This week’s Gears of War Wednesday with the El33tonline community (plus extra) was brilliant thanks to the decision to forego the usual team deathmatch skirmishes and try a few different modes, like ‘Capture the Leader’ and ‘King of the Hill,’ which made things even more exciting and kept our games constantly fresh.

First, however, there was a bit of a robot menace to contend with…

Whether this stipulation is new or not, it seems that in certain matches (i.e private versus standard) of Gears of War 3, you can’t invite new players to your game if your team of five is filled with real-life people. Even if the opposing team is filled with bots, you can’t replace those riotous, roaming routines of AI with real players.

This strikes me, personally, as incredibly dumb, but maybe someone can explain it to me and we can avoid the situation in the future. Why you can’t replace bots with players is beyond me, no matter the game’s setup.

This unfortunately lead to a few of us having to contend with bots on the opposing team for a few too many matches, with all kinds of fruitless (but clever) plans coming to pass to try and overcome the situation. We tried exiting and searching for our own games in the hopes of joining in on the opposing side to invite more players, but alas, our matches disintegrated until I was left with Bro October and Fullmetal MDK desperately trying to get into a game with real people.

It was at the point that Bro said that the games were “almost fun” that I decided it was time to head out and force my way into a full lobby of players. Sorry Bro and Fullmetal, but bots are simply no fun. Not even ‘almost.’

Meanwhile, two full lobbies of Gears 3 players were in full swing stealing all of the fun in games of King of the Hill and Capture the Leader - awesomely enjoyable game types.

Numphie invited me into one of these lobbies just in time and I had a great hour and a half (maybe more) playing against real flesh and blood… and getting churned into flesh and blood gibs against mighty players like GaaTY, BEANIBILITY, Vegeta ZA and the usual gang of Gears 3 scallywags.

It was great to get exile the titan into a few matches, who provided a new and unique commentary track for our games to keep levels of hilarity up nice and high, while Numphie and I tried to keep up with comments of our own.

Unfortunately, however, I didn’t get to play in any of the new maps in the Fenix Rising map pack so I’m hoping to see what all the fuss is about sooner rather than later.

Big thanks to everyone for hopping online on Wednesday night and making the games of Gears 3 so enjoyable - here’s who I managed to track (in-between getting blown to pieces):

• BEANIBILITY
• GaaTY
• FoFoZA
• GreatwytY
• GaaTY
• Ninjascreed22
• Vegeta ZA
• H0ly Diver
• z00bear
• IshSpecialist
• Blackwiddow01
• jGLZA
• de boss za
• v3loCiti
• SKWEH
• MacDeath ZA
• To3jamb
• HAMSTERJIE ZA
• muj33b
• Evolution ZA
• Bull3tSaint
• Omegazn
• Nos4ra2
• exile the titan
• TheMekMaster
• Salvator ZA
• Bro October
• Fullmetal MDK
• MrDestroyer13
• Lafresh ZA

As well as:

• Numphie
• El33tOliver

Is there anyone I missed out or are there any spellings I got completely wrong? Let me know!

We’ll be doing it all over again next week, and we’ll be announcing the recipient of a random spot prize for this week’s games soon!