So after a work-induced week away from gaming last week, I’m back into it. And by it, I mean Crackdown 2.
There’s something about the game that isn’t gelling with me. It’s either open-world fatigue after Just Cause 2, Saboteur, Assassin’s Creed 2, Borderlands, etc or it’s just a little lacklustre compared to the original. For me it’s not the similarity to the original, it’s the lack of similarity that gets me. I loved having to work my way through the waves of gang members before attacking the boss in the original and here, the ‘enhancements’ aren’t as much fun. The games’ fun, it’s just not as compelling. I’m a fair way through the game and fully intend on finishing it soon (certainly before Halo Reach), but I’m not getting the urge to play in the morning before work (my metric for HOLY FUCK THIS GAME IS AWESOME).
I live in Australia and of course, aren’t able to buy the same version of Left 4 Dead 2 as the rest of the world due to classifications issues. A friend gifted it to me after it was more or less being given away by Valve in a sale. I mean they almost paid me to download this game. Somehow receiving the game from someone with a US account means you can DL the normal version in Australia and play it without Zombies disappearing before your eyes.
It’s also a case of too little to add to the first game and I do agree with the critics of L4D’s releases so soon after the original- apart from a few enhancements- why wasn’t this DLC or an expansion like HL2 episodes? The new crew don’t have as much charisma as the original crew and yada yada yada.
Grumpy George continues grumpily with a some Grumpy Theft Auto IV. I’ve perhaps played 90 minutes of the PC version multiplayer- and seem to play once every few weeks. I like a bit of structure. this has none. There are several modes and for some reason they always end up with everyone having Bazookas or Helicopters, even if it’s a race.
So two weeks before Halo: Reach and I’d loooove to play some Halo 3 or ODST in the meantime. Approximately two weeks after H:R turns up, I’m off overseas for a few weeks so chances are I won’t feel like playing Halo when i get back. When you were a kid, did you ever have this thing that any fads or lunchtime activities would always be bookended by holidays? In Year 6 Term 2, everyone was into Marbles but gave up in Term 3. In Year 9, everyone was playing cards on the bus after Easter but that stopped the next holidays.
I therefore expect two weeks of concentrated Halo Reach from mid September. If you hate Halo, this site might be one to avoid till October.
The recent E3 show revealed the existence of several games to be released later in 2009. One of these was the sequel to 2008′s smash hit PC/ Xbox 360 shooter, Left 4 Dead.
Rather than fans of the original jumping for joy at the prospect of a full-blown sequel (these are Valve fans- they’re used to a more deliberate timeline for releases), the many fans of L4D are in fact running a petition to focus their anger on what they see is Valve’s ditching of L4D1 so soon after release.
There are two ways you can look at this…
The first way is how the fans are seeing this. LFD is not even cold in its undead grave, with only a few minor DLC releases and here’s Valve trotting a full (priced) sequel in a year. It means they’re either pulling an EA/Activision and moving to yearly updates to franchises- which rarely has an upside to quality whilst at the same time inducing gamer fatigue faster- and going from the altruistic company that many PC gamers imagine Valve to be into another money hungry company.
It took 10 years to go from Team Fortress to TF2. In 2009, we are still waiting for HL2: Episode 3 (more than 18 months after episode 2). TF2 is still getting updates (free ones) two years after release). Hell, even Day of Defeat is still getting updates alongside TF2. So people feel Valve will abandon the free stuff and long term support of their titles.
The other beef is the splitting of the community between those playing L4D and LFD2. One thing online games need in order to thrive is a lot of people. Its what makes TF2 memes more recognisable than Quake Wars: Enemy Territory. Well, if you split the L4D community between those playing the sequel and those playing the original- they will have less people to play with. The problem with that argument is L4D is not a game that requires a lot of people to play, and in a smaller, more dedicated gaming community, you’re more likely to find people more serious gamers, better games, etc. Did TF2 players start a petition of the original L4D pilfering their player base?
The other way you can look at this is : COOL! More LFD! Yippee!
If it were an Activision title, I would be worried about the quality. I still have enough trust in Valve that L4D2 will be worth the price.
Read C1.com’s review of Left 4 Dead
Focus Test for L4D
Clint plays L4D for the first time, Cam bitches about a new videogame for neither the first or last time while George *facepalms*
For those who can’t let go, I have some advice- Let go. Where I work, people regularly use their PC’s to play multiplayer games at lunch and after work at the end of the week. Because the place is so big and stuffed with geeks there are several different games going on around the building. There’s the WoW fraternity, TF2 players (whose ranks have been thinned recently), Left 4 Dead and CoD4 Modern Warfare. Yesterday we had some interesting conversations on our private CoD4 mailing list and it highlights a problem when you play a good multiplayer game for a long time and tire of, but have no immediate successor lined up.
So these guys have basically played Call of Duty modern Warfare at lunchtimes for over a year. They don’t like CS or TF2 or LEft 4 Dead, they love CoD4. They are very good at it and most are ranked level 55. They also play a mod, so they’ve levelled up using this bot mod only with the bots turned off so they’re basically playing standard CoD4 but one where they can only play against each other if they want to preserve their rankings). This is why its hard to tear away the TF2 guys from their game or WoW players to a new MMO. They’ve invested so much time in the game but are so sick of it but they’ve invested so much time in it but they are so sick of it but, well, you can guess the rest.
So back to this group of CoD lovers. One guy, who’s one of the better players, and the one who wrote the bot mod we played, has basically had enough. I know because I’ve played him on the 360 version as well as the PC- He’s spent more time on that one game than I have on sleeping in the past year by the looks of things. you know the type, complaining about others using the grenade launcher (the n00b tube) So he’s trying to rally the troops into playing something else. So what about Call of Duty World at War? Nope- WWII, buggy, yada yada. Which is funny because he hasn’t played it. Ok, then what?
Operation flashpoint was suggested. The group was all excited but apparently was a colossal let down. I could have told them that. Then Codename:Eagle, apparently a pre EA DICE made this before BF1942. Apparently buggy too so that went down in flames. Its funny, but I’m sure many games have this same dilemma. What do you play when you’re sick of something. I recall years ago, when we played Medal of Honor Allied Assault multiplayer, we moved straight onto Call of Duty (the original). When that grew stale, there was no immediate successor until the UT2004 demo came out. Battlefield Vietnam came out and filled the void for a while but that didn’t last. Eventually someone suggested the original Counterstrike and they went back to that (without me for the most part since CS has never gelled for me). WoW kind of killed the LAN gaming network for a few years (that and some other loopholes being closed by the IT department). Counterstrike source came and went a few times, lots of RTSes and MMo’s and then new FPSes becoming fashionable again amongst theses fairly PC-centric types with CoD4 and TF2 (and then Left 4 Dead).
But the habits are hard to kick. Left 4 Dead took away some of the TF2 players (not all), but CoD WaW has not pulled the CoD4 guys away. I’m guessing that either these dudes will be bringing in CoD2 next week or Battlefield 1942 or BF2. And it won’t last. I reckon give it a month before thy come back to Modern Warfare.
I myself played Left 4 Dead but i found the online wasn’t more fun than SP for me and I kind of lost interest after writing the review. Then I saw on steam my Day of Defeat Source needed an update so I patched it and tried it having not played it since CoD2 came out in late 2005. Well, you can see the TF2/influence now. Film grain effect and killcams straight out of TF2 (same sound effects) but that aside, this is still one of the better fast paced shooters. It has changed so little that I can’t help wondering if these guyus will ever get bored with playing these same maps over and over.
What makes guys play this sort of game over and over so much, even years later? CoD WaW has come out and sold very well, but I find the PC community to be quite small. My ISP is one of the larger server providers and there are only two normal TDM servers for CoD WaW compared to about six to eight for Modern Warfare. Hey, people are still playing Quake III somewhere.
Its hard to let go.
Reviewed on PC. Also on Xbox 360. Developed by Valve. Retail versions published by EA
Left 4 Dead is Valve’s latest First Person shooter, based mainly around online cooperative play. L4D has also managed to at least partially bury the meme-cow (a cash cow for memes) that was TF2, at least in the short term. So what is it about this game that’s got everyone excited?
So the conceit is that each of the four stories are their own survival horror movie. Four survivors- Francis- the tough biker, Louis the office worker, Zoe the spunky chick and Bill, the old fart ex marine. Those are my descriptions based on playing the game so forgive me if they misrepresent the ‘canon.’ The four of you basically go from point A to point B Starting and ending each level in a new safehouse. And along the way there are zombies. Like everywhere. There are the common or garden zombies who just move towards you, sometimes slowly, other times rushing at you, often in numbers. And there are the specials.
There’s Boomer, a giant fat bile factory, who, if you get too close, will vomit on you and have hordes of zombies rushing you. Then there’s smoker, with his enormous tongue; Hunters who’ll jump you and pound the crap out of you; and tanks, who are basically big motherfuckers. There’s also the witch, but DON’T DISTURB THE WITCH YOU TARD!
That makes it sound simplistic but its actually a blast to play, easily the best Valve MP game in ages. You can play either by yourself which is underrated and an enormous amount of fun, and are able to select any chapter in any of the campaigns (of course there are no checkpoints within any of the chapters, so if you die you start again). Or you can play with three others, each of you taking on one of the four characters (one of each BTW). You need to work together, if someone runs off and gets cornered, they will need to be rescued. You can of course heal yourself or heal you teammates and they can of course heal you if they feel like it. But Multiplayer does highlight one thing, the AI in this game is very good (even on single player).
This is down to the much vaunted AI director. This will spawn enemies at just the right time and in just the right places. No two playthroughs of this game will ever bee the same and for that reason I recommend playing the single player through by yourself at some point. When you play with people, they’re selfish with health packs, shoot you by mistake and run off by themselves and get killed- which is a pain since that leaves more infected for you to deal with. There’s also a versus mode where four humans can go against four players on the zombie team. The zombies are weak but respawn and can choose exactly where they will lie in wait for their human opponents.
The graphics are pretty decent for a source based game. It doesn’t look ugly per se, it just looks a little underwhelming compared to even some the best console games, let alone high end PC’s. Sound is fantastic, from the music, the voiceover work to the punchy effects.
Left 4 Dead looks like a poor value proposition when you compare it to Team Fortress 2, but it actually offers so much more, not least is a very good single player mode. It’s memes are also not as moronic and insular meaning this is a fun game for everyone to get right into. Everyone loves zombies right?
Controller1.com rating 3/3
Left 4 Dead left me non-plussed a few weeks ago when I last wrote about it. I have kept at it a little longer- still in the single player mode. I’m finding it a lot more fun than the Singple player of some other PC FPS’s I’ve played in my time. So much that I think the single player is a greatly overlooked part of the game. I’m not even sure I really want to play multiplayer all that much.
Years ago, my first taste of PC multiplayer was the coop mode Terrorist Hunt on Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. I had skipped Quake, Unreal and BF 1942 for various reasons but I got heavily hooked on that MP game for months on end, playing at night on our work LAN. We played the games maps as well as custom maps and we never played adversarial modes. Why? Because my friend who mostly hosted hated playing against other people. This was before co-op was a major selling feature of most shooters. He probably would have loved left for dead. I don’t know I’ve not seen him in a while since he’s gone off games.
I’m currently on the last mission of the Airport level (or the third of four campaigns). Even though its the equivalent of playing BF1942 with bots, its still a highly agreeable single player game. But even though I love PC multiplayer shooters, well CoD at least, I don’t know if I will want to play much more multi of this. Something about Valve games that attracts the rather unforgiving hardcore. In SP, if you shoot your team mates by accident, you get a warning. In MP, if you shoot your teammates you get a smack on the head. One of the single best features of CoD WaW is the one-level zombie mode that is unlocked once you beat single player. I hope Treyarch can turn that success into something a little meatier in future iterations or even DLC.
Fallout 3 is one of those games that you know will just eat your time. I’ve been slack and am still only three hours in but I’ve only had time to play the game on weekends recently so my progress is slower than a Trabant on an economy run. I’m liking it far more than Oblivion. I made it 10 hours into oblivion before losing interest but I hate later had pangs of regret in selling it. Actually wait, I gave it to Clint and he wiped his ass on it, or something. Or he got a dirty disc error. Something like that. I like the setting but obviously in a game that can take 100+ hours, I’m only going to see a limited version of all the game has to offer. And that’s OK. I need an ending to games and if one isn’t in sight, boredom takes over, quality or no. Probably F3′s shooter presentation is what is making it more palatable to player over something set in another fantasy realm. F3 is SF which has always been more my cup of tea. Irish Breakfast, if I’m not mistaken. Mine’s strong with milk, no sugar.
Lastly I played a teensy bit of Rock Band ACDC. For various reasons, including a ridiculously cheap price tag (not RRP), I bought thsi rather than the full version. I am disappointed that you can’t use it to buy DLC, but it is weird for someone who’s played Guitar ero for so long to suddenly play exactly the same game with such a different look- despite it being exactly the same.
I’ve been away for a few days hence the pre-recorded podcasts and tiny updates from my iPhone. Now that I’m back home, there’s more game time. This morning I decided to give Left 4 Dead (PC) another go. I’m just bumming through single player at this stage since my early attempts to play online failed to elicit much fun. I surprised myself by playing through several levels in one sitting, so I think I’ve probably committed myself to playing for a little longer at least. When I go back to work I’ll try playing with real people again but single player will do for now.
Since finally being able to sample World at War online on PC, I’ve decided that although its fun, I’ll probably stick to 360 for multiplayer. There are just no servers running Team Deathmatch for this game unless you want Friendly Fire and Hardcore rules- which I don’t. I never get why PC gamers hate fun so much. It’s like “Hey let me buy you a ticket to Disneyland,” and they’re all “Only if we go when its really busy and really hot and make sure we go on only the rides with the longest queues.”
Fallout 3 has been started. Yes I envisage myself getting about 25% of the way through this game before I give up but since this game is so huge, I don’t think that will be a huge problem. It’s already more fun than Oblivion but that’s possibly down to the more SF backdrop. Cyrodil was a nice place to visit but I woouldn’t want to live there. Washington DC doesn’t look that much better but at least there’s no ‘Wayne’s World’ style zoom-ins everytime I talk to an NPC.
Games on the current playlist:
Multiplayer: Call of Duty WaW (PC and 360)
Singleplayer: Left 4 Dead (PC), Mirror’s Edge (PS3), Fallout 3 (360)
Still to play: Boom Blox (Wii), Prince of Persia (360), Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts (360)
Recently finished (or finished with): Little Big Planet (PS3), CoD WaW Single Player (PC)
