And so the patching continues. According to Epic VP Mark Rein over at the Gear’s forums, another title update for Gears of War 2 is being prepared for release before the end of the month. Whereas the previous two patches were all about matchmaking issues, this one looks to fix a whole slew of online exploits and provide a number of online gameplay improvements. There will also be a number of achievement-related updates.

Among the online exploits fixed by the patch are; the ability to wield an invisible shield, melee through some walls, gain infinite Lancer ammo and equip a two-handed weapon and a shotgun simultaneously (looks like you got your wish, Nico). The online gameplay experience improvements include: increased penalties for quitting matches early, additional spawn protection against planted grenades and chainsaw attacks and a new ability to see the Submission flag carrier destination using Tac/Com. The shotgun has also been looked at according to the post. The weapon will now be more reliable in laggy situations. They’ve also fixed a bug that lead to shotguns and boomshots hitting the ground when firing from the hip.

As for those Achievement updates, Epic are adding Achievement progress numbers to the War Journal (presumably just so you can get depressed about how far away from the ‘Seriously’ Achievement you are) as well as increasing the frequency of in-game Achievement progression notifications. They will also be adding Achievements for the forthcoming downloadable content. Am I wrong to dislike having Achievements forced on me for a product I haven’t even purchased? Maybe. Either way it looks like Epic are doing their best to address Gears 2 ’s issues and, quibbles about the lack of beta testing and the persistent matchmaking problems aside, you can’t ask for much more than that.