Left 4 Dead 2: First Impressions

I'm sure it won't be as hyped as MW2, but L4D2 was released last night. After about an hour and a half delay, I was finally able to load up the game at about 12:30 CST. I played through the first two campaigns on single player just to get a feel for them. There were a few complaints I had, but overall, I believe it has a lot of improvements over the first. Many of the changes are subtle, but they affect the gameplay significantly.

First, the maps. They are much more open this time and it's not always immediately clear where you are supposed to be going. I never got lost, but I did have to stop a few times to look around and get my bearings. For the most part, they kept the idea of marking the general path with various lighting techniques. Also, the maps seem much bigger this time which is a plus for me.

The survivor characters were surprisingly well done. I was afraid that I would be too attached to the original cast, but the new survivors have already won me over. Especially Ellis. At the beginning of the Dark Carnival campaign, he literally had me laughing out loud. The only one I didn't particularly like was Nick, but only because he's a prick. And I haven't confirmed it, but I'm pretty sure Rochelle and Zoey are the same voice actors because they sound almost identical to me.

The new special infected are a welcome addition.I have a new found hatred for the Jockey and the Charger is just a monster. The Spitter didn't make much of an impact on the games I played last night. Could be because bots don't cluster or because the maps discourage stacking, but I'm sure she'll have a bigger impact in versus.

The flow of the game is much better as well. There are almost no down times when there isn't at least a couple of infected attacking. Because of this, sitting still is even worse than in the first one. Also, the level are much more complex this time and there are several moments that will stick with you. The very first level in the hotel was incredible and there's a moment when you walk into a certain shop that is just euphoric. And like in real life, when something gets turned on or an alarm goes off, you now have to turn it off before the horde will stop coming. No more hiding in a corner and waiting it out.

There are small things that add some variety to the game as well. For example, there aren't as many ammo dumps laying around. There are however, lots of guns laying around. What this means is that if you want to replenish your ammo, you're going to have to pick up a different type of gun. No more picking up an auto-shotty and carrying it with you for the rest of the game.

There were really only three complaints that I had. The first one is minor and a personal opinion, but I thought the tank looked a little less intimidating this time. He looked more like a pink blob and a little smaller and less muscular...just didn't give me the same sense of dread I'm used to. Also, the musical cues seemed to be missing. Maybe I just missed them, but I was surprised every time a tank was in my face or a horde was on top of me and I had no warning from the change in music. The lack of music also made it seem a little less tense. My final complaint was the AI. If you thought the original bots were dumb, then you're gonna hate these guys.

Overall, a very good experiance and a very nice improvement over what was already an excellent game to begin with.

MW2 for the PC: British sales suck

From GamesIndustry.biz:

With first week UK sales reaching 1.78 million units, it's no surprise to find that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has entered the UK sales chart at number one this week.

...

Only the controversial PC version of the game could be considered a disappointment, entering at only number five in the individual formats chart. The PC version accounted for just three per cent of overall sales, compared to 57 per cent for the 360 and 40 per cent for the PlayStation 3.

No reliable word on the North American figures yet. I'll keep you posted.

UPDATE: VGchartz says they have "exclusive" - though "preliminary" - data showing that the PC version accounts for just 5 per cent of sales worldwide. We'll have to wait to see what Black Friday brings.

Borderlands: get weird

I've played through Borderlands twice now, and I'm messing around with a new character I hacked together (with Gibbed's Borderlands Save Editor). The game is billed as a role playing game, but the story and characterization elements are so thin that it's a bit difficult to take the claim seriously. That's not a problem, mind you: tuning your weird abilities to inflict maximum nut-ball devastation is its own reward. That early realization got me thinking, and I came to another as I started my second playthrough: the four characters you can play aren't the real stars of the show.

Along with the majority of the NPC's in Pandora, the player cast members have almost no personalities to speak of. Most of the voice-overs are repetitive to the point of being tiresome, and the only motivation seems to be "kill things to acquire things to kill more things to acquire even more things." There's so much stuff in the world, though, that the formula kind of works. With upwards of around a bazillion weapons and other kinds of gear, looting takes on a life of its own, and finding that next screwy shotgun that turns bandits into gooey pools of giblets is all the incentive you need to grind out the next mission. The experience point and class customization systems just add layers of beef - and cheese - to the murderous sandwich. The stuff you acquire makes you what you are, and at the end of the day, you're little more than the sum of your gear.

So, the real personalities in Borderlands are the weapons. Some of them set the bad guys on fire, some liquefy them with acid, some fry them with pretty blue static discharges, and some cause the guy next to them to explode, too. Sometimes, your bullets fly off in a spiral pattern, and sometimes, your grenades disappear right after you throw them, only to reappear in a rather inconvenient spot (for the bastards that are trying to ventilate your dome, that is). Quite a few of the weapons have their own pet-names: the "Vicious" this or the "Genocide Stomper" that. One shotgun's description pays homage to Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness. Since that's the greatest movie ever made, you can conclude that the rest of Gearbox's inspirations are equally licentious.

Borderlands is just barely a first person shooter, in the sense that skill at the controls doesn't make much of a difference. Kills are far more a function of pulling the right tool out of the toolbox, and unleashing whatever advantage it brings to the table. Your toys seem to want you to be reckless and inelegant, and more than a bit daft. You really do have more fun that way.

*Tangent Warning*

Although everyone else seems to think that the game is best experienced in the co-op mode, I don't agree. I have a playlist that includes tracks from Tool, the Doors, Thrice, Stevie Wonder, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Radiohead, The Cure, and Elbow, that I cobbled together just for this game. It's a weird mix for a weird game, and the parts fit together with all the logic of a fever dream.

BFBC2: developer walkthrough

The narrator is Gordon Van Dyke: a former modder that impressed DICE so much they gave him a job. The video gives you a good sense of how the game will play, but it's a PS3 implementation, so the movement won't be as chunky when you get your grubby little fists on the PC version.

Video Games - E3 2009 - PlayStation 3

United We Fail

Steam reports a peak MW2 (MP) population of 68,026 today. View the hypocrisy in real time here.

Day Two

Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling on the advantages of IWnet:

Cheat / Hack Free Games: The biggest benefit of using IWnet by far is the fact that you don't have to worry about joining a server full of aim-bots, wallhacks, or cheaters. Or relying on the server admin of the server to constantly be monitoring, banning, and policing it. Modern Warfare 2 on PC allows us to control the quality of the game much more than ever before as well as utilizing the VAC (Valve-Anti-Cheat) system to keep games clean of hackers and cheaters.

UPDATE: Apparently, Activison doesn't want you to know about this. You'll see all kinds of MW2 gameplay videos in the coming days, but those won't be pulled for copyright claims, will they? (Note that the video is available here, thanks to an unnamed source.)

Destructoid previews Bad Company 2

Words here.

If reading isn't your thing, just watch the video with the volume maxed. I have never heard a game (surround) sound that good.

Pirating MW2: the 360 takes the lead

The story is interesting on its own. That it's not a PC story makes me fell all good inside.

The posting last Thursday on Craigslist was alarming. Someone was selling a Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 bundle, with both a console and a game, for $500. The problem was that Modern Warfare 2, one of the most anticipated games of the year, doesn’t officially go on sale until Nov. 10.

Activision Blizzard, the game’s publisher, called in IPCybercrime.com, a Dallas private investigation firm that specializes in online investigations. The investigators tracked down the seller and stumbled into a scheme to pirate the game and sell a bunch of fake copies over the Internet. While the bust led to the arrest of just one hacker among many, it sheds light on the shadowy underground of the business of illegal piracy. It also offers a peak at how investigators try to head off a major piracy disaster before it happens.

And later:

Coincidentally, pirate digital copies of Modern Warfare 2 flooded onto torrent sites, which are peer-to-peer sites for sharing software, on the same day. That has likely caused untold losses for Activision Blizzard, Holmes said.

Full article here.

Meet AVA

The name of the game is Alliance of Valiant Arms. It's a feature-rich modern warfare shooter that runs on the Unreal 3 Engine, and it costs $60 less than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (yes, that means it's free).

The gameplay has a Counterstrike quality to it, but AVA is deeper (and prettier) in all respects. It has three basic classes, 50 levels of advancement, nine game modes, a full achievement system, and a solid array of weapons that you can tweak out with attachments.* You start with one primary weapon, a pistol, and a frag grenade for each class. As you progress through the ranks, you earn money to buy better boom sticks. Unlike Counterstrike, the weapons you buy are persistent, meaning you'll always have them as long as you keep them repaired (most of the optional gear is temporary, however). And, there's a whole pile of new stuff coming on November 11.

* Note that the website does not list all the gear that's available in this build.

AVA isn't as polished as Call of Duty, but the amount of content is pretty remarkable for something that's completely free. I've had a hell of a lot of fun with it so far, and it more than satisfies the urge to play the more traditional type of multiplayer shooter. In an age where most games are going the co-op route, it's nice to get back to my roots for a couple of rounds.

You get a decent wad of cash after you complete the tutorial mission. I highly recommend buying the M16 straight away: you'll do a lot better with that than you will with any of the default weapons.

If you're interested, start here. If you're not sure if you're interested, watch the video:

Score One for DICE

The folks over at DICE want PC players to know that they still like us so they posted this letter that they were sent.
Edit: Hopefully the image shows up properly. I uploaded this from work, but access to any blogspot sites is restricted so I can't verify it. I'll check later from home.