Gears of War 2 "Fixed," "Balanced," and "Improved"

— -- Are you a Gears of War 2 cheat? Do you roadie-run while discharging flamethrowers? Kung-fu catapult yourself through the air? Finagle unlimited ammo for your Lancer Assault Rifle? Employ a shield and a two-handed weapon simultaneously?

Hello bygone days: Epic's "Title Update 2" ("title" because?) has arrived, eliminating some 16 exploits from the popular 360-exclusive tactical shooter.

It's a sobering list, full of curiosities like the "ability" to melee through walls, make shields invisible, become invisible, force other players into the vulnerable down (but not out) position, or prevent them from plucking heavy weapons off the ground.

Several additional fixes reportedly remedy issues like client-side hit detection for the Gnasher Shotgun (it's more reliable in high-latency situations now), improve bot functionality, eliminate a "Horde" mode split-screen issue "that could cause a team to get -2 billion in score, which when posted to the leaderboards looked like +2 billion," and quash an annoying bug that prevented vote-quitters from showing up in end game stats, making it difficult for other players to tag them with negative feedback.

The update also adds seven new downloadable-content-based achievements worth 175 points total, though not retroactively. You'll also have to drop between $10 and $15 in Microsoft Points for the necessary "Flashback" and "Combustible" maps, if you haven't already.