Double Bonus
Hot damn, Rantza and Megwings are lucky, they get two posts in one day! Ahem.
Its raining. More appropriately, it's storming. Here in starts another wondrous and tumultuous Spring in Kansas. I've not seen an Ice-nado (what I imagine a tornado full of ice and snow would be called, other then 'you are royally boned.') and imagine that that's on the menu for this weekend. Stormy weather, though, as long as it keeps its mits to itself, are actually really pleasant. I miss rain, though I would not exchange snow for it, and its building up to be another rainy Spring. Global warming for sure has changed the local weather patterns, even the short time I remember. We have gone to having six week rainy seasons during the transition into and out of dry winters. Totally logical explanation.
Let's talk about Left 4 Dead.
This is the best thing I have spent money on, year to date. Its even beating out things I did not spend money on (though I guess technically I had that since November, but they moved all the buttons and its hard to use wawawawa, I know, I didn't even pay for it). It is roughly everything that I really love in board and computer games. I like cooperative games. Arkham Horror is the trashiest, Amero game ever created and I love it. Games like Agricola and their limited actions and competition to build the greatest farm that is about to get plowed under by a Renaissance German army can suck an egg. I mean really. You are deducting points for having not taken actions to get my bone on so that I can have more actions. It needs to go another turn so that the Prussians raise your dumb little farm to the ground. Arkham, however, gets everyone to work together, you and yours get a sense of accomplishment like no other when you work together and pull off a sweet last minute victory against some elder thing that defies reason and explanation. Even when you get your ass handed to you, it asks you to smile, and oddly enough, you want to, because it was no one's fault, it still was a satisfying length of game, and it totally fits the theme. By rights, you should not ever win that game. That's the point of Cthulhu. It's degrees of how badly off you are when you walk away. But back to the point.
Left 4 Dead is a lot like that feeling.
On futuristic space cocaine.
With Christmas Lights.
...That cause orgasm.
Ok, so maybe its not that sweet, but its definately got the formula very close to making the perfect cooperative game. You can get four friends (preferably ones that will get into it, turn out the lights in their apartment, etc.) and you start off locked up on a rooftop, praying that the zombies don't learn to pile up on top of eachother to reach up higher then 6 - to - 8 feet, depending. While this would be amusing to watch the zombies puzzle out complex spacial stacking problems, their end goal is to beat the crap out of you, possibly gnaw you to death, and run off with your bits like happy dogs with trophies (not restricted to that order) so you'd rather them not. The AI Director mechanic is wonderful. If you are doing well, the computer will attempt to foil you by alerting a horde to your location or spawning some more special type zombies. Possibly toss in a juggernaught of a Tank or that whiney Witch thing. If you are operating with a handicap (like a gung-ho player thats not for creeping about) the Director will cut a break or two, offering up better equipment or health. It's never stingy, even on harder difficulties, if you manage to keep your survivor party limping along long enough, the director will insure that you get the health pack you need or the bullets you wish you had gone back for, but never fast enough that you don't get worried inbetween. It's very good at stringing out dramatic tension, and this Director method makes sure that even though you are playing the same four maps over and over, every go around will be a little different. Me and the G-man played through the same leg of a trip almost 4 times, and each time we were given a different puzzle and set of circumstances to overcome.
It's not without flaws. Limiting player choice to 4 set characters hurts it. I would have liked to see some more models, so that your survivor group is not so cookie cutter (the campy movie theme is cute, but it illustrates the point. It's the four same characters starring in four different movies, none of which are related to eachother). I think even with 8 player character looks and personalities would have made the feel superb. This was probably a consideration, however, to go with the scripting. I have not played a game yet that had this immersive of an audible event script. Programming for more characters to activate similar lines in game would probably be rediculous, as you would go from having one script to 1680 scripts in about the time it took me to punch the math into the calculator, so this operation is forgiveable. Also, Louis and Francis make it forgiveable. (Francis sounds almost exactly like I would during the zombie-pocalypse, but I would probably panic like Louis panics. "I hate stairs.") The other thing is that their are only 4 events. Each event only takes about an hour. So you have roughly seen all that the game has to offer as far as different content in about 4 hours. Thats really kind of disapointing for a full priced game. Those were a very fun packed four hours, but I miss the era when you shelled out your 50 bucks and got 70+ hours of gameplay, back on N64 and PC. Fallout 3, which didn't really recieve any competition until I convince the boys to pick up Left 4 Dead, is getting up on that point of in game time, but most of it was walking around, so I am not sure if I will count it. I hear that there is already an expansion pack in the pipe for Left 4 Dead that adds a game mode and two new stories coming in the next month, along with the SDK, so hopefully with this first company content pack will come a host of new user created content, something that I am always behind (and thankfully, so is Valve). This may actually be the first real micro-content release system on Valve (*cough*episodic content for HL2?*cough*) that will actually be micro-content releases. I'd like to see if it works out, even it will end up costing me money. If they continue to pump out about 4 hours of new content every quarter for 10 - 15 bucks, I can get behind that, since I know that it will always be better polished and much better scripted then almost any user created content. We shall see though.
Later: Serial Killers, WoD, Fallout 3, Writing blurbs.
Its raining. More appropriately, it's storming. Here in starts another wondrous and tumultuous Spring in Kansas. I've not seen an Ice-nado (what I imagine a tornado full of ice and snow would be called, other then 'you are royally boned.') and imagine that that's on the menu for this weekend. Stormy weather, though, as long as it keeps its mits to itself, are actually really pleasant. I miss rain, though I would not exchange snow for it, and its building up to be another rainy Spring. Global warming for sure has changed the local weather patterns, even the short time I remember. We have gone to having six week rainy seasons during the transition into and out of dry winters. Totally logical explanation.
Let's talk about Left 4 Dead.
This is the best thing I have spent money on, year to date. Its even beating out things I did not spend money on (though I guess technically I had that since November, but they moved all the buttons and its hard to use wawawawa, I know, I didn't even pay for it). It is roughly everything that I really love in board and computer games. I like cooperative games. Arkham Horror is the trashiest, Amero game ever created and I love it. Games like Agricola and their limited actions and competition to build the greatest farm that is about to get plowed under by a Renaissance German army can suck an egg. I mean really. You are deducting points for having not taken actions to get my bone on so that I can have more actions. It needs to go another turn so that the Prussians raise your dumb little farm to the ground. Arkham, however, gets everyone to work together, you and yours get a sense of accomplishment like no other when you work together and pull off a sweet last minute victory against some elder thing that defies reason and explanation. Even when you get your ass handed to you, it asks you to smile, and oddly enough, you want to, because it was no one's fault, it still was a satisfying length of game, and it totally fits the theme. By rights, you should not ever win that game. That's the point of Cthulhu. It's degrees of how badly off you are when you walk away. But back to the point.
Left 4 Dead is a lot like that feeling.
On futuristic space cocaine.
With Christmas Lights.
...That cause orgasm.
Ok, so maybe its not that sweet, but its definately got the formula very close to making the perfect cooperative game. You can get four friends (preferably ones that will get into it, turn out the lights in their apartment, etc.) and you start off locked up on a rooftop, praying that the zombies don't learn to pile up on top of eachother to reach up higher then 6 - to - 8 feet, depending. While this would be amusing to watch the zombies puzzle out complex spacial stacking problems, their end goal is to beat the crap out of you, possibly gnaw you to death, and run off with your bits like happy dogs with trophies (not restricted to that order) so you'd rather them not. The AI Director mechanic is wonderful. If you are doing well, the computer will attempt to foil you by alerting a horde to your location or spawning some more special type zombies. Possibly toss in a juggernaught of a Tank or that whiney Witch thing. If you are operating with a handicap (like a gung-ho player thats not for creeping about) the Director will cut a break or two, offering up better equipment or health. It's never stingy, even on harder difficulties, if you manage to keep your survivor party limping along long enough, the director will insure that you get the health pack you need or the bullets you wish you had gone back for, but never fast enough that you don't get worried inbetween. It's very good at stringing out dramatic tension, and this Director method makes sure that even though you are playing the same four maps over and over, every go around will be a little different. Me and the G-man played through the same leg of a trip almost 4 times, and each time we were given a different puzzle and set of circumstances to overcome.
It's not without flaws. Limiting player choice to 4 set characters hurts it. I would have liked to see some more models, so that your survivor group is not so cookie cutter (the campy movie theme is cute, but it illustrates the point. It's the four same characters starring in four different movies, none of which are related to eachother). I think even with 8 player character looks and personalities would have made the feel superb. This was probably a consideration, however, to go with the scripting. I have not played a game yet that had this immersive of an audible event script. Programming for more characters to activate similar lines in game would probably be rediculous, as you would go from having one script to 1680 scripts in about the time it took me to punch the math into the calculator, so this operation is forgiveable. Also, Louis and Francis make it forgiveable. (Francis sounds almost exactly like I would during the zombie-pocalypse, but I would probably panic like Louis panics. "I hate stairs.") The other thing is that their are only 4 events. Each event only takes about an hour. So you have roughly seen all that the game has to offer as far as different content in about 4 hours. Thats really kind of disapointing for a full priced game. Those were a very fun packed four hours, but I miss the era when you shelled out your 50 bucks and got 70+ hours of gameplay, back on N64 and PC. Fallout 3, which didn't really recieve any competition until I convince the boys to pick up Left 4 Dead, is getting up on that point of in game time, but most of it was walking around, so I am not sure if I will count it. I hear that there is already an expansion pack in the pipe for Left 4 Dead that adds a game mode and two new stories coming in the next month, along with the SDK, so hopefully with this first company content pack will come a host of new user created content, something that I am always behind (and thankfully, so is Valve). This may actually be the first real micro-content release system on Valve (*cough*episodic content for HL2?*cough*) that will actually be micro-content releases. I'd like to see if it works out, even it will end up costing me money. If they continue to pump out about 4 hours of new content every quarter for 10 - 15 bucks, I can get behind that, since I know that it will always be better polished and much better scripted then almost any user created content. We shall see though.
Later: Serial Killers, WoD, Fallout 3, Writing blurbs.