Gears of War 2 multiplayer facts: Shotgun still powerful, quit yer bitchin’

At the same time as Epic was apologizing for Gears of War 2‘s multiplayer screw ups, some statistics were shared about how multiplayer is shaping up. If you’re interested in meaningless numbers and percentages like I am, then you might want to know these.

It’s interesting to note that, despite complaints about the shotgun being considerably weakened, it is still the most statistically lethal weapon in the game. With the amount of complaints you hear about the Lancer being too strong, it’s quite fun to see that it’s still not the most popular cause of death.

Here are the stats, in any case:

• Almost 3 million multiplayer matches (excluding Private) have been played.
• Almost 1 million screenshot photos have been uploaded to gearsofwar.com
• The most popular multiplayer mode is Horde.
• The most popular multiplayer map across all modes is River.
• The most lethal weapon is the Gnasher shotgun with almost 29% of all kills.

The popularity of Horde doesn’t surprise me, and it explains why it takes ten minutes for me to get a match started in that mode. The amount of matches being played on River also makes sense, since I tend to see that map more than most. I think it’s because everyone knows where the Boomshot is on that one. 

Also, that’s a lot of multiplayer matches being played.