Left 4 Dead Boomer Plush!

Last Saturday, I made the title of my blog into a lie and turned forty.

I may end up changing the blog's title (eventually - I'm still a bit in denial), unless the 40-something brand has already gone.  Middle-aged gamer? [shudders].

Gaming-wise, I received LA Noire (still waiting for the postman to deliver that one) and this fantastic Boomer plush.  A Boomer is a special infected from the two Left 4 Dead games, whose unique move involves puking bile over the survivors, bile that then attracts  hordes of zombies to those players covered in it.  Nice chap.

Elvis had really let himself go

It is an extremely well-made product (as can be expected from Valve, who made the product),  topped with a hilariously smiley face and what are undeniably moobs.

Oxy 10's new 'before' photo went a bit too far

It also makes sounds, when a pad inside the hand is pressed.  The sounds are those made by this zombie in the game (a succession of gut-churning groans and heaves).

Urp!

For a lot of the last week, my daughter has been using Boomer to puke on me, or for her to mime being sick while pressing the (hidden) Boomer's hand!  Cool :)

Left 4 Dead 2 DLC - The Passing - campaign mode review

As I've written elsewhere, I love Left 4 Dead and its sequel - balls-out co-op zombie carnage.  L4D2's first chunk of DLC, The Passing (subtitled "Nobody survives forever"), has just been released for download (560 Microsoft points), a package I'd been looking forward to since it was originally announced.  The USP of this release is that it unites the survivors of the first game with those of the second. Except for one. Yes, the 'passing' of the title refers to the death of one of the original band of survivors.  At least I think it does - I suppose it could refer to the two groups passing, or the passing of the L4D flame between the two groups. Hell, I don't know - it's just an interpretation! I'll not give a spoiler to who the dead survivor is, other than to say that I guessed right at which one it was going to be...

Ellis, Rochelle, Coach & Nick look apprehensive, wondering who will be sacrificed as a ploy to flog DLC for L4D3

However, it is not the death of a L4D survivor that is the story that plays out in the campaign - that will happen in a future L4D slice of DLC (and, possibly, a digital comic). Rather, this is a 3-chapter vignette that covers what happened to Coach, Nick, Ellis and Rochelle  between the end of the  Dead Center campaign from L4D2  (where they flee a shopping mall in a NASCAR) and the start of Dark Carnival (where they kill zombie clowns - the worst type of clowns).  During this period they meet up - or pass, if you will - the original survivors, now reduced to a trio, who then provide cover for you in the evac chapter.

I've blogged about  L4D2 before and enjoy the campaign mode a lot. What the player gets with The Passing is more of the same, other than the difficulty. As I'd said even  before my L4D2 review, is a very hard game and that is part of what makes it so enjoyably satisfying upon completing a chapter. Many's the occasion where I've limped towards the evac vehicle, health dangerously low, with infected snapping at my stumbling heels.  The feeling of exhilaration on finally getting into the car/boat/copter or whatever and the credits starting to roll, particularly after a series of failures, is one of the best feelings in gaming this generation. That feeling is missing from The Passing, as it is not very challenging at all.


In previous campaigns - The Parish, I'm looking at you - I've sometimes spent as long on the evac chapter as I have on the rest of the campaign put together.  On The Passing, we completed the evac level on the first attempt with no-one even getting incapped, let alone killed, even though we made a few mistakes along the way (it is a petrol can collecting level and there was lone wolfing at times) .  In previous campaigns, that standard of play would have taken the team out early on - this time we weren't punished.  I was disappointed with this lack of challenge because without that challenge, it's just not L4D to me.  I was also surprised - I don't think it could have been intentional dumbing down (like, to skip to another series, Super Paper Mario on the Wii), as this DLC package is only of interest to those that liked the, bloody hard,  parent game.  Weird.


There are a few minor gameplay tweaks in the package - an extra melee weapon (a golf club), a new gun (M60), the obvious extra achievements and, probably the most major tweak as far as the campaign is concerned, an extra uncommon infected, the 'fallen survivor'.  This latter addition, as the name suggests, is a survivor that has succumbed to the zombie plague and, unlike all other infected, when they see you they run in the opposite direction.  They also drop items - health packs, molotovs etc - if you manage to catch up and kill them.  Again.


I'm not a big fan of the other game modes in L4D2.  Playing as a special infected (spawn, get killed quickly, wait, spawn, get killed quickly, wait) isn't my idea of fun.  I did try the new mode included in the DLC, 'Mutation', which, as I understand it, is intended to be a regularly updated  mash-up of other L4D2 game modes.  When I played it was a mixture of 'Realism' and 'Versus'.  I didn't find it much fun but if you like either it may be for you.


All in all I found this quite a disappointing slice of DLC, certainly when compared to the DLC from the first game, which I really enjoyed.  It also didn't compare favourably to the recently released 'Desperate Escape' DLC for Resident Evil 5, which I thought was excellent (and will blog about soon).

Left 4 Dead 2 - campaign mode review

Zombies, eh? Swarming hordes of them wherever you look. Zombie videogames, that is. In just over a year I've bought new releases Left 4 Dead and its  sequel; Resident Evil 5; The Last Guy;  Burn Zombie Burn and the turd sandwich that was House of the Dead Overkill.  And this morning I bought Ghosts n' Zombies for iPhone.    A brief bit of research (not really - just flicking through a magazine found on the floor of my bathroom) also came up with Wolfenstein and Plants vs Zombies to add to that decaying list. Zombies are flavour of the month for videogame bad guys, though I imagine it would be a mouldy, musty, budget-supermarket-ham type of flavour.

There didn't use to be this many zombie games. You'd get regular(ish) updates of established franchises like Resident Evil (and Capcom have certainly cranked those out over the years) and House of the Dead but after those venerable series' the graveyard was pretty much empty. I've done some research. No, just kidding again - I just read through my game collection on Playfire - and this zombie fixation seems a relatively recent phenomenem. I remember 'Carrier' on Dreamcast but I mainly remember it because it wasn't very good. Stubbs the Zombie had some fans on Xbox. And there was Boktai on GBA but they were space vampires (or something).

For a developer, zombies  are a safe-choice of onscreen bad guy, like an English villain in a Hollywood blockbuster. As gamers (well, some. Maybe) would baulk at shooting down wave after wave of Jeremy Irons looky-likies (and publishers might baulk at that, as the UK is a large games market), the English aren't really going to work. A couple of years ago, there were bucketloads of World War II games, as no-one objects to shooting a Nazi in the face. Gamers seem to have wearied of Nazis (or maybe just the crap forties-era weaponry) - witness The Saboteur's poor games sales -  and there's nothing that draws the attention of those bankrolling the games than falling returns. Zombies are this (and last) year's Nazi. Or, with Wolfenstein, both.



I've often thought that Hollywood goes with English bad guys in order not to offend any one of a number of racial groupings that the sterotyping that goes hand in hand with the shallow characterisation present in many mainstream films. The English don't really count, either due to their not being a clearly-defined racial group, or (and this seems more likely to me), we just don't like making a fuss. Give a character a voice like they are talking with a mouthful of marbles and a fondness for tea and you are away.

The same can be said for zombies and videogames. There isn't a zombie protection league, no meeja talking head is going to decry negative portrayals of zombies and  there isn't going to be a charity record for their benefit recorded by in-need-of-publicity pop stars.  No-one cares about offending the Z-man.  A developer would have to strive really hard to fuck up the guilt-free villain status of a zombie (hats off, then,  to dunderheads at Capcom and the opinions voiced after the first footage of Resi 5 was released). Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2) treads safer ground, the game being set, as was its predecessor, in a post-zombie apocalypse America. In direct comparison with Capcom, Valve handled a possibly sensitive situation - the game is set in New Orleans and its surroundings, no strangers to disaster, albeit natural rather than undead - very well and what idiot-commentary there was (a column in a Houston newspaper) criticising the setting was brief and confined to the US.

The basic premise of L4D2 is the same as in the first game - you play as one of four survivors (your companions being either human or CPU controlled) immune to the zombie virus, fighting your way as a team through the zombie hordes (and, my, do they horde) to an evac zone. Each of the 5 campaigns (with one more to come - featuring both L4D and L4D2 characters - via DLC in the spring) is split into either 4 or 5 chapters, each ending with a safe house (or evac, for the last chapter of each campaign). There are also a few mid-level set pieces, generally requiring the player to pull a lever or press a button in order to  clear the way ahead but at the same time making a noise loud enough to attract the zombie horde. This review concentrates on the Campaign mode for the game.  There are other game modes - Realism, Scavenge, Survival, Versus - but I have not played them sufficiently to cover them in a review.


I've already posted my first opinions http://tiny.cc/tSYju which I won't repeat here as continued playing has, to some extent,  reinforced those opinions. There are plenty of differences between the two games - more special infected, more weapons, melée weapons, daytime, more involved gameplay, more zombies - all of which improve on the original.  I certainly think  there's enough new content here to justify this being a new game, rather than DLC.


Unlike last time out, the 5 campaigns are in a linked narrative - the start of each succeeding campaign continues from the end of the last.  This is a welcome evolution from the first game, where the campaigns - other than the 'Crash Course' DLC, released nearly a year after the game came out - had no narrative connection.  Albeit gamers have added their own  internal narrative to games since 'Space Invaders' (or maybe that's just me), having an overriding story arc running through the campaigns adds an extra layer of involvement for players.  That is, other than the  'so you've evac-d me from one zombie-invested hellhole to put me at the start of another?  Gee, thanks' feeling between at least two of the campaigns. 


As in the last game, the characters speak to each other independently of the player,  saying where there's ammo/health, when they have to heal, when they've thrown a molotov or pipe bomb (though how any human player can resist shouting 'Fire in the Hole!' to make their fellows aware of this, I don't know) or retelling redneck anecdotes (Ellis) .  The voice acting is good, particularly Coach (my character of choice) an aging, overweight football coach voiced by Chad Coleman,  'Cutty' from  'The Wire'. Yes -  zombie apocalypse/The Wire cross-over! 


Although my opinion of the difficulty level has softened since I wrote my first impressions - on replaying campaigns, we've been taking about half the time that we took when playing them for the first time - it is still a fair bit tougher than the first game.  That difficulty is, at times, frustrating but when you do complete a campaign, particularly for the first time, the feeling of achievement is palpable. I finished the final campaign, The Parish, for the first time at gone 1am in the morning, with my character, Coach, having very little of either life or ammo left, limping towards the open hold of the evac helicopter. Zombies were continually grabbing at my back (none in front of me, thankfully), meaning I had to turn around every so often to lop a few heads off with my machete to gain some time, while my, already onboard, co-op buddy laid down some fire to tamp down my pursuers (the two CPU characters had bought the farm some time before).  The last few yards, staggering across the tarmac, were extremely tense (we'd been trying to beat this campaign for a number of hours, spread over two nights).


When I finally got onboard and the tail flap lifted up and the 'Achievement' beep went , I literally shouted with excitement, nearly waking my sofa-bound sleeping wife. I also, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit, fist-pumped. 


The level of elation at finishing that campaign was in direct relation to the level of difficulty of that chapter. I love it when games push you like that (the final boss God of War II on PS2 springs to mind) - hitting the sweet spot between being too difficult to be fun and being too easy to present a challenge.


As it is, essentially, a multiplayer-only game, there is also the very real sense of shared experience - that you and your real-life companions have bested the game as a result of teamwork (and without teamwork, you won't get far).  You can play the game as a single player but such is the  emphasis on the group experience - even more than with the first game - that I cannot recommend purchasing it if it is your intention only to play it on your own.  As well as group playing of this type of game being a more enjoyable experience, the CPU-controlled party members just aren't smart enough to do what needs to be done, particularly with evac and the occasional mid-level set pieces. 

As well as the usual Achievements to boost your gamer score, the game offers avatar awards, that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago http://tiny.cc/zNg0o. 


L4D2 is a great game in its own right and a worthy successor to the first game and one that I would recommend to anyone seeking multiplayer zombie carnage (and who isn't?).

Left 4 Dead 2 - first impressions

Time was, I'd buy a new game, rip off the cellophane, ignore the instruction manual and plough several hours into my new purchase. These days, what with being 'grown up', having 'responsibilities' and a pathetic craving for 'sleep', I take my new-purchase gaming where I can find it.

Which brings me on to Left 4 Dead 2. I bought the game on release day (20th November in the UK) but was going away for the weekend for a pre-Christmas visit to relatives, so could not play it until Monday night. And, as it turned out, into Tuesday morning.

My initial impression is that L4D2 is bloody hard! The first game was no walk in the park (other than the bit that was, actually, a walk through a park) but this ratchets the difficulty level up a notch. I've only played through one campaign, 'Dead Center', so far and if that's a sign of things to come, there'll be a few more late nights in my future. The campaign took two and a quarter hours to complete, which is about an hour more than a campaign in the first game would take.

The new infected are both interesting and hard to kill (I hate the Jockey) but, in the player's favour, you are given melée weapons (which rock). The set pieces are a lot more involved than in the first game. In the campaign I played, I had to steal some cola (really) from a store in order to bribe some guy to blow something up and, for evac, had to find fuel cans around a mall, with which to fill up a Nascar-style car. I thoroughly enjoyed these events, which showed more depth than just blasting scores zombies, wave after wave, as in the first game (though I enjoyed that too).

I think that this added layer of complication kills the single player game, as the CPU-controlled characters simply do not have the nous to use the tactics necessary to progress. Hand them a petrol can and they'll just drink the petrol and wear the can as a party hat - they're that dumb. I played with one other real person, with the other two in the party in the hands of the 360 and even then we struggled.

After I've played it some (lots) more, I'll post a full review. Of course, I would have played it some more last night but my 7-year old was still awake at 9pm, my L4D buddy had to work on an important job tender and I was crazy-tired. Responsibilities, eh?

Left 4 Dead 2 demo

I've been playing the Left 4 Dead 2 demo on 360, having pre-ordered the game from Game. They had offered a 7-day exclusivity deal for the demo, before it becomes available for Xbox Live Gold subscribers next week. I think there's a similar deal for PC on Steam.

The demo level (two chapters of a full level) is in the daylight, which is an interesting twist for a zombie game. Even without the darkness, it's a scary game but a different type of scary. Nighttime plays on primal fears of darkness - evolutionarily speaking, a fear of the dark is a good thing, unless you want sabre-toothed tigers in your near (and considerably fore-shortened) future. Daylight is another thing entirely. We live our outdoor lives, for the most part (goths excepted) in the daylight - a game that has zombies wandering around during the day plays on our own personal fears. I mean, who's never thought about the possibility of a zombie apocalypse in their town?

The game itself seems more of the same, which is no bad thing (sorry Internet petitioners). There have, of course, been updates and improvements - new special infected, the daylight, the - yes!! - melée weapons, new items - but the central idea of the main (and only part on the demo) game, for four survivors to escape the undead, remains the same. The controls are also unaltered - if it ain't broke, don't decap it with a shotgun shell.

I'd initially thought that the frame rate had been upped but a quick revisit to the first game indicated that it probably hadn't (both are very smooth). Even though the game is in daylight, you don't see vast panoramas - New Orleans feels claustrophobic and past mid distance, descends into a balmy Louisianan heat haze.

In terms of difficulty, I'd say it is a bit harder than the first game, which was hardly a cakewalk. The new special infected, particularly, add to the difficulty level and there seem to be even more (fantastic) horde moments to 'enjoy'. I couldn't really feel the much-vaunted AI director at play but reckon that will be apparent in the full game that, on the strength of the demo, I will be getting.