Lag switching, leaving maps, hacks and host advantage, all of which have plagued and rendered its ancestors almost unplayable, have been completely eradicated by the hosted environment, something which all other developers and publishers should take note of. I say on the hosted servers, because there have been occasions when these have been down for maintenance and the peer-to-peer system of old has kicked in, which in itself has not been too bad compared to the likes of Gears 1 and 2. Having clocked up almost 9 hours with the BETA, not once have I experienced any form of lag when on the hosted servers. Pure and simple, Epic have taken everything that was bad about the first two instalments and thrown it out the window, leaving what is arguably one of the most stable, tactical, fast paced shooters I have ever played on a console. So, the public Gears of War 3 BETA has been up for almost a week now and I can tell you that this game is simply amazing. If you haven’t already pre-ordered this game, do it.