Gears of War was last year's 300 pound Gorilla. It was the Game of the Year and soon became the number one most played game on Xbox Live, surpassing even Halo 2 in online popularity. This was for good reason; the online is a blast to play. In fact, the only major flaw with the online isn't even entirely the game's fault. Sadly, this flaw still manages to ruin what would otherwise be an amazing online experience. The flaw I speak of, of course, is the online community itself. Gears of War, however excellent it is, has one of the worst Online Communities in gaming today.

First of all, the game does not encourage Teamplay, and for a game with no Free-for-All Modes, that's very disappointing. The game often seems like a Deathmatch where 3 of the 7 other people are immune to your bullets. It's not rare to be the only person doing any fighting at the beginning of the match while your teammates are off somewhere on the other side of the map. Assuming your team sticks together somewhat, then comes the issue of kill ownership. Generally, when somebody downs an enemy, they are considered to own that kill. If you finish off somebody's down, you will immediately be yelled at for kill stealing, even if the person who made the down was under heavy fire from another enemy and you were worried about him reviving the downed enemy. Of course, you wouldn't have to worry about that, since even if it causes your team to lose the round, it's more beneficial to their kill count to never risk anything to revive you. As a result, you probably won't be revived when you go down, unless you happen to meet someone who still needs the revive achievement.

And speaking of achievements, what was Epic thinking when they made these? The achievements are primarily kill based, leading people to worry about their kill count first and the good of the team second. Nobody cares if they lose a match as long as they're a pistol kill closer to the achievement, and it's even worse if they already got those, since the "seriously" achievement requires 10,000 kills. This could have easily been solved by making most of the achievements rely on winning rounds or matches, or on the number of kills earned by the team as a whole, but the achievements reward personal kill counts first and Teamplay second. Predictably enough, this focus on kill count has led people to become very angry when they die and can't get anymore kills for the whole round.

Every time somebody dies, it was the host that killed them. Seriously, the myth about host advantage has gone way out of control and been blown way out of proportion. I've heard people die and blame their death on host advantage when the person who killed them wasn't even host. I've heard my kills blamed on host advantage in a local 1 on 1 game. I've heard people claim that host advantage makes their bullets do more damage, that host makes them take less damage, and that host advantage applies to the entire team. If you die as host, your team immediately yells at you because as everyone seems to know, hosts should be immortal. According to the average Gears of War player, the Host should not be able to use the following weapons due to an unfair advantage:

• Lancer
• Chainsaw
• Shotgun
• Pistol
• Revolver
• Smoke Grenade
• Frag Grenade
• Hammerburst
• Boomshot
• Longshot
• Torque Bow
• Hammer of Dawn

The host also should not be allowed to roll, take cover, or move from spawn. All in the name of making the game fair of course.

Perhaps the worst thing about the game, is how people complain about it. If you use the Active Reload system, people complain about you being an "Active Whore". If you use cover, people say you have no skill. If you use a lancer, people say you're a "Lancer Whore". It seems the only acceptable method of playing is to run around in the open with a shotgun and battle people at medium to close range. Never mind that the developers never intended you to play like that. This is in fact, the first game in which I've been insulted for playing the way the developers intended. Because I use cover and shoot people with a Lancer while people run at me and try to use their shotguns, I'm often called a "Lancer *****". And God forbid you use your chainsaw. Anyone who uses the chainsaw is a noob and is being cheap since the chainsaw supposedly sucks people in. Never mind that the chainsaw is so slow that if you can't stop it, you deserve to be sawed in half, it's not a shotgun, so it's cheap.

The worst part about this all is that it's actually encouraged in many ways. In the Capital Punishment 2 Tournament they noted that there was a lot more defensive play in the last tournament and more close combat in this one. They then passed it off as an "evolution" in the community. I don't know about them, but I'd argue that the change from people using cover and attacking tactically to people running around in the open at close range with shotguns is devolution. The Gears of War community has managed to become some of the sorest losers that exist in gaming, beating out even Halo's mother-insulting 10-year-olds. At the current rate, if Halo 3 is as good as it looks, I might consider hanging up my Lancer for good. That is, unless the community as a whole decides to try to improve. Will you try to improve?