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Six months ago, I posted an article called "Mr. Bleszinski, Hear My Plea." The article was a detailing of then-recent events I had dealt with on Gears of War's ranked multiplayer modes. I wrote about glitchers, douchebags and spoiled brats playing the game and ruining it for everyone else. I talked about the players' "absurd level of freedom," as in their ability to cheat and get away with it without being penalized.

Well, Gears of War 2 has been out for almost two months now, and not much has changed.

So I'm playing Gears of War 2, in a new mode called Wingman, which pits 5 teams of twos against each other in a race not for survival, but to a set number of kills. In this case, 15 kills win the match. I'm playing on my favorite level, River, and my teammate, astonishingly enough, isn't that bad and he's actually communicating—unlike the majority of my Wingman sessions (if my teammate doesn't leave at the start to begin with). We're way down with 5 kills between us and the leading team has 12. We have a pretty good round, each getting 4 kills, and the leaders go up to 13. Now, keep in mind that if there's a tie at the end of a round, a tiebreaker round called Overtime takes place which includes every team.

So it's between us, the leaders and another team with 12 kills. We start what should be the final round and I go headlong into a hellish rampage, getting three kills in three shots, totally obliterating two entire teams (one of them had only one player remaining). Now we have 12 kills, but the leaders are up to 15, meaning that if we don't kill the last three remaining players, we can't even tie. Luckily, I am terrific, and while our opponents are distracting one another with each other's c--ks, I grab a miraculously unguarded mortar and aim into a bumblef--k of three players. The mortars fall from the sky and crash through a roof, effectively f--king each of their respective shits up, and tying the game at 15-15, with some stragglers not that far behind.

"Talk about a comeback," my disbelieving wingman states, and I give a satisfied chuckle, affirming the notion and my own awesomeness.

Overtime.

We head out and run into battle. My wingman gets a kill, then I back him up with another using the brute force of my Coalition of Ordered Governments-issued Gnasher Shotgun. I check the scoreboard and see that my competition have also scored two kills, once again tying the game. This time at 17. With only me, my wingman, one player from my opposition and one other straggler left standing, I bite my bullet of superiority and decide to end the game quickly with another mortar onslaught. I typically hate using super-powered weapons such as the Boomshot and the mortar, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna let something stupid screw me out of the victory we've earned.

I grab the mortar, and...

Nothing.

I stand perfectly still, unable to move a damned muscle, and am left furiously rotating the sticks in a desperate attempt to avoid what I'm certain is coming:

*Tink*
*BOOM*

A Torquebow dart hits me in the sternum and I die a chunky, disgraceful death. If you're unclear about what I've just described, here's what happened:

One of the two players on the team we're tied with was the host of the game, and decided that instead of risking a loss at the hands of my bad badness, he would put his modem on Standby, freezing me in place before I could shoot off a mortar. This would allow him or his buddy to get an easier shot with the torque, which would've already been an easy shot since the mortar slows you down to a crawl anyway. And no, it wasn't my controller screwing up, since just like the last two times this has happened to me in the past week, my camera control still responded—just not my movement one.

Needless to say, they took the lead and kept it, easily dismantling my wingman and the lone gunman who wouldn't have made a mathematical difference for us anyway. And it was all because he decided cheating would be better than dropping rank.

F--k him, f--k his mother, f--k his father and f--k his service provider.

Listen, this game rules. It's flipping brilliant. Don't get me wrong, I've been to the Gears forums, and I know how people are calling it "Unplayable." I know they think it's filled with terrible, awful lag and are pissed off by the planted grenades, but here's where I question your most hardcore fanbase: When they played Gears of War, were they playing the same game as I was? Up until the day I started playing Gears 2, there was an average of a half to a full second of lag in every ranked match. Nearly every problem in Gears 2 was always worse or just as bad in Gears, even after several title updates. The majority of the connections in Gears 2 are better for me than they mostly ever were in Gears, and I love the vast majority of the new gameplay elements. The game just seems bigger, more complete, and I truly, truly love it.

That said, you've just got to do something about those cheating sons of bitches. You know who I mean—the Invisibles, the Invisible Boomshielders, the Standbyers, the Host Droppers, the Air Walkers, and the dozens others. I really, really hate to see another great f--king game from you guys go to shit online because the kids who do this shit are not being punished. Hell, I'm sure you've seen the YouTube video of the number one-ranked Wingman player standby-ing his modem, getting 8 kills, then ending the game... but has that dickhead been banned yet? Last time I checked (two days ago), he hasn't.

I'm not like the other douchebags who have already stopped playing and sold their copies. You've made a great, awesome work of art with Gears 2, and I only see it getting better down the line. But there has to be something done about all this, as soon as possible. Temporary bans, a three-strikes-and-you're-out system, SOMETHING. For the love of God, men, you should be in control here, not 12-year-olds and quarter-assed wannabe hackers. Make your game perfect. Otherwise, it'll just be really, really good. And I know you're probably not gonna be satisfied with that.

Or at least, I hope not.