Tag Archives: left 4 dead

Games

Left 4 Dead 2: zombie apocalypse squared

November 19, 2009 – 11:23 am

l4d2_carnivalMy wife & I loved playing Left 4 Dead. Sure it only had 4 campaigns and became repetitive after a while (but we still logged 30+ hours on it), but there was just no other game like it. Not only was it the best co-op experience I’d ever had, defly encouraging real co-operative play (rather than just feeling like you happen to be in the same game at the same time) without it ever feeling forced, but it was also without doubt the best zombie apocalypse simulator ever. It made Resident Evil 5 look like a tired old horse being ruthlessly flogged around the track one more time to please its unimaginative masters.

I was a little worried about Left 4 Dead 2 when I saw the final intro movie and played the demo. Had they decided to go into full-on daytime carnage mode and forgotten the pressing suspense elements? Having had the full game for a couple of days now, I can report that the answer is most definitely and pleasingly ‘no’. In fact what they’ve done is taken everything that was great about Left 4 Dead, and added a whole extra layer of extra stuff which works incredibly well.

We bought it on PC because that was the best experience (we had L4D1 on both PC and 360 and the PC version was much better – faster, more detailed, higher resolution etc), and everything seems to have had an extra visual bump. I’m playing it at 1680×1050 with everything cranked up to the max and it runs really well and looks great, especially considering how many zombies are running around at times.

It’s impressive how well the new elements interact and improve on the gameplay. The environments themselves are very much more individual – we’ve only played through 2 of the 5 campaigns so far but their visual style and the events that occur are now far more varied. While in L4D1 the environments were great at times (my favourite was the airport), the actions that happened inside them were mostly the same. Even in the two settings we’ve played so far, we’ve had great variety – trying to escape a burning building with smoke obscuring  your vision (friendly fire is a particular problem since every flailing silhouette looks similar), running around a roller coaster, starting up a rock concert stage show to attract the attention of a chopper, it’s all great fun. They’ve mixed things up more so you have to switch weapons more often – gone are the times when you could pick a single weapon and ammo-up where you could, now you’re more likely to find small selections of discarded weapons which you need to switch for the current gun you have which is running low, meaning you have to adapt more. The new special infected definitely add a whole new dimension and can make things go pear-shaped quickly, particularly the spitter which can split the group up for precious seconds as a pool of steaming acid cuts you off just long enough for someone to get into trouble. The choice of new items adds a new element too – should we carry more medkits, or should at least one of us have a defibrillator unit in case the worst should happen? If we’re going to have to make a run for it, say to turn off a noisy carousel which is attracting the horde, maybe an adrenaline shot might be more useful than pain pills (temporary health restoration)?

All the people who complained that this was a sequel instead of a free content pack need to be quiet now, because the improvements in the sequel are easily worth paying for. Valve took a major risk with Left 4 Dead; no-one had embraced co-op gameplay quite so completely (so as to basically make playing alone unattractive), and no-one had tried to make an AI ‘game master’ (director as they call it) adapt a dynamic and semi-randomised game to the players before, thus making a co-op game which had the replayability only competitive multiplayer games had achieved before. But, it worked, and arguably created a whole new type of game. Watershed games like this don’t come along that often, and when they do I think developers deserve to be rewarded for it.

Left 4 Dead used to be the best co-op game, and the best zombie game around – it’s fitting that it should be superceded only by its sequel. If you remotely like co-op gaming and share the current fascination with the zombie apocalypse, I doubt you will find a game better than this.

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Games Personal

Steam’s L4D2 pre-order price shock – it’s reasonable

October 4, 2009 – 2:50 pm

l4d2I like Steam. Sure, you’ve got all the people moaning about not being able to sell on their games afterwards, but I don’t care about that – maybe because I don’t buy that many games compared to some, and I tend to hold on to them regardless more often than not.

It’s the nearest thing to XBox Live on the PC and it does a pretty good job of it. Buying games and keeping them up to date is simple, and it’s indie-friendly with far less of the snooty attitide that seems to be increasing in the console online marketplaces now they’re established.

But one thing holds it back – prices. The simple fact is that it should be cheaper to buy a game online than to buy it in a physical box. To say otherwise is utter madness – after all the boxes have to be manufactured, shipped, placed on shelves and waved through a barcode scanner by a bored teenager on their Saturday job – each stage of which sucks a little more money out of the loop. Even Amazon has to handle physical boxes and add or pay for postage & packaging. The cost of some digital storage and bandwidth pales in comparison, so why can I buy most of the games on Steam for less on Amazon, and even in my local HMV? It’s insanity.

My feeling is that this bizarre situation is forced upon them by publishers, who are simultaneously being leaned on by the physical retailers. This is backed up by the fact that any game that is not by Valve, and is also available in stores, is more expensive on Steam than it is in the shops. I guess if Best Buy threatens not to put your game on the shelf if you let Steam sell it for less, you don’t have much choice but to comply, even if that actually perpetuates the reatiler’s control over the industry, to everyone elses detriment.

Anyway, we were playing Left 4 Dead’s Crash Course expansion (pleasantly free on PC, and a superior experience there anyway) and helpfully a Left 4 Dead 2 pre-order offer popped up after we finished the game. The hooks that were offered were early access to the game and demo, and an exclusive in-game baseball bat. The asking price: £26.99, discounted from the normal price of £29.99. My first reaction was ‘ok, but it’ll be cheaper on Amazon’: except that when I looked, it wasn’t. It was precisely the same price in fact (although in this case Amazon discounted it from £34.99).

So, we pre-ordered on Steam since I’m sure it’s going to be awesome. Still, I think it could be even cheaper given that Valve must get much less than that from Amazon’s sale of the game. Hopefully as digital distribution continues to mature, we’ll see the prices come down. Games are too expensive at retail by a large margin  (particularly on consoles), it’s hampering mainstream adoption, driving the second-hand sales market and piracy, and making the hit-driven mentality of the industry worse. Games need to be cheaper at first purchase, and need to sell for longer outside the first month on sale. Movies make the majority of their money from DVDs, not the box office, but the ‘big’ games are still stuck in a chase for a box-office smash. Services like Steam provide a route to a more sustainable model – and by sustainable I don’t just mean the environmental benefits of not manufacturing more plastic and shuttling it around the world with fossil fuels, I mean that games could last longer there and provide a longer tail return for their developers, all while costing the public less.

Ah well – I guess parity is at least a start. We won’t make much more progress towards sanity until the hands of the big retailers can be slowly prised from the throat of the industry.

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Games

Horde 4 Dead

April 17, 2009 – 11:26 am

l4d_smallFor those who don’t follow these things, the new, free Left 4 Dead DLC drops next week, which does 2 things – it enables ‘Versus’ mode on the 2 maps where it wasn’t available before, and it adds a new gameplay mode called ‘Survival’, which is basically about holing the survivors up in one area of the map and throwing zombies at them relentlessly, with leaderboard scoring for the teams that survive the longest.

Valve have talked about it in their blog, and to be honest I’m really not sold on the whole idea. It basically turns Left 4 Dead into Gears 2‘s Horde mode, or alternatively a final setpiece with no ending. Now, I love Horde – we’re still playing it right now, having bought the Combustible and Snowblind map packs recently, but it’s a different kind of game. One of the reasons I like playing both Gears and Left 4 Dead months after buying them is that they give me two different kinds of co-op experience – the former being really a kind of first person tower defense, and the latter being about being forced to make your way through a zombie-infected territory, despite the urge to lock yourself in a closet and barricade the door. The key thing about Left 4 Dead for me, is that every instinct tells you to hunker down, to make an area safe and stick to it, but in reality you know you have to press on into the unknown, leaving each place of relative safety that you created for yourself because you know it’s really just an illusion. I think it encapsulates the survival horror movie feel completely that way, and all without needing an explicitly laid out plot or silly cutscenes – the environment tells all the story you need.

Also, while survival mode might seem just like an extended end set-piece in the main game, but in the end set-pieces you’re just trying to hold out for rescue to arrive – it’s desperate, chaotic and insane but you know that maybe, just maybe if you hold out, you might be in a fit state to make that final mad dash for  the helicopter / boat / army transport with multitudes of baying zombies at your back. That’s the rush – that carrot of potential salvation is what keeps you going through the mayhem, that eventually, it’s going to end and you might just make it. I’m not sure that I’d be very motivated to just defend against hordes of zombies with no chance of rescue, with the only way out being death. Sure, I do that in Horde, but the question remains why I would choose to play L4D survival mode rather than Horde, since arguably they’re the same and the defense mechanics are more refined in Horde. I play L4D because it’s different, I’m not really that interested in L4D trying to provide a Horde-like experience, because I already have one of those, and it’s pretty damn awesome.

Well,  it’s free so I guess I can’t complain. I would much rather they spent their time on new levels though – which I would be very willing to pay for.

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Games

I love Valve

February 12, 2009 – 11:48 am

Valve are awesome. They’ve made a string of excellent games, many of them including elements that have significantly progressed the medium, like the Half-Life series’ in-game storytelling, Team Fortresses class systems, Portal’s FPS without guns and Left 4 Dead’s reinvention of the co-operative gameplay experience (yes, I know some of these became Valve when they absorbed other teams, but they had the vision to nurture and promote them). Then there’s the fact that they’re almost single-handedly helping to keep PC gaming relevant in the modern world with Steam. It may have had it’s problems initially, and some people don’t like the lack of resale value on games, but there’s simply no other system as slick as it for getting content and updates, and connecting with friends on PC, and the opportunities it offers for independent developers is fantastic.

It was just announced that the Left 4 Dead Survival Pack will be free, both on PC and 360, which is great and another reason to say ‘yay Valve’. The one criticism you can level at Left 4 Dead is that it’s a little short on content, given that a single playthrough of the entire game could maybe take you 6-8 hours. Of course the replay value is great though, very much like Horde on Gears 2, which we’re playing a ton, but more content is always welcome (note: this pack doesn’t include new campaigns, but a new play mode called ‘Survival’ and enables Versus mode for the 2 maps that didn’t have it – not that we play Versus). Multiplayer games have always had this benefit of course, but in my case I haven’t been a fan of playing against other random players from around the world for a few years, simply because I don’t want to burn lots of time practicing, and in that case the experience is too unpredictable to guarantee a fun time, every time – I really don’t want to have a 50:50 chance of being frustrated every time I play. Conversely when I play co-op with friends against the AI in Horde or Left 4 Dead, I can guarantee that it’ll be fun every time because we can peg the difficulty the way we like, and still have fun as a group.

For this reason I don’t feel bad that I’m buying my 3rd copy of Left 4 Dead this week. We already have 2 copies on PC, but we decided to buy the 360 version too so we can play with non-PC owning friends. These games definitely work best when played with real-world friends rather than ‘randoms’ (as we’ve come to call them) from the Internet, and the sad fact is that more of our friends play on 360 than PC these days. We’ve had so much fun on Horde lately we want to have another similar experience to alternate with.

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Games

Left 4 Dead Merch

November 27, 2008 – 10:53 am

I just saw that Valve are doing some fun merchandise for Left 4 Dead now. The ‘movie posters’ are nice if you’re still in that phase where you like to stick posters on the wall (I’m not), but the T-Shirts are of pretty universal appeal.

Francis seems to be pretty well represented here, or particularly his predeliction for saying how much he hates everything all the time (hospitals, airport terminals, woods, vans, you name it), so I’m guessing he’s turning into a fan favourite. He reminds me a little of Jayne from Firefly which is probably why I like him. There’s actually quite a lot of voice acting in L4D; it’s only delivered dynamically based on the events, rather than as a story mode, but still manages to give you a basic sense of each character and does add to the atmosphere. Well, except the ubiquitous ‘Reloading!’ call of course.

The Portal tees are fun too :)

Talking of Left 4 Dead, I’m ashamed to admit that I died twice on Blood Harvest last night, and just on Normal mode. The first time was when I bravely volunteered to go out front to see if there was enough space to sneak past the Witch (conclusion: there wasn’t, and the horde chose that time to strike so the others couldn’t rescue me from her in time), the second time was right at the end where we got separated while trying to make it to the rescue point, and I made the mistake of running back to try to rescue my wife from a Tank, despite only just having disentangled myself from the horde (I love/hate how the zombies hold on to you so you can’t run). I could see the rescue truck, but I could also see Marie on the ground just a little way in the opposite direction, incapacitated but still rescueable. I thought I could make it there and back – it would be heroic, right? Wrong. In the end we both ended up getting stomped to death within line of sight of salvation. We made it through on the second attempt though (just) – I’m not sure we’re ready for Advanced mode yet (Yeah I know, lightweights), but we’re going to try soon.

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Games Personal

Defensive planning

November 23, 2008 – 6:05 pm

So, my back has been getting slowly better over the last month since my hospitalisation experience; I occasionally have a small relapse, like just after I picked up my new guitar – you wouldn’t think that shifting a small practice amp would be a big deal, but I certainly felt it for the next few days – but overall steady improvement. Part of my rehab is to take more regular gentle exercise, and to mix up my routine a bit so I’m not hunched at the desk in ‘work posture’ for such long periods of time, which means, among other things, daily walks of a few miles, daily guitar practice and plenty more gaming time (hence more game-related posts on this blog).

Often I don’t actually have anywhere in particular to go during my walks, but I need to do it anyway, so I tend to wander off in a direction and try to figure my way back. Despite living in this area for 6 years there are still lots of small country lanes in the vicinity that I’ve never been down before, so while it’s impossible to get properly lost (ie the ‘stranded on the moors’ kind of lost), I nevertheless end up on unfamiliar territory a lot of the time.

Since I don’t have a lot to do except listen to my iPod and think, sometimes I’ll think about work, sometimes about new ideas I have for various things, but today as I walked past fields and picket fences, the defensibility of each location against zombie attack kept wandering into my mind. Last night we made our way through Riverside in Left 4 Dead, which is a small town with many rural sections, and the dynamics of the game are much different from the fairly claustrophobic sections of city streets and buildings in the previous ‘movie’. Not only can you be attacked from all sides, but the surrounding undergrowth is adept at hiding many a boss zombie, and it’s really easy to get separated from your teammates because of the open nature of the scenery. You may think you’re just quickly darting behind a shed to check for pickups, but when you come out again and see your friends are a few hundred yards away, it feels like miles. I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the landscape fairly near to my house is like that, making it less than optimal territory for zombie defense. The estate agent unfortunately did not point this out when we bought the place.

We’re loving Left 4 Dead now the full version has come through. The ability for it to generate memorable situations from pseudo-random behaviour is masterful, such that you end up talking excitedly about the ‘scene’ you just experienced afterwards as if someone had deliberately directed it. After L4D the reliance of many games on pre-scripted set-pieces looks a little boring and repetetive – repeat a section in L4D and it’s never quite the same, while still being memorable. Of course, the range of situations L4D can generate are, on a macro scale, fairly limited, since they are basically all about surviving zombie mayhem, but even so the combination of several factors does make each game feel unique within itself. Some people would say that multiplayer games have generated their own ‘stories’ for years, but actually in most cases since it tends to be a PVP experience it’s less of a story and more of a sports commentary. L4D is, AFAIK, the first game where you get a really successful blend of the dynamism of multiplayer and the unpredictability of variable settings within a context of a traditional ‘human versus computer’ story play. Diablo was perhaps the closest I can think of, since that had randomly generated content and co-op multiplayer, but it never felt as refined as this. Perhaps that’s because the levels themselves and overall objective remain the same, and so tend to add a little more story structure, while still the actual detail of the action varies enough to keep you interested.

One of the memorable moments from last night:

The helicopter had just arrived on top of the medical building, but I’ve gone to help Louis up after he was flattened by a Tank. I fire him up with pain pills so he has enough strength to run, and he’s off towards the chopper where the other 2 are already jumping in, shouting wildly for us to follow. I turn and run after Louis when suddenly a Smoker hiding out on a nearby roof lashes me with his toungue, pulling me backwards off the landing pad and away from rescue, leaving me dangling and choking. Someone in the chopper shoots the toungue to release me, but that drops me down to a lower level, tantalisingly out of reach of the chopper. They’re still screaming at me to run for it.

I run madly for a ladder, catching out of the corner of my eye that the roof access doors are being smashed in and are disgorging hordes of zombies on to the roof, each with the express intention of feasting on me. A few make it to the ladder ahead of me, so I slam the rifle butt into them make some room – I know I don’t have time to try killing them, they’ll just be replaced by the dozens around them, I just need to make enough space to flee because I don’t have a chance down here on my own. I scramble frantically up the ladder and sprint across the roof, the snarling masses literally right over my shoulder. The guys in the chopper are shooting over my head to pick a few off, but there’s too many of them. I just about dodge a Hunter that leaps at me and pile into the chopper, and we lift off leaving a crowd of disappointed flesh eaters seconds behind.

The culmination of each movie has a frantic ending like this, but you never really know precisely what’s going to happen. It’s some of the best co-op fun you can get IMO, and since co-op is my preferred play style now, this is just what the doctor ordered. Highly, highly recommended.

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Games

Left 4 Dead update

November 15, 2008 – 4:44 pm

I finally got chance to play Left 4 Dead co-op with my wife rather than single player with all AI teammates, and it’s an entirely different experience. I’d heard this of course, but even so I found it surprising just how much difference it makes. Having a real person yelling for help as they get jumped by a hunter after hanging back behind the others, running scared from a marauding tank together, or frantically trying to help a team-mate up so you can get back up into a defensive choke point before the wall of dead flesh that’s charging down the abandoned subway track crashes over you, it’s simply enormous fun. We played through the demo an extra 2 times, cranking up the difficulty the second time, and really enjoyed it.

It certainly assuaged my concerns about replayability and how well the co-op mechanic would work – in short, bloody brilliantly. I was a little concerned that the setting might freak my wife out too much, since she’s not a big fan of ‘jumpy’ games and has previously passed on survival horror games on that basis. However, she said it’s different when playing co-op with a real person, so it was fine – although at one point she was left alone on the harder setting because I was kicked to death (they kick you when you’re down, the swines – don’t they teach Queensbury rules in zombie school?), and she said that was more unnerving. In fact, even when we lost an AI character it was pretty unnerving, since we know we have less chance of survival as our numbers dwindle.

The fact that Amazon were doing a pre-order special deal on PC for £17 sealed the deal, so we have 2 copies with our names on them now. We’re not the Counter Strike type players who make complex team strategies of the like I’ve been seeing cropping up on some forums, but I’m sure we’ll get plenty of enjoyment out of this. It’s just fun to share that co-op experience – still my preferred multiplayer mode, especially with people you know. Of course, explaining to ‘normal’ people that you and your spouse’s quality time together sometimes involves attempting to survive metropolitan zombie infestation might raise a few eyebrows, but hey, this is the modern world :)

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Games

Necessary training for an uncertain future

November 12, 2008 – 10:48 pm

Serious games are big these days. Whether it’s training firefighters, soldiers, plant operators or surgeons, the benefits of a simulated environment in which people can hone their real-world skills is widely recognised. Now, with the impending release of Left 4 Dead, we have the necessary training environment to prepare ourselves for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You’ll be thanking those foresighted chaps at Valve in due time, mark my words.

I just picked up the demo today – on PC, because if there’s one thing that’s going to increase the likelihood of the recently dead opening your skull and spreading your grey matter on water biscuits, it’s being limited to a fixed turning speed. Somehow being able to flail wildly and spray bullets in a 360 degree arc while squealing like a girl makes me feel more in control of those high-pressure situations.

So, it was pretty much what I expected, only more so in some areas and less so in others. I expect I should probably get slightly more specific if I’m to maintain this tenuous ruse of being some kind of reviewer, so here we go.

If you’ve seen Dawn of the Dead, you pretty much know what to expect in terms of the rank-and-file zombie experience; ie zombies that do the traditional zombie shamble when they’re unaware of you, but when they are alerted to you they begin to sprint like Ben Johnson, also climbing over fences, up to higher floors, leaping over cars etc – it’s very difficult to feel safe anywhere (except for a particularly comforting broom cupboard I found on the first level). I’m actually really impressed at the number of zombies they managed to get running at you at once – you think it’s getting crowded and then another 10 sprint round the corner. Certain events also trigger what is best described as a ‘zombie rush’ – this can be setting off a car alarm (which infuriates and attracts more zombies), but also getting covered in the bile from an exploding ‘boomer’ (basically a fat inflatable zombie), which attracts the little blighters like moths to a flame. Also, your view is distorted while this happens, looking convincingly like you’re peering through thick liquid, which is horrific as you see the shapes of many zombies homing in on you.

Other ‘special’ zombies seem to be mainly designed to bring the co-op elements into sharper focus, since all of them have a special attack which renders the victim helpless and in need of rescuing by comrades – the ‘hunters’ are very fast and have a tendency to leap onto you, pinning you to the ground, the ‘smokers’ (recognisable by the hacking cough and the fact that they disintegrate into a cloud of noxious gas) fire out some kind of ‘toungue’ which reels you in if hit, much like a mobile version of the barnacles in Half Life. The ‘witch’ seems to be an extra-tough zombie that you’re supposed to sneak past but goes nuts for the first person to disturb her, again needing rescuing.

Overall, the feeling of being trapped in a zombie-infested city with 3 other companions is pulled off extremely well. The zombie hordes are highly convincing, the music is dynamic and always puts you on edge, and the co-op element works well, you really do feel that you need to stick together. I played single player with AI comrades – I tried briefly with other random people but succumbed to the usual annoyances of kids who won’t shut the hell up on voice chat, or who generally behave irritatingly (yes, you’re teabagging a zombie, how very droll and original). The ongoing problem with multiplayer of course is that it involves other people. But if you have a group of reasonable people (ie actual friends) I think it would be huge fun.

The action is allegedly controlled by AI which balances the experience dynamically, meaning that you don’t get the same experience twice. I can’t really comment on that yet, only having gone through the demo once, but it does seem to flow pretty well. In the full game, a person can take control of that, directing zombies and changing music, apparently. That sounds interesting.

There are some downsides though. Despite it being very creepy, and the variety of the different types of zombies throwing a few curve balls in there, and the exquisite moments of panic that can be created by a car alarm going off or a boomer covering you in goo, it does often feel a bit like a shooting gallery, just in slightly different surroundings each time. I wasn’t bored in the demo, but I wonder if after a few more levels I might start to be. You start to get a sense that after it’s been quiet for a while, there’s going to be another ‘zombie rush’ soon, so you start scoping out the potential entry points. Sometimes it surprises, with zombies bursting through walls, windows and doors, over railings and up through ruined floors, but I wonder whether it might get a bit predictable. I also wonder if that would matter so much; maybe the appeal of co-op zombie massacre in different surroundings doesn’t get old that fast. Difficult to say.

I’m also not sure about the decision of giving the pistols infinite ammo. Sure, the other weapons are far better and you really like to conserve ammo on those, but I quickly settled on a strategy of using the pistols for distant enemies and moments of reduced peril, and flip to the bigger firepower when things got hairy. I never felt in danger of running out of ammo – the main peril really came from just large zombie rushes, not from any individual ones. I think there’s less tension this way, knowing you’ll never really be out of ammo so it takes a big wave of undead to really put you in danger (or a special attack). One of the terrifying things in the Resident Evils and System Shocks was the thought of having to face horrific creatures armed with only your travel toothbrush, and that made you treasure each bullet and watch that depleting ammo gauge with beads of sweat forming at your temples.

So, it’s good fun, but I’m not sure if I’ll buy it as a full retail game. I’d be quite happy for this to be in something like the Orange Box, but on it’s own? I’m not sure. I think I’ll wait for the reviews of the full game.

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