As any highly-successful and over-hyped game, Gears of War was bound to backfire at developer Epic Games. Out of the various issues players have been complaining about, mostly in multiplayer, one mind-boggling bug was causing the game to display at a squashed aspect ratio on non-widescreens using VGA cables. Apparently it's an inherent bug for the current version of the Unreal Engine 3, and the reason I'm calling it "mind-boggling" is simply because it hasn't been spotted *before* the game came out. Which means that neither Epic, nor Microsoft's extensive QA testing department didn't use a lousy 4:3 LCD monitor with VGA cables when testing Gears of War.
Anyway, the good news is that Epic has since fixed the VGA aspect ratio issue (at least Mark Rein *thinks* so), however the bad news is that the fix will only be applied along with the next update. Which, as luck would have it, has yet to receive an ETA. But at least it will incorporate "a few other things" as well. For now, affected players will have to content themselves with an official apology for the oversight.
In other GoW backfiring news, 2old2play are making a big fuss over the banning of a Gears of War player from the Epic forums:
"Bryantson was commenting on how while the single player game was fantastic albeit short, the multiplayer was filled with bugs and other shortcomings. Soon after the post, Epic contacted Bryantson to inform him that he was banned from the forums forever."
You can read the victim's entire post on 2old2play, and the reason invoked by Epic for the ban was "continued trolling, railing against moderation". Well, that doesn't say much. It could be because of the guy's bitching against the Gears of War multiplayer, or comparing it with Halo 2 (which apparently goes against the regulations)... or maybe it was because of the following two bits:
"This game was shorter than Danny Divito. (...) So, I move on to multiplayer with high hopes only to be letdown faster than Hillary when she announces her bid for presidency."
I guess it's best if you avoid all of these things when posting on Epic's forums. Especially the one about Hillary...
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Those forum Nazis it's true what they say if you aren't a fanboi they'll silence you. I'm not surprised about those bugs if they didn't bother testing it on a 4:3 monitor.
full post: http://www.2old2play.com/News/Epic_B..._GoW_Criticism
Source: http://www.playfuls.com/news_8457_Ge...er_Banned.html
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