Re: L4D
Posted by amanderino on Thu Nov 6th at 10:35pm 2008
I must be taking out some of the code on accident. I'll have to pay more attention next time.. unless Firefox has problems with the new Snarkpit.
Thanks, Riven.
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Re: L4D
Posted by **Dedi** on Fri Nov 7th at 4:54am 2008
No, I had trouble quoting before too, and I figured out the problem. If you press quote, and then write a message after that, there's a problem. However, if you press 'post reply' and THEN press quote, all seems fine. Hope that helps.
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Re: L4D
Posted by Riven on Sun Nov 9th at 1:12pm 2008
Well, I wanted to give my feedback about the game in this thread...
I had pre-ordered the game and because of that I get the chance to play the demo early before anyone else. The early demo opened up for everyone on PC @ 7:00 am PST Thursday morning. That's when I got the chance to play it. The demo becomes open to the public for free on Nov. 11th. And the game doesn't come out until Nov. 18th.
Soooo, I've been playing the demo and I have to say,.. I've fallen in love with this game! It had me at the title screen. The zombies are gorgeous and act like what I would think zombies would act like. The gameplay is tremendously awesome and the effects make tie it up in a little bow and place it under the tree for ya. I mean, this game is everything I was hoping it would be plus more!
-Enough rambling, let me get into the specifics of the game for those of you who are unsure whether they should waste their HDD space for the demo...
If you're a fan of zombies and FPSs, then I HIGHLY recommend this game. If you have that in common, I'm almost 99% sure you'll like this game.
The game is built like a movie. With the 'Director' in charge of everything. The Director is a chunk of AI that controls the visuals, sounds, monsters, overall 'flow' of your gameplay. It is constantly evaluating how fast or slow you're moving through the level, what items you may or may not have; which weapons you've picked up, how low your health may be,(and the health of everyone else in the party) and what difficulty you're playing on. It uses all this info to keep you in that 'sweet spot' of gaming. Basically it compensates on how well you're playing to give you the most enjoyable experience. And based on my playtime so far (over 18 hours) it works! BEAUTIFULLY!
The higher the difficulty IMO the more fun it is. Now even though the director tries to give you fun experiences, it by no means makes it easy. If you fail, it feels completely fair and not by the game's fault -which was a pretty big deal when making the game (you never want to blame the design of a game for why you died!) Instead, It happens because YOU did something not well enough, or made a bad decision.
Things I liked (a lot)
The zombies. It's all about the zombies; The move like zombies, and they act like zombies (if they were real) Now you may not be used to zombies running, but this game makes it feel natural. What do they do when not running after you? Perfect question: They do what zombies do.. You'll stumble upon them while they're just lumbering around, or puking, or hitting on something making all kinds of gurgling noises and growling. You can shine a light in their eyes and they won't do anything about it. They're completely oblivious to one another and they have no mercy on you; they will do everything in their power to get to you if it's the last thing they do! (once they notice you) And get this, the higher the difficulty the more zombies! -thus the greater strain on your computer (it's noticeable).
The animations are seamless. You can push zombies out of the way and they will fall face flat based on how you pushed them and from where (the hip, face...) and without a hitch or glitch, they will push themselves back up to run after you, it flows very nicely. -Just one of those details that I liked...
The guns feel very real with the sounds being very nice. The characters get to say their witty comments in just the right moments and they have facial expressions just like in TF2. So when you just got through killing a horde of zombies, Louis' face will be either pretty relieved or downright scared looking.
The re playability...IS AWESOME. I don't know how many times I've played through this game with each experience being completely different from the last. I'm still finding new places from zombies to come from. There's a different amount showing up each time and in different locations, so that I may be fighting them out in the streets, down a cramped hall, or in a parking garage, whereas before I wasn't and it stays entertaining because I may or may not have the same items I had before.
Your pistol has unlimited ammo...
What I Didn't Like
Well, some people may not have a problem with this, but in a game like this (where there is a lot of frantic shooting going on) you may accidentally hit your teammates because there is friendly fire on. I have not found a way to turn it off, but it does get annoying when a teammate moves right in front of you before your shotgun goes off only for them to get knocked down in the process. Now the FF isn't completely realistic. There is a little leeway. For example. if a hunter tackles someone, the only way to get it off of them is to shoot it (which means aiming your gun at your friend) however, it will only hurt the hunter and save your friend -no worries, that's fine. But also, when you may be clipped inside one of you friends (no player collision boxes -like teammates in TF2; you can move through your friends). You can shoot and it doesn't hurt them because you may get pushed back by a zombie or something. There are some other leeways, but I'll leave that for you to discover.
-And that's the only thing I kinda don't like about the game, other than that, the execution is near perfecting in my book. The music plays at the right time, the color correction at the right moments is perfect, and the timing of the zombies is just icing on the cake.
That's all I have to say for now, so I hope you enjoy it when the free demo comes out on the 11th, and remember, Don't disturb the Witch!
/2 and-a-half Cents
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Re: L4D
Posted by RedWood on Sun Nov 9th at 8:39pm 2008
Quoting Riven
Well, some people may not have a problem with this, but in a game like this (where there is a lot of frantic shooting going on) you may accidentally hit your teammates because there is friendly fire on. I have not found a way to turn it off, but it does get annoying when a teammate moves right in front of you before your shotgun goes off only for them to get knocked down in the process.
I had read that there is no way to turn off the FF. I have also read that if someone steps into your line of fire and gets hit it will count agance his points. I don't know how they would calculate that (and i imagine that it would be harder to do with a shotgun). Just thought u would like to know.
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Re: L4D
Posted by Natus on Tue Nov 11th at 8:41am 2008
Christ I love this game, nothing bad about it so far. I did had an unfortunate encounter with a which on my first try, where I happened to join an expert group, and me being a noob ran up and shot the which in the face. But we made it anyway, can't wait for the final game to be released.
Friendly fire is a good thing in this game, it encourages people to think about what they do and where they position themselves, I'd much rather have people come up with formations instead of running in front of me and blocking my fire with no consequences whatsoever.
Anyone want to team up and play a bit later today?
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Re: L4D
Posted by Riven on Tue Nov 11th at 4:38pm 2008
I'm game! I will be able to play after about 10 hours from now :P (busy atm). I live in (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada). So, it's 10:30 am here, and I won't be able to play until 8:30 pm. Message me over steam. I'll add ya as a friend.
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Re: L4D
Posted by Finger on Wed Nov 12th at 1:10am 2008
The game is awesome!!
Play it a few times on normal, then quickly jump to advanced or expert - that's where it shines. Friendly Fire is good - forces people to pay attention and form themselves as a unit. The replayability of these maps is amazing - I've been playing this demo for days and haven't tired of it; it's all about taking a group of strangers and turning them into an elite zombie killing force, through the course of 1 campaign. It's a great feeling to come together as a team and beat a map after failing a few times.
The A.I. director is genius - You really never know what's coming your way, but you can be assured that if you stray from the pack or mindlessley run around one of the bosses will eat your lunch, separate you from the pack, and quickly cause all hell to break loose.
This is THE mod to map for. All you do is create the environment and the AI director fills in the gameplay. ** of course I assume you will have to place the appropriate clues, nodes, spawn points, and have a well designed enviroment that caters to the games strenghts.
This could be a great mod for a Snarkpit group map, 3 or 4 maps that create a whole campaign.
Everyone should play this game!
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Re: L4D
Posted by amanderino on Thu Nov 13th at 4:27am 2008
Well, I've played it twice so far. Once with AI party, and the second time with some random people online.
Playing online is definitely a lot more fun, which is weird.. I've never had so much fun losing a game with my team.
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Re: L4D
Posted by **Dedi** on Thu Nov 13th at 4:32am 2008
hahahaha nice..
Yeah I played the game last night, then I played it this morning, then I'm going to play it as soon as I write this post. It's simply brilliant. Valve has done it again, I'm so proud of them. Gotta start saving up to get the game, because it's a must have. Forget about Call of Duty 5, forget about Red Alert 3(which I hear is a dissapointment), Left 4 Dead goes in front. I'd talk about my experiences, but the guys have already summed it up in detail. Very nice game!
Well, off to play it now.. lol
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Re: L4D
Posted by **Dedi** on Fri Nov 14th at 1:58am 2008
Ahh... having played this awesome game time after time, I've finally come across a downside. Something that I don't find as... realistic(even though it's a zombie game lol).
When you play and one of the characters dies,a couple of minutes later they will appear again stuck behind some doorway and you have to rescue them. I don't know, some folk may like this, but I find it the only thing in the game that I dislike. Destroys realism. The friendly fire leeway is ok I guess, but dead characters re-appearing.. just doesn't appeal to me. I don't know, what do you guys think?
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Re: L4D
Posted by amanderino on Fri Nov 14th at 8:57am 2008
I think that the idea of rescuing teammates is a cool idea, but I think it'd go over smoother if you had more than 4 characters to play as. It would give you more of a "realistic" feeling if the person came back as someone new.
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Re: L4D
Posted by rs6 on Sun Nov 30th at 3:53am 2008
This game is awesome on the xbox 360 if u can get 4 friends playing together in close proximity. Other than that, I don't see how it could be too much fun.
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Re: L4D
Posted by Le Chief on Tue Dec 2nd at 3:22am 2008
Whoa, that's interesting, split screen on a PC? I wish I could configure my Xbox 360 controller for Half-Life 2, that'd be pretty fun.
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