Left 4 Dead=Left 4 Awesome

If the zombie apocalypse is this fun, then I wish I was dead. That could be interpreted many ways. One is that (a) this is a terrible game and I want to kill myself, (b) I wish I was dead to become a zombie, or (c) um… never mind, only two ways that I can think of. Well, the correct interpretation is (b). I guess in this case, and the same is true with many zombie games of late, I would rather be infected than dead. In L4D, you don’t have to dead to be a zombie. 

I’ll skip the Infected for now and go to the survivors. The survivors are who you play as in the campaign. You’re a group of survivors of the epidemic of zombies and you’re trying to get to a certain place in each campaign were survivors are being evacuated. That is really all there is to the story, except that there are four different campaigns that each take place in various locations that would be found in a city. One goes through the streets and up on to the top of a hospital, one through the countryside and a small field to be evacuated at a military outpost, the next in an airport, and the last in sewers that take you out into a forest where you get picked up by a boat during the finale. Speaking of the finale, all of the campaigns have an epic finale where the survivors hole up somewhere for a period of time until the transport arrives to evacuate you. Then the campaign ends. 

The campaigns are fun, but not fun enough for me. Why would you play as a human, when you could play as an infected and screw with the human players? I just never really got into being a survivor and always would much rather play versus mode where you take turns being survivors and infected. 

So versus mode is where a team of four joins another team of four and one team plays the survivors for a round and tries to reach the safe room. There are five safe rooms (I think) in each campaign. The other team plays as infected and tries to apprehend the survivors and kill them all before they reach the safe room. After the survivors reach the safe room, or the survivors are all killed, the teams switch roles and play the chapter over again. The important thing about that is that there are many different variants of each chapter so it never feels like your playing a game that you just played. I always preferred the infected, as I stated earlier, because it felt way more fun. 

In versus mode you can play as the “special” infected, the Hunter, the Smoker, the Boomer, or the Tank. The smoker are like cats. They crouch down and can jump like 30 feet onto a target and then start to tear them to shreds while also knocking them down to the ground where they are defenseless and can be attacked by other zombies. The smokers have long tongues that they shoot a hundred feet out and into a survivor. They then drag the survivor closer and closer and attack them when they get close enough. Also, a survivor being attacked by a smoker only has a few seconds to shoot them before they are stunned. The tank is, well, a tank. It has a huge amount of health, can knock people to the ground with one hit, and can rip huge chunks out of the ground and throw them at the survivors. The Boomer, is a large, fat zombie, that barfs on the survivors which attracts the “horde” (the term for the normal infected). I’m serious. 

a Tank

 

Combat is intense. There is nothing else to say about it. It’s frantic, fast-paced and intense. There is no problem with the combat unless you cannot get yourself to think quickly and make split second decisions. The only problem with it is the guns. There is not a big variety of them and the sniper rifle? Who wants a sniper rifle inside a hospital? Or sewers? But still its really great combat. 

So Left 4 Dead is a really good game. I am one of the few people who didn’t really ever like it as much as every one else did. But I liked it and I definitely see how and why everyone else likes it. I recommend this game only for hardcore shooters as you really need to have a lot of experience. 

Oh wait, haha, I forgot something. The AI director. The AI director is an AI that controls all of the other AI and controls how many items and ammo stashes you find. If you’re doing great the AI director will make more zombie babies, and if you’re doing really bad it’ll throw you some slack and make it a little easier.

is that it? That’s it. So go and play your games and keep looking at my blog.  I don’t have a million views yet. Oh, and comment. You have no idea how excited I get whenever I get a comment. Seriously though, take five seconds and comment. 

Love,

Jake Goulder

Peefackle’s Author

Too Human: It’s fun! Oh wait…no it’s not

Sorry, I was thinking of Fable 2. Too Human was fun, for like an hour. Even though Too Human came out like 5 months ago I’m still going to write about it because it’s fun to write about bad things, so I’m going to skip the witty banter that usually comes with my posts.

So, I went and picked up Too Human the day it came out. Played it for like, two hours, then my xbox broke it, then I went and picked up the replacement, then I sold it back to Gamestop. Honestly, this game gets so effing repetitive, it’s not worth a cent. 

The only thing that changes in the game is the setting and the story. The combat is fun for a it, but after a little while, you want to go and take a healthy dose of cyanide.

For some reason, Silicon Knights decided to use the right stick for all of the combat and it is really (cough cough, excuse my language), really stupid. It just doesn’t feel good to kick ass by moving your thumb in circles with no strategy. 

The story is the only good part of the game. It does get make you want to keep playing, but it does not balance out the overall worthlessness of everything else in the game. 

 

 

There really is not much to write about besides the combat and the story. Because the only other thing is the customization. There is a ton of customization. So much that it is a bad thing. You feel overwhelmed by it. It kind of like WoW. There is that much stuff. Except it all gets thrown at you right away and gets overwhelming. 

If I was grading things, i would give Too Human a “D” for content, but a few extra credit points for it’s creativity. So do not go and buy Too Human. Please. For me. For yourself and your wallet.

Mirror’s Edge: Parkour for the Lazy

So, sorry for not writing for a while. I know that my hordes of dedicated fans will be disappointed. Sorry. 

So I got Mirror’s Edge a while ago and I’ve been meaning to write about it. I really like Mirror’s Edge. It’s awesome. There are stunning visuals, great action, and best of all there is the awesome parkour that makes up the game. 

For those of you who don’t know what parkour is, go look it up. I’ll give you a minute. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Ok that’s long enough. 

For those of you that were too lazy to look it up, parkour is an extreme sport that people do out in the streets. It’s kind of like urban acrobatics. It involves wall running, rooftop jumping, and other shenanigans. It’s awesome. I  do parkour myself you know. It’s like free-running. 

Ok, back to the Edge. In Mirror’s Edge you play as Faith. Faith is a girl whose parents were killed in some riots a long time ago. The city you live in is closely monitored by the government and pretty much completely controlled by them. Therefore the people who do not want to be monitored need messengers called runners who are pretty much badass traceurs. Traceurs are the people who do parkour. Come on, focus. Faith is a runner. Ok, done with the background.

 

So in the first chapter, the prologue, you actually are delivering a message. But at the start of the first real chapter you find your sister, who was asked to meet with a mayoral candidate. She was knocked out and when she woke up the mayoral candidate was shot dead with her gun. So she goes to prison and you try to rescue her and that makes up the whole story.

A lot of reviewers and critics have been saying how stupid the story is and how there is no depth. I disagree. I like the story a lot, now it may not be as epic as Halo’s or many other games, but it is still a good story. It does not have depth and it may not impact you on a highly emotional level but I still like it.

I did have one problem with the story. It’s like, what? 6 hours long? It’s like trying to get a full meal off of half a sandwich and not eating the crust. It has no meat and it does not have nearly enough  to make it worth 60 dollars. 

Where players will be spending most of their time is the time trials. You try to make it through a part of a level in a certain amount of time which ends up to be a very fun and very challenging part of the game. 

The gameplay is fantastic. The running you’re doing makes you feel so awesome, and the moves you’re pulling are amazing. And that’s just the running. 

The combat is pretty cool too. the combat is mainly hand to hand. You disarm and knockout your enemies with a variety of different moves and you try to integrate the ass-kicking into your flow which makes stuff really awesome. You can use guns but the developers tried to make guns unnecessary and they slow you down considerably when you actually are wielding one. Now I’m not saying that the guns are not fun to use. Because they most certainly are. the LMG is like the SAW in CoD4 and it is one of the most satisfying weapons to use in any video game. 

On my first play through I didn’t use guns and it made for a really enjoyable experience, but when I switched over to the Hard difficulty I decided to use guns and also had a really fun time. Now if you are an achievement addict, you might just decide not to use guns because of the 80g achievement for not using guns for the whole game. But even if you don’t even care about achievements then I really recommend not using guns for a while anyway.

I also really want to emphasize how visceral the visuals are. The city feels alive and you can see for miles around from anywhere. The art style is also very original I think. The city is primarily White and there’s a little orange thrown in there but it really makes the game feel unique.

So if you have a good feeling about this game, then give it a try. If not, well try it anyway, just rent it. I loved this game. If you haven’t even played the demo on the XBOX live marketplace then go give it a try and see what you think.