IGN and Friend L4D Group
It's a public group so if you are inclined to play with us please join it.
why you may wonder? Well L4D has a group system so you can set up private servers
for said group, and everyone in that group can see these servers and join them easily. If you join this group, its servers will show up for all of you.
I did this because I play with a lot of guys from IGN and I wanted us to all be able to see the same servers, giving us a big pile of people to play with. I made this server only accept players from the group, it's a public group and all you have to do is join it to play with us..
Hope to see you there..
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Shevalan L4D server
Guys, I made a private server for Shevalan and IGN members for L4D.
right now it's a 4 man server for the Demo but will go 8 man once the game is live.
*Edit* found a simpler way
to connect to custom servers enable your developer console in options/keyboard
hit the ~ key to bring console down (can be done at menu screen)
and type in openserverbrowser
now you will have the oldschool server browser that the game should have had all along.
add 8.12.16.85:27015 to your favorites
the password is "fulci"
right now it's a 4 man server for the Demo but will go 8 man once the game is live.
*Edit* found a simpler way
to connect to custom servers enable your developer console in options/keyboard
hit the ~ key to bring console down (can be done at menu screen)
and type in openserverbrowser
now you will have the oldschool server browser that the game should have had all along.
add 8.12.16.85:27015 to your favorites
the password is "fulci"
Left 4 Dead Demo footage
In my own world from Eric Whalen on Vimeo.
Ominous from the IGN boards took a pretty good video of a pretty intense gameplay section of the Left4Dead Demo. This is one one of the harder difficulties and gives you a good idea why teamwork is so important in this game.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Left4Dead Demo Impressions - Misfit410
So I finally put enough time into the pre-release demo of Left4Dead to discuss in some pretty good detail what to expect from the game. The Demo consists of just two parts of the first chapter called "No Mercy". The basic flow of the game is the survivors spawning together and needing to work their way to a "Safe Room" At the spawn you have two weapon choices, ammo and a medkit. The starter weapons are a pistol and a choice of either a shotgun or uzi. The main weapon has ammo limits but the pistol never runs out of ammo. You can also use the medpack as a melee weapon if needed.
The Zombies in this game are pretty wild, I'd put them as a cross between the "28 Days Later" infected and the "Dawn of the Dead Remake" zombies. They look and act more like DOTD but I put in the 28 days reference as they are just "infected" and will go down by being shot and do not require that the bullet be to the brain like most movies. In L4D you take them down easier with head shots but it is not required. The zombies pretty much just roam around and don't typically come after you until you startle them into doing so, loud noises and flashing lights tend to attract them so you spend your time being careful not to set off any car alarms. To keep you on your toes you have the AI director, it kind of watches over the game and spawns "Hordes" so that the game is not too easy for you.. basically when this happens some opening will just start gushing out zombies in large numbers making it so you have to really play smart to get through.
Another thing that REALLY keeps it interest and also makes the versus gameplay fun are the boss zombies. I have encountered quite a bit of them and they really shake things up. You will regularly need to be on the lookout for Hunters, Smokers and Boomers. They make unique noises so you tend to know they are near. Smokers are really sneaky and will usually wait for a hectic time to grab one of your team members with it's long tongue and pull them into a crowd of zombies, the only way for you to get free once he grabs you is for a team member to kill him. Hunters are fast and have the ability to leap very far,they basically just jump on someone and try to rip them to pieces, team members can free you by either knocking him off you with melee and then killing him, or just shooting him(it is preferred to use melee so you cut how much damage he does if you are close enough to do so). The Boomer is just a really fat guy who vomits a thick,sticky mucus like substance at you, this substance will also get splatted on you if you are too close to him when you kill him. The substance is like crack to zombies and it will make them all flock to you if you get coated, it's tough because while coated your vision is very blurred by the slime.
The Other two Boss Zombie types are much, much more serious to encounter. The Tank is basically like getting into a rumble with the Incredible hulk.. he is huge, strong, tough to kill and will hurl large objects at you. The other "Try to Avoid" type of Boss is the "Witch", you will know her because you hear her crying. When you hear crying turn off your flashlights and just try to avoid her, if you startle her she will mess your entire team up. If she is unavoidable you want to use a Molotov cocktail or explosive to take her down as quickly and easily as possible. If she is not in your way, you just do a lights out and sneak by.
Left4Dead is truly gaming perfection IMO, the need to work together has never been seen this strong in any game I've ever experienced, you really do have to get over your lone wolf instincts and learn to watch each others back. It's really one of those games that someone being stupid can get the entire team killed in a hurry.
Now I have only one issue with the game thus far, the Game Lobby. What is in place right now is kind of an Xbox live type interface where you make a lobby or join one, you see your friends and join them, but for PC we have Dedicated servers, so from the lobby you are trucked to a Dedicated server, right now there is a lack of servers due to it being just a demo.. and it was a real headache for the first few days. As PC gamers we prefer being able to join the server of our choice, and I am told that will be as I want in the final product. It's a minor gripe but PC gamers come to expect much more especially from Valve.
So my final word is that this game is every bit as good as you have heard, it's creepy, it's intense and it's made to be played on Expert with the lights out. It is getting a bit old playing the same two maps over and over again.. but the game will have 20 when it ships next week, and user made content is already being put together (someone got DE_DUST from Counterstrike Source working on it with zombies already).
I will have to wait for the final product, if it's as solid across the board as the demo gameplay wise that is a solid 10/10 from me.. if the game matching does not change between now and then, I will lower that considerably.
and so I don't forget, L4D is also the premier for "Steam Cloud" where your settings and save games are stored on valves servers and wherever you log in your controls and save games are intact.
The Zombies in this game are pretty wild, I'd put them as a cross between the "28 Days Later" infected and the "Dawn of the Dead Remake" zombies. They look and act more like DOTD but I put in the 28 days reference as they are just "infected" and will go down by being shot and do not require that the bullet be to the brain like most movies. In L4D you take them down easier with head shots but it is not required. The zombies pretty much just roam around and don't typically come after you until you startle them into doing so, loud noises and flashing lights tend to attract them so you spend your time being careful not to set off any car alarms. To keep you on your toes you have the AI director, it kind of watches over the game and spawns "Hordes" so that the game is not too easy for you.. basically when this happens some opening will just start gushing out zombies in large numbers making it so you have to really play smart to get through.
Another thing that REALLY keeps it interest and also makes the versus gameplay fun are the boss zombies. I have encountered quite a bit of them and they really shake things up. You will regularly need to be on the lookout for Hunters, Smokers and Boomers. They make unique noises so you tend to know they are near. Smokers are really sneaky and will usually wait for a hectic time to grab one of your team members with it's long tongue and pull them into a crowd of zombies, the only way for you to get free once he grabs you is for a team member to kill him. Hunters are fast and have the ability to leap very far,they basically just jump on someone and try to rip them to pieces, team members can free you by either knocking him off you with melee and then killing him, or just shooting him(it is preferred to use melee so you cut how much damage he does if you are close enough to do so). The Boomer is just a really fat guy who vomits a thick,sticky mucus like substance at you, this substance will also get splatted on you if you are too close to him when you kill him. The substance is like crack to zombies and it will make them all flock to you if you get coated, it's tough because while coated your vision is very blurred by the slime.
The Other two Boss Zombie types are much, much more serious to encounter. The Tank is basically like getting into a rumble with the Incredible hulk.. he is huge, strong, tough to kill and will hurl large objects at you. The other "Try to Avoid" type of Boss is the "Witch", you will know her because you hear her crying. When you hear crying turn off your flashlights and just try to avoid her, if you startle her she will mess your entire team up. If she is unavoidable you want to use a Molotov cocktail or explosive to take her down as quickly and easily as possible. If she is not in your way, you just do a lights out and sneak by.
Left4Dead is truly gaming perfection IMO, the need to work together has never been seen this strong in any game I've ever experienced, you really do have to get over your lone wolf instincts and learn to watch each others back. It's really one of those games that someone being stupid can get the entire team killed in a hurry.
Now I have only one issue with the game thus far, the Game Lobby. What is in place right now is kind of an Xbox live type interface where you make a lobby or join one, you see your friends and join them, but for PC we have Dedicated servers, so from the lobby you are trucked to a Dedicated server, right now there is a lack of servers due to it being just a demo.. and it was a real headache for the first few days. As PC gamers we prefer being able to join the server of our choice, and I am told that will be as I want in the final product. It's a minor gripe but PC gamers come to expect much more especially from Valve.
So my final word is that this game is every bit as good as you have heard, it's creepy, it's intense and it's made to be played on Expert with the lights out. It is getting a bit old playing the same two maps over and over again.. but the game will have 20 when it ships next week, and user made content is already being put together (someone got DE_DUST from Counterstrike Source working on it with zombies already).
I will have to wait for the final product, if it's as solid across the board as the demo gameplay wise that is a solid 10/10 from me.. if the game matching does not change between now and then, I will lower that considerably.
and so I don't forget, L4D is also the premier for "Steam Cloud" where your settings and save games are stored on valves servers and wherever you log in your controls and save games are intact.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Gears of War 2 (XBOX 360) First impressions.
I have not been able to take much time lately to play many games, girlfriends will do that to a guy, but I have found one way to combat this. It turns out the girlfriend has a thing for multiplayer CO-OP games. She does not like it when we play against each other because I usually win most of the time. Then again since we have been playing a lot of CO-OP games she has gotten a lot better. It all started with Halo 3, we then moved on to Gears of War which has been our favorite of the two. Just recently though we also played Army of Two which I have to say in some ways even out shines Gears of War 2, but more on that later.
Ok first off I just got this game yesterday and we played it for roughly 3 hours last night in split screen CO-OP mode. I have to say any game that can do split screen CO-OP is almost a must purchase for me these days. So we put the game in the machine and we are greeted by this.
After seeing that we looked at each other and went that looked kind of familiar
Then we figured it out.
Ok now on to the actual game play. The CO-OP is just as good as it ever was from the original Gears, which was good news to me at least. The controls have not been messed with and it really looks just like more of the same. Run gun get cover, Shoot repeat. But that is all I was looking for so that works for me. There are some interesting tactical improvements such as using grenades as proximity mines and luring the enemies into them. The mortars are also and interesting weapon for taking out many enemies at once. Though the times you get ot use it there are usually hords of enemies that are far off and the only way to get rid of them is use the mortars, or the one turret. Just saying a nice sniper rifle would have been great at that point. difficulty on this game is very scalable from super easy, to dang near impossible, we are working on the easy level at the moment and found it to be a little too easy. But we are getting the lay of the land the first time around I have a feeling we will be revisiting this game over and over. As for the CO-OP experience that has not changed much since the last Gears which was good. However like I mentioned before, new games have been out lately that have blown the top off of the CO-OP game play such as Army of Two which I found to be an excellent experience. The CO-OP in that game requires you to work together not just tag along. The agro system of cover rather than just hieing behind something works better too. A big improvement for Gears is the fact that the computer controlled characters will actually come heal you if you get taken out. Instead of having to just rely on your one human teammate. They will brave bullets and even their own safety to come after you . This was a great addition and made me hate the CPU players much less, felt they where and actual part of the team rather than a pain in my butt.
Pros
-CO-OP game play is good not great (on Par with last Gears of War)
-Graphics have improved a bit (I think they added a few more colors anyway)
-THE GIRLFRIEND LOVE IT ( Which is really the most important thing)
Cons
-Story seems a bit weak (but its not what I joined the party for anyway)
-Can be kind of hard to find your way ( I got lost a few times, needs something like the Army of Two GPS)
-Some of the new weapons could have been better. (let me shoot a crowd with the mortar close up!)
Conclusion.
So if you have somebody that will sit down and play this game with you then its a blast and I highly recommend it.
Ok first off I just got this game yesterday and we played it for roughly 3 hours last night in split screen CO-OP mode. I have to say any game that can do split screen CO-OP is almost a must purchase for me these days. So we put the game in the machine and we are greeted by this.
After seeing that we looked at each other and went that looked kind of familiar
Then we figured it out.
Ok now on to the actual game play. The CO-OP is just as good as it ever was from the original Gears, which was good news to me at least. The controls have not been messed with and it really looks just like more of the same. Run gun get cover, Shoot repeat. But that is all I was looking for so that works for me. There are some interesting tactical improvements such as using grenades as proximity mines and luring the enemies into them. The mortars are also and interesting weapon for taking out many enemies at once. Though the times you get ot use it there are usually hords of enemies that are far off and the only way to get rid of them is use the mortars, or the one turret. Just saying a nice sniper rifle would have been great at that point. difficulty on this game is very scalable from super easy, to dang near impossible, we are working on the easy level at the moment and found it to be a little too easy. But we are getting the lay of the land the first time around I have a feeling we will be revisiting this game over and over. As for the CO-OP experience that has not changed much since the last Gears which was good. However like I mentioned before, new games have been out lately that have blown the top off of the CO-OP game play such as Army of Two which I found to be an excellent experience. The CO-OP in that game requires you to work together not just tag along. The agro system of cover rather than just hieing behind something works better too. A big improvement for Gears is the fact that the computer controlled characters will actually come heal you if you get taken out. Instead of having to just rely on your one human teammate. They will brave bullets and even their own safety to come after you . This was a great addition and made me hate the CPU players much less, felt they where and actual part of the team rather than a pain in my butt.
Pros
-CO-OP game play is good not great (on Par with last Gears of War)
-Graphics have improved a bit (I think they added a few more colors anyway)
-THE GIRLFRIEND LOVE IT ( Which is really the most important thing)
Cons
-Story seems a bit weak (but its not what I joined the party for anyway)
-Can be kind of hard to find your way ( I got lost a few times, needs something like the Army of Two GPS)
-Some of the new weapons could have been better. (let me shoot a crowd with the mortar close up!)
Conclusion.
So if you have somebody that will sit down and play this game with you then its a blast and I highly recommend it.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Left 4 Dead Demo today..
If you have preordered Left 4 Dead on Steam this morning at 7am the multiplayer demo was unlocked. The public release of the demo is set for November 11th and the full game released on November the 18th.
If like me you KNOW this game is for you, I suggest preordering it now and getting that Demo.
Impressions will be posted here later.
If like me you KNOW this game is for you, I suggest preordering it now and getting that Demo.
Impressions will be posted here later.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Farcry 2 Review
I had planned to do Farcry 2 as my first Video review but with it taking far longer than I had planned I'm going to opt for a text review (and I will edit in some screencaps when I have time).
I will start by saying I had extremely low expectations for Farcry 2.
Strike 1. It's Ubisoft- once known for making some pretty butt kicking games Ubi I feel has typically gone downhill over the years.. It's hard for me to not anticipate a crapfest from these people.
Strike 2. It's a cash-in, Crytech the makers of Farcry left a long time ago and made the phenominal Crysis (true successor of Farcry), in their leave Ubi has pooped out several horrible console Farcry games almost killing the franchise name.
Strike 3. This Game took the name of a run into the ground franchise, yet is not related to it in any way shape or form.
So with that out of the way, I'm going to publicly eat crow and say I was wrong, so wrong about this game. What we got was a unique progression on the First Person Shooter Genre. It takes many of the best elements from action shooters, free roaming sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto and mixed them into one damned superb game. Don't let me imply that it's perfect, in fact the biggest hold up is a broken mission I encountered that I wasted far too much time trying to complete that it put my review back a few days. In fact this game has quite a few bugs I have encountered, but let me assure you now, the experience of this game is so good that you will overlook all flaws.
The basic plot here is that you are a mercenary that was sent to Africa to kill "The Jackal", an arms dealer that is getting rich on the conflict in the area by arming both sides. Your plans are altered when you come down with a case of Malaria and are bed ridden for some time, in your sickened state the Jackal pays you a visit but does not kill you as he figures there is no way you can touch him, and once you fail your mission others will be after your head. This is where you begin, sick and with only basic weapons. You find missions on your map as exclamation points and you visit the right NPC to get them, they typically consist of either killing someone or destroying something. Your payment is in rough diamonds that you can use in the weapons shops to buy new weapons, upgrade them and also to allow you to hold more ammo and such. If you visit the shop when you have no active missions you can often find the arms dealer will be there to give you missions that will unlock new weapon choices. Once purchased weapons will be available with ammo in an unlimited fashion in the store houses next to all weapons shops.
One thing that really impresses me the most is that there are no loads once in game,you can travel to all corners of the map and never once have to load. The only time you will is when you use a bus station to fast travel from one part of the map to another. The graphics are sharp, crisp and the lighting is the most natural and realistic I've ever seen in a game outside of Crysis (and in many ways more so). You will spend your time driving various jeeps, crappy cars and dune buggies down dusty african roads, this is pretty fun as it's like offroad rally racing without the actual race. To keep things from getting too boring they have made every citizen of this great land completely bat shit insane so every one you pass on the road will attack you on sight. Even simply driving by the lumber mill will make all workers drop what they are doing to chase you down and kill you!!.
While doing missions you will undoubtedly get a few rescue cases where you help some other Mercs out of a tough spot, once you do this they are your buddies and they will be a huge help to you. You typically get two main buddies, one will stay on rescue(if you die, they come in drag you out of danger and help patch you up), the other will typically help you out on missions by offering alternative ways to get them done (which tend to bring in some extra rewards). This is basically Farcry 2 in a nutshell, fighting your way through insane Africans to complete missions for bad people on two conflicting sides and eventually you work up to finding the Jackal. It is a lot of fun finding unique ways of taking out the enemy, buying all types of new weapons and getting some spiffy new vehicle and watching how bad they look after a few hours of driving them in this place (it broke my heart when I got a new Jeep SUV with gold rims from a prince, only to have it look like a big ball of mud an hour later).
Another Highly impressive thing is the fire, Alone in the Dark(2008) tried to really raise the bar with in game fire, and Farcry 2 takes it to roughly the same level but this time, it's in a game worth playing!! It's really impressive the things you do that will start fires and you just watch them spread, all of the leaves burn off trees leaving black burnt limbs, a few Molotov cocktails always make for some fun gunfights against entrenched enemies. Anytime you see a propane tank of any sort you know shooting them is only going to end in big fun.
The Pros
Cons
All in all I loved Farcry 2, I could complain for hours about what is wrong with it, but I won't because I'll be too busy PLAYING it.
I give this game an 8/10, amazing game brought down by some minor flaws.
I will start by saying I had extremely low expectations for Farcry 2.
Strike 1. It's Ubisoft- once known for making some pretty butt kicking games Ubi I feel has typically gone downhill over the years.. It's hard for me to not anticipate a crapfest from these people.
Strike 2. It's a cash-in, Crytech the makers of Farcry left a long time ago and made the phenominal Crysis (true successor of Farcry), in their leave Ubi has pooped out several horrible console Farcry games almost killing the franchise name.
Strike 3. This Game took the name of a run into the ground franchise, yet is not related to it in any way shape or form.
So with that out of the way, I'm going to publicly eat crow and say I was wrong, so wrong about this game. What we got was a unique progression on the First Person Shooter Genre. It takes many of the best elements from action shooters, free roaming sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto and mixed them into one damned superb game. Don't let me imply that it's perfect, in fact the biggest hold up is a broken mission I encountered that I wasted far too much time trying to complete that it put my review back a few days. In fact this game has quite a few bugs I have encountered, but let me assure you now, the experience of this game is so good that you will overlook all flaws.
The basic plot here is that you are a mercenary that was sent to Africa to kill "The Jackal", an arms dealer that is getting rich on the conflict in the area by arming both sides. Your plans are altered when you come down with a case of Malaria and are bed ridden for some time, in your sickened state the Jackal pays you a visit but does not kill you as he figures there is no way you can touch him, and once you fail your mission others will be after your head. This is where you begin, sick and with only basic weapons. You find missions on your map as exclamation points and you visit the right NPC to get them, they typically consist of either killing someone or destroying something. Your payment is in rough diamonds that you can use in the weapons shops to buy new weapons, upgrade them and also to allow you to hold more ammo and such. If you visit the shop when you have no active missions you can often find the arms dealer will be there to give you missions that will unlock new weapon choices. Once purchased weapons will be available with ammo in an unlimited fashion in the store houses next to all weapons shops.
One thing that really impresses me the most is that there are no loads once in game,you can travel to all corners of the map and never once have to load. The only time you will is when you use a bus station to fast travel from one part of the map to another. The graphics are sharp, crisp and the lighting is the most natural and realistic I've ever seen in a game outside of Crysis (and in many ways more so). You will spend your time driving various jeeps, crappy cars and dune buggies down dusty african roads, this is pretty fun as it's like offroad rally racing without the actual race. To keep things from getting too boring they have made every citizen of this great land completely bat shit insane so every one you pass on the road will attack you on sight. Even simply driving by the lumber mill will make all workers drop what they are doing to chase you down and kill you!!.
While doing missions you will undoubtedly get a few rescue cases where you help some other Mercs out of a tough spot, once you do this they are your buddies and they will be a huge help to you. You typically get two main buddies, one will stay on rescue(if you die, they come in drag you out of danger and help patch you up), the other will typically help you out on missions by offering alternative ways to get them done (which tend to bring in some extra rewards). This is basically Farcry 2 in a nutshell, fighting your way through insane Africans to complete missions for bad people on two conflicting sides and eventually you work up to finding the Jackal. It is a lot of fun finding unique ways of taking out the enemy, buying all types of new weapons and getting some spiffy new vehicle and watching how bad they look after a few hours of driving them in this place (it broke my heart when I got a new Jeep SUV with gold rims from a prince, only to have it look like a big ball of mud an hour later).
Another Highly impressive thing is the fire, Alone in the Dark(2008) tried to really raise the bar with in game fire, and Farcry 2 takes it to roughly the same level but this time, it's in a game worth playing!! It's really impressive the things you do that will start fires and you just watch them spread, all of the leaves burn off trees leaving black burnt limbs, a few Molotov cocktails always make for some fun gunfights against entrenched enemies. Anytime you see a propane tank of any sort you know shooting them is only going to end in big fun.
The Pros
Great Graphics that run well on medium level hardware. Game play that always keeps you on your toes, interesting story, weapon and upgrade selection give a good incentive to work on side missions.
Cons
Not the most polished game on the planet, AI a bit flakey, sometimes you can walk right up to them and they don't see you, next time they see you through walls and nearly blast your head off without being in your range of sight. one or two missions that can break under certain circumstances, would love to be able to take more than one mission at a time.
All in all I loved Farcry 2, I could complain for hours about what is wrong with it, but I won't because I'll be too busy PLAYING it.
I give this game an 8/10, amazing game brought down by some minor flaws.
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