kill in Wingman.
• A player could continue to shoot the Flamethrower while performing special movements like evading and mantling.
• A player could cause heavy weapons to spawn continuously while playing Horde.
• And some lesser-known exploits

General Fixes:

• An issue that could cause players to lose all achievement progression if they signed in during a loading screen.
• Issues related to the Smoke Grenade causing a player to cringe instead of knocking them down. If hit by a Smoke Grenade with cringing turned on, players will now:
  • Drop the Boomshield, even if aiming while carrying it.
  • Drop a heavy weapon, even if it is deployed.
  • Cringe while roadie running.
  • Cringe while in cover.
• An issue that prevented players from shooting around the lower left side of a planted shield.
• An issue that could cause a DBNO player to not appear as DBNO.
• An issue that prevented Gears players from inviting players of other games to join them in progress in a Private match using DLC.
• Issues that caused rich presence information to become inaccurate.
• An issue that caused the overall achievements progress bar to not reflect the latest achievements.
• An assortment of localization bug fixes.
• Additional miscellaneous bug fixes.

Balancing fixes:

• Adds a 30-second delay in map-based weapon spawning at the beginning of a Wingman match.
• Adds more future server-side balancing options.

Finally, the upcoming Dark Corners add-on is also getting a bunch of its own Achievements, worth 325 GS:

• "My Way or the Highway" (25 points): Without being detected, complete the "Road to Ruin" deleted scene after choosing the stealth option.
• "Highway to Hell" (25 points): Complete the "Road to Ruin" deleted scene after choosing the guns-blazing option.
• "Two for the Road" (25 points): Complete the "Road to Ruin" deleted scene in co-op as either Marcus or Dom.
• "Be Careful What You Wish For" (10 points): Reach level 5 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 10 on the War Machine map in Horde (any difficulty).
• "Ride It All Night Long" (10 points): Reach level 10 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 10 on the Highway map in Horde (any difficulty).
• "No, But His Face Rings a Bell" (15 points): Reach level 15 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 20 on the Sanctuary map in Horde (any difficulty).
• "Lost in Transition" (20 points): Reach level 20 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 20 on the Way Station map in Horde (any difficulty).
• "Like Father, Like Gun" (30 points): Reach level 30 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 30 on the Allfathers Garden map in Horde (any difficulty).
• "Am I Only Dreaming?" (40 points): Reach level 40 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 40 on the Memorial map in Horde (any difficulty).
• "Blood on the Sand" (50 points): Reach level 50 in multiplayer and complete waves 1 through 50 on the Nowhere map in Horde (any difficulty).
• "Afraid of the Dark" (20 points): Play a multiplayer match on each of the seven Dark Corners Map Pack maps (any mode).
• "Did Not Go Gentle" (30 points): Win a multiplayer match on each of the seven Dark Corners Map Pack maps (any mode)
• "Is it Hot or Is That Just You?" (25 points): Kill 25 Bloodmounts with a Scorcher Flamethrower while playing Horde on a Dark Corners Map Pack map (any difficulty).