I'd maybe put Gears #3 this gen in terms of influence but way behind Call of Duty and Wii Sports. No shame in that.

It is a shame though, that Epic did not do more to improve the quality of Gears online. The first one was about as good an online game as I have ever played. So much of it revolved around strategy and communication, something we'd not seen on consoles since SOCOM. But things like host advantage and glitches destroyed it, especially when Gears 2.

The franchise is clearly one of the most successful this gen and I am sure more successful and generating more revenue than Epic/MS could have dreamed, but it makes me wonder sometimes just how much more popular it would be with a working online mode. One of the reasons I am looking forward to Judgement. I hear it is having dedicated servers, a nice start to eliminate host advantage issue that has plagued the series.

Everyone multiplayer game should imo

Gears and Uncharted are worthless, God of War is where's it at.

Nah not all games need dedicated servers imho. Plenty on p2p have good enough net code. Plus with dedicated servers you have the reality that the day the publisher decides to pull the plug will arrive a lot quicker, plus what EA did with BF3 was just disgusting and hilarious. Last time I bothered to try and play, a couple hours later I'd still not found a server that was just regular rules and tickets.