Gears of War 2 was one of the biggest games launched last year, as it is the sequel to one of the most popular titles made for the Xbox 360. Promising to deliver a bigger, better and more extreme experience, it was immediately embraced by fans around the world.

Sadly, it wasn't without faults, especially in the multiplayer mode, as a lot of gamers complained that the weapons weren't balanced properly and that too many things had been changed. The inefficient matchmaking system and big lag times were also among many user complaints about Gears of War 2.

Fortunately, the team at Epic has just released a few title updates in order to fix these problems. The next update, number 4, hasn't passed certification yet, but the developers have revealed just what it would fix and add to the overall experience of the game.

Improvements

Title Update 4 makes these new improvements:
• Adds the ability to collect multiplayer experience by playing Horde mode. 
• Adds the ability to restart Public Horde from the current failed wave instead of having to start over from wave 1. Title Update 4 also allows the host to kick players from a Public Horde session.
• Increases the frequency of downloadable content (DLC) maps showing up in map voting if all players have shared map packs.
• Adds a message at the end of the match to explain to players that they should wait before quitting so that they avoid an experience penalty for quitting early.
• Adds support for the new campaign chapter, "Road to Ruin." 
• Adds 13 new achievements worth 325 points. All of the new achievements require the Dark Corners Map Pack, a set of seven new maps and a deleted campaign chapter to be released July 28. 

Exploit Fixes

Title Update 4 fixes these possible exploits, where under certain circumstances:
• 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.
Title Update 4 also fixes a number of lesser-known exploits.

General Fixes

Title Update 4 fixes these other issues as well:
• 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:
o Drop the Boomshield, even if aiming while carrying it.
o Drop a heavy weapon, even if it is deployed.
o Cringe while roadie running.
o 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

Title Update 4 makes these balancing changes:
• Adds a 30-second delay in map-based weapon spawning at the beginning of a Wingman match.
• Adds more future server-side balancing options.

Overall, these are a lot of changes, and if you want to see the full list, including the new achievements, you can check out the official forum thread at Epic Games.