I downloaded and installed the Gears of War patch last night and played with 8-10 people on my friends list. The game seemed to play differently than expected. I noticed these differences both on another player’s host and on my host. The biggest differences: The Longshot sniper rifle seems to fire a second shot without reloading, the Gnasher shotgun seemed slightly more powerful (possibly just host advantage), and the Chainsaw seemed to have a longer “reach” (possibly just host advantage).

When I joined up to FoulBreed’s host, I joined into a game on War Machine. As a round was starting I immediately noticed that I could hear everyone, even the players on the team that won the round. As it turns out, in the lobby, everyone can hear everyone now. It used to be that only the players that died during the round could be heard. Of course, people joining up mid-game also be heard; a welcome fix.

I spawned in War Machine and immediately rushed toward the Longshot. I had trouble picking up the weapon. I had to stand over weapon for what seemed like just over a second to pick it up. Later in the match, I noticed the same thing was happening with the Frag Grenades in the middle of the map. When the “Press X to pick up weapon” icon came on my screen, I had to wait about 1.5 seconds to get the grenades. Perhaps I was experiencing lag as I was joined to FoulBreed’s host. A few matches later, the same thing was happening to me. I had to stand still on top of the weapon for about 1.5 seconds to pick it up. However, during some matches, I seemed to be able to pickup the weapons with no problem. I didn’t notice this later in the night when I was hosting. Before the patch, I never experienced this problem.

I noticed that I was having trouble climbing over cover. I had to press “A” four or five times to get over the cover. I’ve had trouble before where the game would play the “climbing” animation two or three times before letting me over the cover. Last night, it seemed even more difficult to navigate around and over cover.

(By the way, I was playing with new batteries in the controller. The controller worked fine in other games and in the XBOX dashboard.)

These problems were all happening on FoulBreed’s host. Perhaps FoulBreed’s host was the problem. Midnight and FoulBreed were playing on the same connection. I think at least one of his brothers was also signed in at the time. Maybe he didn’t have enough upload bandwidth to support all of those outbound connections plus the 8-player game he was hosting? I did get the “Connection Error” popup box in about half of the matches for 1 or 2 seconds.

Another thing that was pointed out to me was that sparda20 couldn’t join up to my host via the invites I sent him. He got a connection error. Sparda has always been able to join up to my host with no problems. The patch did affect NAT settings. In my case, it seemed to have done more harm that good.

Of course, the tagging distance of the Frag grenades was greatly reduced. I’m satisfied with it. The tagging distance seems to be at about an arm’s length. That makes sense and will do for now.

Both Oculus and sparda reported that the Longshot sniper rifle fires a second shot without reloading after two active reloads. This was repeatable for them. I played with the Longshot a couple of times last night and I didn’t notice this change. But, I didn’t test it out after they reported their findings. Can anyone else confirmed?

Animations involving the chainsaw still seemed strange. Last night, and certainly many times before the patch, some of the chainsaw animations didn’t taking place on screen. A person would just explode while hearing the chainsaw revving in the background. I was hoping this would be fixed.

Also, the reach of the chainsaw seemed to be increased by a couple of feet. Perhaps this was symptom of joining up to someone else’s host.

What differences have you noticed?

Thoughts on the night:
* Midnight and FoulBreed are beasts on the same host.
* It sucks spawning in the game, rushing around the map to engage the enemy only to find out that someone inverted your Y-axis during the last LAN.
* Roadie running with a shotgun on host is cheap.
* That is all.

Link dump:
Mintz’s already wrote about the LAN: http://hushedcasket.com/node/1628/
Midnight blogged about it: http://midnight.hushedcasket.com/2007/01/16/gears-of-war-halo-1-lan-at-raptures/
70 photos from the LAN: at Flickr.com

THX’ers gather around for 3-shot lessons

This past Saturday the Hushed Casket held its first epic HALO LAN of 2007 in Huntsville, Alabama.  It was massive (over 30 gamers), starting on Saturday morning at 11 AM and lasting until 6 AM on Sunday.  That’s 19 hours of hi-def gaming.  Travelers made their way to the event by flying in from as far away as California and Philadelphia.  Others made the drive from the Auburn and Birmingham areas.  While we’ve hosted LANs with more people in attendance in the past, the local Casket community brought the gear, making it the most high-tech and playable LAN to-date.  We had nearly two dozen original XBOX and XBOX 360 consoles at the event along with 10 hi-def displays and copious standard-definition displays scattered throughout the home, including a 95” LCD projector display (

The Prey, Phoenix, and Myth trash rapture’s office