Left 4 Dead

[thatdamnhippie]

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x163/kazeHideoshi/CopyofLeft4Dead.jpg

This game looks pretty promising, havent seen a good zombie game in a little while. I wont be getting this right away because I have Fable 2, Far Cry 2, and just got myself Gears 2. And I am quite broke now. But from gameplay videos of this game it looks very promising. Hopefully this will be a new and great zombie game that all of us forgery'ers will be able to do the 4-player co-op it has (:

Any thoughts?

[Null Parameter]

There's already been a group of us playing Co-op in the demo, it is pretty fun, but when you play with a bunch of people who have already been playing for a while, it is hard to keep up.

I also found the controls to be a bit iffy. Many times you had to be in the exact right place for things to work and you seem to run uber fast.

[Thomas]

So, Parker, overall, would you recommend it?

[Null Parameter]

I'd have to play the demo through on my own again to get used to everything, but as of right now, yes, I would recommend it based on my limited knowledge.

[thatdamnhippie]

yeah i played the demo im okay at the game. but i think if your playing with 4 people of all different expirience on the game it is quite difficult. I havent decided if I want to get to this first or CoD5.

[WoozyJoJo]

There's already been a group of us playing Co-op in the demo, it is pretty fun, but when you play with a bunch of people who have already been playing for a while, it is hard to keep up.

I also found the controls to be a bit iffy. Many times you had to be in the exact right place for things to work and you seem to run uber fast.
Thing is, it's made for the computer. The source engine is nearly perfect on PC. I downloaded the same L4D demo off of Steam to try it on the computer, and it plays a lot like Counter strike, which is a very, very good thing. I'm actually thinking about canceling my Xbox 360 pre-order and just buying L4D cheaper off of Steam. There's even sexy menu music.

[Murdock Sampson]

Hmmm... Usually I do these. But I guess I can post my thoughts here

I havent decided if I want to get to this first or CoD5.

Go with Call of Duty. That one is pretty much guaranteed to be great.

Actually upon looking at a review it got 4/5 stars.

So it wasn't as great as we all thought.



Now for L4D:


We all know Valve. They can never actually achieve. No they're not happy with that. They have to overachieve. Always and that's that. They don't even consider underachieving, or simply achieving even.


Portal was fantastic. You can probably guess that I'd say that, seeing as it was the only game I played for a week. And for the record I beat it on the second day. Half-Life is a fantastic series. And so honestly, there's nothing keeping this game from being over the top fantastic. But that doesn't mean it will be, and so here are the things I like and don't like (please note that this IS based off a demo. I'm sure most glitches and problems will be fixed before release):


Merits:


The AI developer is really, really great. If you don't know what that means, here it is in a nutshell: The levels aren't laid out with enemy spawn points and with specific times when hordes run at you or boss zombies attack you. As you play, and based on how you play, an AI developer will create the zombies to attack you and generate objects like weapons and health stuff. And also, this means you could literally stay in one spot and play forever

Atmosphere. That's all there is too it. When play through this game on advanced or expert you feel gripped up in it. You really get the feeling like you're being hunted, and you actually don't want to let you're teammates down. And then you just barely here the sound of a hunter. You close in on the sound and then out of no where it jumps on your buddy. You rush over and smack him off. And then you here the sound of something up-chucking. You turn around and see a boomer just as it spits its bile all over you. Then in rushes the horde. Blind and with your back to your wall, you desperately fire your weapon at silhouettes as you hold them off as best you can. You finally get your vision back, but are knocked on the ground. You rapid fire dual pistols at the threat above and wait for your teammates to bail you out of it. If you haven't played the game yet, you have no idea what I'm talking about. But if you have, you're familiar with it
Co-op gameplay is something everyone needs to try. Differences in skill will have their affect, but really if you have great teammates helping you out or weak teammates slowing you down, then it just thickens the atmosphere
Graphics are above par. The city looks overrun, there's graffiti in the safe room, the zombies look scary. And really that should be a given, but its been done before in horror games where you just dont get scared

Squad AI is really good. They can tell when you're weak and will heal you. They can detect boss-zombies as well as you can. They're skill is consistent throughout difficulties, so they'll help you more in easy and you'll have to go out of your way to help them on advanced and expert difficulties. Over 1000 unique lines have been recorded for each Survivor
Enemy AI is appropriate for the most part (the other part will end up in the complaint section). Zombies have no idea where you are if you're behind them, they can't see you from a specific distance. They just trudge around. Once they find you, however, they'll charge at you, crowd around you. They'll use pack-like thinking to overcome you. However it becomes obvious that each zombie is selfish and wants to just have all you're juicy brains for himself
Characters. You don't get anything about each character other than a name, however they seem to have genuine care for the other as human beings. Each character is charming in their own sense
Music and Sound. You can tell when a horde is coming, when a witch is near, everything. It also helps with the eerie feel


Complaints:


Null wasn't lying. You are kind of unrealistically "uber fast." A slower speed and sprint function would've been nice.
Weapon selection is low. It is a demo, although, and it appears you may be able to pick up better weapons as you go
Sometimes zombies will stand next to you. I'm sure its hard to keep every AI active and intelligent when you're rendering thousands of zombies, but still
There are only about 5 different looks for zombies. And again, they're developing thousands of zombies, but still you can get two identical zombies attacking you without there even being a horde. And i doubt it was just a city of twins (or 1000-druplets) that got infected. this isn't something I have a big problem with, because I see them, shoot their head off, and am done with that zombie. However it'd help the realism a bit if they just made about 20 different toroso/pants options and had the AI developer press random. idk, maybe i like to complain
Boss zombies. There are only 5. And once again that's good enough for me, but I can see how thats going to get repetitive. And also the same thing that's above for the boss zombies. Like maybe 10 different skins for each boss zombie. But its not me making them, and so I wouldn't pile that much work on someone
Lacks the "open world" feature that I love in everygame, especially zombie survival. Dead Rising did a brilliant job with this, however L4D seems to have pretty straight forward and linear maps, with few side trials that almost immediately go back to the main trial, usually rewarding you with nothing more than a molotov or pain pills and perhaps you run into zombies (which keep in mind if this is your objective, you can just stay in one spot and wait for the AI developer to send out some zombies to you)

Interesting Features:


Versus mode. Although unavailable through the demo, you can play as boss zombies. And so I'm thinking smething similar to G-Mod's zombie survival. Which actually made it fun to be zombies. So hopefully it'll be good. And hopefully it'll still have normal multi-player modes.
There seems to be different campaigns, and missions inside of these. The campaigns are to get from one safe room to the other, and the capmaigns seem to be the general objective. In "No Mercy," the campaigns available in the game, the objective is to get the Survivors to Mercy Hospital for evacuation. Through information on Left4Dead411.com I've gathered that there will be 4 campaigns with 5 different "maps" (moving from safe room to safe room). Each campaign has a different objective, supposedly. And maybe even will introduce new characters. I doubt it, but still I can dream
"Take a Break" which allows the player to sit idle and give control back to the AI while they take a break is a nice feature
"Call a Vote" is also a nice feature. Players can vote to kick a player, restart campaign, return to lobby, or change difficulty. And so its not only good that these things can be changed by a majority vote by all players, but that they're even available.

That's all I got for now. It looks really enticing, and if it gets good reviews next week I might get it.

Left 4 Dead comes next Tuesday, just before Xbox Dashboard update, so look for it on Nov. 18th (only for Xbox 360).

Sources:
[ull=http://left4dead411.com/left-4-dead-information] Left 4 Dead 411[/url]
[ull=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_4_Dead] Wikipedia-Left 4 Dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_4_Dead)[/url]

[Ganye]

Complaints:


Null wasn't lying. You are kind of unrealistically "uber fast." A slower speed and sprint function would've been nice.
Weapon selection is low. It is a demo, although, and it appears you may be able to pick up better weapons as you go
Sometimes zombies will stand next to you. I'm sure its hard to keep every AI active and intelligent when you're rendering thousands of zombies, but still
There are only about 5 different looks for zombies. And again, they're developing thousands of zombies, but still you can get two identical zombies attacking you without there even being a horde. And i doubt it was just a city of twins (or 1000-druplets) that got infected. this isn't something I have a big problem with, because I see them, shoot their head off, and am done with that zombie. However it'd help the realism a bit if they just made about 20 different toroso/pants options and had the AI developer press random. idk, maybe i like to complain
Boss zombies. There are only 5. And once again that's good enough for me, but I can see how thats going to get repetitive. And also the same thing that's above for the boss zombies. Like maybe 10 different skins for each boss zombie. But its not me making them, and so I wouldn't pile that much work on someone
Lacks the "open world" feature that I love in everygame, especially zombie survival. Dead Rising did a brilliant job with this, however L4D seems to have pretty straight forward and linear maps, with few side trials that almost immediately go back to the main trial, usually rewarding you with nothing more than a molotov or pain pills and perhaps you run into zombies (which keep in mind if this is your objective, you can just stay in one spot and wait for the AI developer to send out some zombies to you)


Just a few things. I've honestly only noticed myself being faster when I had full health: As your health gets lower, you slow down. Try running around when you're bleeding out at 1 HP sometime. Also, who the hell wouldn't be running quickly when they're being chased by zombies?

There's supposed to be something like 20 weapons in the full game, so this point's rather moot.

I agree with this part, however I can also imagine that they were thinking "LOL UNDEAD R STUPID."

There's supposedly over one hundred different styles for Zombies, and I've noticed that myself. I'm not sure if it's just you?

I can understand why they did this. I don't want to have to think "Wait, is that a hunter, a zombie or a smoker?" I want to KNOW that it's a hunter ready to rip my intestine out.

I fully agree with this: There's very little variety as to paths you can take. However, the careful eye will notice plenty of shortcuts.

[TheGrimPeeper28]

i r can haz zombie killing spree?

[Murdock Sampson]

Yessir. You can has Hells Janitor