f13.net

For those who don't venture into the Steam forum, the L4D demo is now available to everyone on PC and 360.

And those of us who pre-ordered have been loving the hell out of it.

What's so special about it?  FPS 4 vs 4 with a (slightly) different skin is all I get out of it.

Pleased to be hearing teh cool.

I refuse to answer that question as you obviously haven't played it. And if you have, you need to play it on advanced at minimum, expert ideally.

I was all set to give Fallout 3 personal GOTY honors but holy shit L4D. I mean, HOLY SHIT. Also: Chet.

Yeah, fuck that shit. And the Olympics is just gym class with a few more people watching. And a Maserati is just like a Ford Focus in a (slightly) different skin.

Fuck, I love being ignorant.

You made it so painfully obvious you have no idea what this game is about.

So what is so special? Feedback that goes beyond "this is awesome  :ye_gods:" would be good.

It's exactly like World of Warcraft arenas, only it's 4v4 instead of 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5.

Yeah really.

Don't bother downloading the demo to see for yourself. Totally not worth it.

 :grin:

I don't have a pre-order so I've been downloading the demo today.  33% done.

In addition to my slow download speed (20ish KB/s average, oh ho look at that 9.2 KB/s now), it randomly times out and I have to "verify integrity of game cache" to get things going again.

My internet tubes are fine, but I'm new to this crazy Steam business.  Are slow speeds / seemingly random time outs typical of release days on Steam?

Downloaded it twice today, on my wife's computer with a fresh install of Steam (ie: none of the download had been cached already or whatever...) she was getting a full 1.2MB/s, the full potential of my modem.

Valves servers have been historically excellent, so my first inclination would be to blame your net connection, but I could be wrong.

Let's pretend I'm completely swamped in my entertainment time right now with a million other games. What about this should make me take the time to go download the demo and try it? Be specific!

Left 4 Dead doesn't need reasons. It's the alpha and omega of zombie games, that's reason enough.

Its a free demo. Set it to download while you are playing something else. Sheesh, not like it will take long. All of 45 seconds on Steam.

Says the guy that bought a lifetime sub to...Well, you know where it goes.

So, yah, still wondering why it's so great (while I'm waiting on the demo that says it's going to take 6.2 days to DL).


Which is why I asked the question.  So, either answer it, or continue wasting YOUR time being snarky.  Doesn't matter to me.  Your bandwidth (and time).  And I suppose Schild and Co's, but go ahead.

You know what, don't play it. Your loss.

Pissy much?

Downloading a demo if an EFFORTLESS activity on Steam. Your laziness only robs you of fun. And I have 30,000 posts of snark. You're not wasting my time. I have nothing BUT time.

Thanks, now I am playing the ol' "disable everything I can and restart 1000 times" game to see if it will increase my download speed.  After this attempt, the last thing to do is unplug Mr. Router.


The 6.2 days is how long the demo will last for.  I thought it was the DL time at first too.

(edit: ocd)

Heh. DOH!

Holy :drill: it was my router holding me down.  Now I'm at a sweet sweet 300 KB/s and rising.

Anyone know what kind of general router voodoo plays nice with Steam?  I'm going to ask Google.

Played the demo. While cool, I don't know thats its going to be worth my $45. I can see the coop wearing off pretty quick, and they don't let you play Vs in the demo.

As of now I am undecided on if I am going to buy it or not.

I'm sure this depends on the router.  I have a fairly standard setup on a WTR54GL with dd-wrt, no issues.

Seriously, did you play it with 3 people (friends ideally) on Advanced/Expert? The game lives on Expert, which is kind of dumb, but pansies will whine otherwise. I thought the way you thought until I followed those instructions.

Here is why it is promising so far:
- the randomized crap in every level actually does keep the tension fresh
- your friends suck at this game and now you have another valid reason to berate them
- killing zombies with guns is a basic right of every human being
- features KISS technology, which is what made Portal so delicious
- zombies
- guns
- zombies vs. guns

Downloading the demo on the xbox, I have no patience for playing games on the computer anymore.... it's essential a porn and chat box :p

I don't understand how Steam is working so fast for me now after I have things set back up as they originally were.  But hey at least I learned about forwarding ports.  Times like this make me hate my PC and the magical turtles living inside it.  If it wasn't for Diablo 3 (and possibly StarCraft 2 if it really is mom friendly (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3171072), since mom's are slow and I am slower) I would junk my PC.

Anyway, the intro movie actually made me laugh out loud.   

And in my first game
Everything in this game is geared towards having fun.  With zombies.  And guns.  And zombies.

If you're really THAT unsure, try a taste of VS by playing a zombie against the AI. Not as easy as you'd think. There's a link to how to do it in the Steam L4D thread.

I downloaded/ played the XBOX 360 version last night, and played all kinds of it online/offline.. The game is magnificent. I am ALL OVER THIS SHIT.

Seriously the game is super cool.  :ye_gods:

Same, downloaded the demo yesterday and played the two levels 3 times (one solo, one with friends on normal, then advanced). I was really bored with it by the end. With an additional 18 levels I don't think it would hold my interest for long.

The director AI decided to throw one random tank in one spot is all I really noticed.

Edit:
Oh one tech gripe, the "friends only" games. Friends of a friend getting in is freaking annoying. Just allow the lobby leaders friends in, or invite only :P

I am boggled that they don't allow customized characters. Hey Valve this isn't 1998. I played coop with one friend, and the AI was driving me insane. My teammates would constantly run right in front of me as I was shooting, and then the tip would pop up "Dont shoot teammates".

What? Customized characters? Like what, so you can dress them up like Barbies?

The game extensively uses the fact that you are role playing as some in the game, be it Bill, Louis, Zoey or Francis. They call out their names specifically and obviously have their own voices and lines to deliver. The game counts on the fact that *you are these people*, and it makes it glorious. The only customization would be to dress them up. Sorry, I never personally was into Barbie.

In regards to shooting teammates - don't shoot teammates.

Wow, calling out names. Woop dee fucking do. Read the post. I said they ran right in front of me as I was shooting, not much I could do. This is 2008 not 1998, I am sure they could manage to make the game work with custom characters. Don't be a tool.

I agree with you on not having customized characters. It allows Valve to give the characters in the game personalities and better voice acting that would be missed out on if they went down the customized character route.

You seem to be under the impression that them having personalities somehow makes me gift a shit more about them.

Some games maybe, this one, nah, not so much. Dressup would actually be a step in the right direction. And maybe a list of names we can pick from.

Customization is vastly, vastly overrated. Sure, I didn't paint the picture perhaps as clearly as I should have. What would you want to change with the characters? Being that they each have their own unique voices, you couldn't change much of their appearance beyond their clothing, hair style and hair colour. Would that *really* be worth it? Does it even matter?

I can understand customization in a game where there are potentially hundreds/thousands/millions of people around, but just 4 of you? It's not going to make or break any experience. I would suggest the fact they were able to make the game "tight" based on an assumption of a certain look/style and feel of each character is far more engrossing than being able to change Bob's army pants into khakis. And give Louis a different coloured tie. Woop de fucking do.

People might run in front of you, that happens with the AI and with people. Actually if the AI didn't do that I'd suggest it would be intentionally handling the player with kid gloves.

[O Rly? (http://www.figureprints.com/)

Damn, and here i was, thinking that those guys were making mad cash due to customization.

I totally agree Schild.

While the concept for this game is cool, it really seems like there isn't that much game here, so having them give the option of like 20 names and 5 different voices wouldn't be that much to ask for. Let the players make their own characters, and then chose their name and voice. How hard would it be instead of having the npc say "Oh my god, save Bob" to say "Oh my god save '$NameVariablePlayerTwo'".

You increase the number of lines required to be recorded multiplied by however many names you provide. For asking Zoey to save you, you need 3 lines, one from each person there minus, obviously, Zoey herself. Right now you need 9 recordings for everyone to ask everyone by name to help them. Increase the number of potential names to 3, you have 4 characters saying 3 lines for 3 potential names, increasing the number of name-specific recordings required for that one line to 27.

Could you just have everyone record each name and use it every time? Sure - if you wanted it to sound like OK Computer and draw you out of the game. We obviously inflect, modify, and change our speech depending on the words surrounding it and the context, which is why those programs have never sounded fluid. You could do the [insert name here] idea, but it would sound like shit.

Is it worth it? To me it sure isn't. Call me bob, dick, harry, I don't give a shit. I've never been concerned that people called me Gordon Freemen while playing Half Life, or Mario when playing Mario. However, I guess if you're feel pretty raw about it...

Again, I just come from the mindset that customization is completely overrated. I bought the game to engage in an experience, not play dress up.

That's you. Customization is _not_ overrated. For every 1 person like you, there's a hundred that like playing dressup.

Or you'd just write the lines around a nonspecific name, and the other character would say something like "save me, you fucking cunt" (simulating what most people yell at healers in online games) while looking at you for a fleeting second.

You didn't sacrifice customization, and you didn't have to record a lot of lines. Can't really gauge immersion, since, to me, that shit is overrated.

See the thing is this.

The game is more about online multiplayer than singleplayer Half Life. I don't want to play as Bob over and over and over again. Especially for online multiplayer. For how small the game content is, I wont care about the "story experience" after the first time through I'll just want to shoot zombies.

Oh for sure, you absolutely could do that, and basically repeat whats been done a hundred times before. Keep it generic, keep it unspecific, etc. Have a lot of "Hey, you...yeah, you" moments and such, shout out the simple "Ow!" recording, rather than "Dammit, Louis!". You could remove the ability to find who's doing well or who's griefing your team through natural ways, and just go for the simple and generic way of perhaps outputting the specific information in a chat box.

However, I don't think that was the design goal with this game.

That's what nicknames are for.
Player 1 customizes his character, but his nickname is always Cuntfag.
Player 2 customizes his character, but his nickname is always Bobhope.

And so on, and so forth. There you go, now you can find who's doing well or who's griefing your team through "natural" ways, because, y'know, zombie apocalypses and HUD's sure are natural events.

Or just do it like mass effect, and force a last name which is always used, but let the gent pick a first name, although to me that's the same as saying no name at all.

Hmmm...you haven't played it yet, eh?

Why not use steam cloud to allow the user to customize their own audio prompts, ie: if the user has the mic for voicecom just allow the recording of your players 5-10 audio prompts or choose the stock ones. Just put an option box to disallow it like sprays on the server end, but it would provide awesome customization.

 :awesome_for_real:

Downloading. Fucking thing is coming at 50k/s.
I'll come here and admit any and all retardness and faux passes after it finishes.

You guys are focusing on the fact that you can't customize your characters enough through voice acting in the best LAN party game to come down the pipes in three or four years? Seriously?

Incidentally, 100 stages (20 levels; you are playing 2 stages in the demo) and more characters coming. VS mode coming, as well.

I think Dead Rising proved that there is fun in dressing up during a zombie apocalypse.

No.

There are 4 campaigns with 5 levels each. That's 20 stages/levels/whatever you want to call it. You can actually see that from the menus on the PC Version.


It's an excellent game where there's no absolutely specific strategy due to randomness and we want to talk about it, customization is a valid point. I'm not seeing your problem with it.

For that matter, who actually engages in LAN parties anymore?  This ain't Korea.  If I'm playing a multiplayer game it's likely over the intertubes.

Teenagers, college kids, and epeen types.

I resemble that comment. 34 HEADSHOTS WHAT YOU ONLY GOT 15 HUH

I think in order to see why they decided not to go the customized route we would have to play through the full game and see what kind of story, if any, Valve has put in the game. If it is very focused on the characters personalities and has a good story behind it then sure I would say it is better to have gone that way. If the game is lacking in both of those areas then you guys have a case for asking why isn't there an option to customize your character.

To me its a FPS so my characters looks have zero effect on the game and I think it might actually take you out of the 'game world' if you had a bunch of pink trannies running around killing zombies. I don't think that was the intention Valve had in mind. Sort of the same reason you can't customize your character in TF2, Counter-Strike and so on.

Office-workers who should be doing other, more productive stuff.

Also, what's the endgame like in this game? Is it all just PvE raids? Also - can we sit in chairs? I want player housing, and permanent death.

This. Lunch time is a raucous shouting match about zombies. It has nothing to do with epeen and everything to do with asking your buddies to come over with their laptops.

Some games are just fun for the sake of being fun. Some games you're left wanting more. I'm not exactly sure how customization would make a game about shooting zombies for an hour with a few friends somehow more fun when it's not geared to be anything more.

Of course people also wrote Portal fanfic here when the game just "was" so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here.

TF2 has convinced me that pre-defined characters with individual personalities are a lot better than superficially customizable characters that all talk and act the same.  At least in team-based FPSes where you're spending a lot of time looking at each other's avatars and have relatively few ways to make them "emote".

I get a lot more entertainment out of the character-specific banter during the game ("God dammit, Francis, check your fire!") than I would out of putting different hats on some nameless dude.  And I say this as someone who LOVES putting hats on people.

Now, if they had a way to customize the zombies, Romero-style, with the occasional random zombie wearing clown makeup and holding tambourines and shit?  I'd be all over that, and it wouldn't require them to re-record every piece of dialogue a thousand times.

Other than the fact, like most zombie movies, the dialogue sucks, and frankly, the banter is only REALLY useful when you're playing single player. With multiple people, 9 times out of 10 the person will say what the toon is gonna say before he says it.

It's redundant and adds so little after your 10th game or so.

The whole thing is based on zombie movies since the ground up. It IS a zombie movie. Customization would contradict that design/artistical decision.

My short on the game: Atari's Gauntlet with 3D, zombies and Valve. What's not to like? Win.

I don't get the big deal about this game not having customization considering you stare at your hands for a majority of the game. If it'll make you feel any better why don't you load up Sims 2, make your L4D character, pretend it's in L4D and play. It really just seems like you're all complaining for the sake of complaining and I know that's how F13 is, but at some point you have to look back and think "Wow, I'm a fucking idiot for thinking not being able to put a Hawaiian shirt on my character detracts from a game about surviving a zombie apocalypse."

Also, I'm sure Turtle Rock didn't have the man power or budget for customization. By the time Valve got their hands on L4D, I'm sure they didn't want to re-write the entire game just for something that changes nothing about the core game play.

Your second point is decent, but frankly, if I'm going to be playing with randoms and friends - point being, lots of different people - it'd be really fucking cool if they all had some sort of uniqueness - as in, it's always a bunch of strangers surviving the zombie apocalypse. Not the same four fucking people Every Single Time.

In other words, you missed the fucking point. Everyone being a little (a lot) more unique, would've really brought it CLOSER to a zombie movie. And it's possible Valve will add that. I just wanted to make the presence known that it would be a great feature.

I play with voice turned off most of the time because most people are cockweasels.   :why_so_serious:

Maybe we can import our 360 Miis as avatars.  I'll have one of the many that resemble Hitler.

Most people would make the most outrageous looking characters (Especially since you yourself do not have to see what you look like) and this would really take you out of the moment. Like I said you will see people in all pink, guys with woman's clothing, 'insert theme here' clothing and it just wouldn't fit the environment and theme of the game. If you played the Battlefield Heroes demo you would know how ridiculous some characters can look.

You probably never complained about TF2, CS, Call of Duty, or Resistance having a lack of character customization so why start here?

Dude, TF2 would be totally awesomer if you could make the Heavy look like the Scout and the Scout look like the Engineer, except wearing berets.  Everyone would be all like WTF.   :awesome_for_real:

Phire is right, specifically about me.  Remember my PotBS beta character?  Hell, even my release one was "colorful".  My avatar in Saint's Row 1 and 2 is a great example of why I should not be allowed to customize characters.  Xtreme Customization is one of the main reasons I like LBP so much.  Finally, having the ability to put your own face on your character in Rainbow 6: Vegas was a horrible, horrible gateway to things that should not have been.

Zombie shooter staffed with Hitlers and Crackwhores? Dude, where do I sign up?  :drill:

Both of you are making stupid points that don't make sense. Sorry to be so blunt, but here, might as well explain why since you somehow thing it was an argument.

1. Team Fortress and Counterstrike relied on 2 teams defined by how they look for another pack of players to identify them upon site. These are human versus human players, and even more than CS, Team Fortress relied on balance. Not only that but mechanics like the Spy would crumble if customization was around. I never asked for customization in these because it would be _stupid_.

2. Call of Duty and Resistance are another set of situations where customization would've taken away from the game/end result. Particularly Resistance. Call of Duty on the otherhand had some of the most robust weapon customization in the industry. It's just superb.

Left 4 Dead is a game about zombies versus humans. At the very least, they could've had 10 or so outfits for each character and not have had to have changed anything. It's purely a scenery/flair thing, but that shit goes a long way. And if you don't think Valve has the manpower to do such a thing - you're mad.

I don't like comparing apples and oranges, so don't make me do that again.


Battlefield Heroes characters are ridiculous because they allowed it. Valve wouldn't have to. Really, I can't believe I'm arguing with you. That paragraph was stupid. I didn't say everyone should get a tophat and have a mask to look like GladOS. Jesus, don't be insane.

The insanity of character customization is defined by what is even offered in any sort of customization. I'm pretty sure Valve could stem any such problem pretty much immediately with a slew of pre-set outfits or a lack of color options.

Fuck. Now I'm angry because you think way too in the fucking box.

You're just starting down a trek of complaints that carry no merit. You think a couple differing pieces of clothing would be awesome, then the next guy thinks there should be more and someone else thinks there should be more eccentric choices. Now Valve has to listen to a bunch of prissy mouthbreathers who want to play dolly. In a zombie shooter no less.

Heh, I just like that "too much customization" is "thinking in the box" here.  Ultimately, though, I'm not seeing that customization of characters is anything most people playing this game are going to care about.  I get the feeling you want this game to be something more than what it is, say an instanced Zombie-FPS-MMO.

I like the defined characters myself, I don't need to fight zombie hordes with Ace Ventura in a pink tutu.

I'm really looking forward to versus mode. I think the campaign mode will be entertaining for a good while, but I think versus mode is where the longevity will be.

The fact you think Valve has to go that far is part of the problem. You have trouble saying "No" sometimes, don't you?  :why_so_serious:


No, probably wrong, and who wouldn't want to play such a thing?

So you are honestly disappointed in a game because you cannot change your shirt from red to blue? That's all you care about? Really? I knew you liked to nit pick but WOW.

How about this?  I'd like the option to play a female character if someone else has already picked Zoey.  Can I have enough customization to at least have that choice?

As for the time it takes to record the dialog?  There isn't that much.  They could do it in a few hours per character, if even that long.  They do this for a living.  It goes quickly.

I want a Night of the Living Dead mod:

Zombies are slow but can only be put down with a headshot, and getting caught by more than one or two = you are dead.

Along with that, more environmental manipulations, maybe hand weapons like axes and baseball bats, very limited ammo for any actual weapons, and isolated environments that are difficult to defend.

Wrap it all up with a 15-20 minute timed mode where you have to hold off the zombie horde until sunrise (or alternately escape the area by truck or something) and I'll love it.

Yes. You hit the nail right on the head. You've counted the angels on the head of the pin and you've found the needle in the haystack. Obviously, I want the group to be Frankenstein, Himmler, Abraham Lincoln and a goat. But hay, I'd settle for a palette swap.

All of you fuckers are taking this to one of two extremes that is totally missing the point. That's fine, I just want to make you aware that you're bugfuck crazy.

Is it really so wrong to not want the characters to always be Knockoff Dreamfall Girl, White Trash, Dying Sergeant Jackass, and Halftuck?

Also, at what point did I express disappointment? I'll fucking praise the game to high fucking heavens. And have been. I'm just saying it's begging for some amount of customization. You, on the other hand, are nutso.


Zombie Panic sounds more up your alley. Particularly the limited ammo bit. Though, I think in the later stages on expert, the ammo will get very limited. I can't imagine there's going to be tables full of shit on the rooftop of the hospital which is the last stage of the demo campaign.

Could be, but I can't imagine Zombie Panic is as polished as this.  I wonder if they'll take L4D and mod it to the "next version"?

This is a better decision than Customization. If Capcom can put 24 characters into SF4, I'm pretty sure Valve can put 20 characters in, record their 20 or so lines and fix the issue of redundancy.

Sorry about ruining the party, but Left for Dead has more than 8000 lines of dialog.

Source (love the pun): http://kotaku.com/5043897/left-4-dead-to-be-cut-scene-free

So, assuming 4 characters, evenly divided up into 2000 lines each. Changing names, adding more entirely new characters, you can do the math.

The argument comes down to this: Do you want quantity or quality of characters? I would take 4 extremely well done characters over 20 half-assed characters any day of the week.

In the case of a game where 9 times out of 10 I would be playing with 4 humans who are voice chatting, I'd take quantity. The quality comes from the zombie end of the spectrum, not how many times Halftuck yells SHIT SHIT SHIT whenever somebody kicks it.

Can you back up this statistic of 9/10 with hard data? :grin:

I'm pretty sure when I'm using myself as a sample size of one and referring to how I'll play the game, I am the hard data. I don't like playing with less than 4 people - in fact after a couple people drop, I drop after a few rounds just to finish whatever we were trying to do - if it's even possible. And even then, at no point has the dialogue spat out by a bot been either 1. Compelling or 2. Terribly useful. Not only that but I've played enough (and so have some of my friends) that they can identify the boss zombies by sound far before the AI noticed and loads the dialog. The AI is decent on advanced and below, but unacceptable on Expert. It's pure shit. Of course, some players are also, but most of the players are better than the AI is or will be.

They've said that more characters are coming

Where? That would've made this derail a very, very short one.

Would you be happy with more characters and not customization? (Asking to know, not to continue the argument.)

Edit: Only link I could find on post-launch content for L4D: http://www.videogamer.com/news/10-09-2008-9265.html (http://www.videogamer.com/news/10-09-2008-9265.html)

Already said I would be.

I hear shooting zombies is cool, confirm/deny?

Confirming itt.

lol

Anyway, I'm with schild on this.  The game needs more characters.

I am all for customization usually, but this time I am not.

I like the movie tone they gave it and I am in for the (very very light) story they are trying to tell.
As I am used to shallow zombie movies with cookie cut characters, I am gald to have my cookies here too. It makes perfect sense to me. And these 4 chars perfectly set the mood of the game, which would still be fun but a bit impersonal without them. Plus, I still think it's a precise homage to Gauntlet.

I am not saying you customizers are wrong. Just saying that I am personally more than happy, in this case, with the actual design.

EDIT: More "official" chars? Brilliance!

You will love Battlefield Heroes.  That's pretty much what they are going for, judging by the video on their website. 

You. Did. Not. Read. The. Whole. Thread.

That will be enough to make me happy.

Not green is the new green.

I liked that in RE:Online you could choose different characters that had different abilities.

With 4 characters they couldn't do that in L4D, there would be too much fighting over each character. However if they had 8 characters they could do it. Or if they had 4 characters and allowed you to choose palette-swapped duplicates. (With different hair or something...)

If the characters are all going to be functionally identical they might as well let all 4 people play as the black guy if they want. Worrying about plot and dialogue concerns seems a bit silly in what is supposed to be a fun multiplayer game. Four of the same black dude with different colored shirts may not make a lot of sense story-wise but who cares?

It's a little surprising that TF2 would have such diverse character classes then L4D has 4 characters that only differ graphically.

My feeling is, at least for launch, they wanted to have a stupid reason for the stupid goddamn name of the game.

Zombies 8 My Neighbours

Played it.
Loved it.

12 Zombeys

Shocked itt.

Lame.

Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

So back about the game...

Is this really good enough to spend $60 + xbox live sub for, when I don't really have any friends with a 360 (and no I won't get the pc version because I don't have a good pc setup so kb/m gaming is a PITA for me right now)?

I've comprimised on a handful of FPS titles in the last few years, this is one of those I wouldn't compromise on. The amount of twitch needed here to be successful on the more.... zombie-survival like difficulties is higher than average.

But I've said it to others, I would wager the 360 version has a decreased difficulty across the board. Haven't played it yet to find out though. And I won't  :oh_i_see:

This game is fast and fulfilling enough on a mouse+keyboard setup that I wouldn't get the console version even if threatened at gunpoint, and I love my Ps3 and my full HD panel.

Enough with the console/pad-mania. Some games, a few, are just plain better on PC. Hell, even at the lowest resolution and detail of my work pc it's just pure pleasure to blow zombie heads and limbs with loud precision and quickness.

Some games, yeah. Like for example... ALL of them.

That should be green, right?

A few of my friends are picking this up, are the majority of people here playing this on PC? I sure hope so.

I played this last night for about 30 minutes. I don't think I'll be picking it up. Its good and all, but let's face it, its a hl2 rehash with some 'innovative' game play concepts. But not really. Remember how in HL2 you'd get a room full of face huggers trying to jump onto your face? This game is that scenario, only amped about 1000 times.

Wut?


Double wut?

That was like 1 room, in Ravenholm, right at the bottom of the mineshaft, and you could pick them off before you dropped down. I think you're remembering Half Life 2 incorrectly. The better example would be the mines that made up a good portion of episode 2, but even then Not Really At All.

Honestly, I wouldn't care too much about L4D if it wasn't for the fact that it's a great coop experience. The perfect coop experience me and my twitchy friends were waiting for outside dumb MMORPG territories. Sometimes it's great to play and clear a game together. It was in Ikari Warriors in the 80s, it is nowadays with L4D.

But I can understand solo players unwilling to shell out 49$ for this, not trusting too much the matchmaking options as a viable way to complete the game with random partners.

My friends and I have been having a blast with this. I finally understand what all those console players were going on about with their co-op games. It's been a blast. I'll definitely be looking to pick this one up.

I just wish there would be more types of zombies in the retail version. We've already fought everything the game has to offer in that regard.

I wish there were fewer types. Actually I wish there was one less type specifically; get rid of the witch. After getting that cunt dropped behind the same door 4 times in a row, where there is literally no way to not startle her I'm officially sick of having a 90% chance of losing someone without being able to do anything about it.

I like the witch (the tension when everyone has to turn their lights off and creep around looking for her is awesome), but I wish it were possible to kill her before she's knocked someone down.

Comparing L4D to Half-Life 2 is silly.  Doom 3 is a MUCH more apt comparison.  This game is basically Doom 3 with an urban setting, different monsters, and better co-op mechanics.  The core gameplay of running around dark rooms while monsters teleport behind you is the same.

I played this on Normal last night and it was too easy.

Expert is for drama ya?  I dont' think you're suppose to make it without losing someone.

Not fucking true. You can shoot and have a flashlight.  :awesome_for_real:

Well, you can aim and have a flashlight, but IIRC as soon as you start shooting the recoil makes it so you can't see what you're splattering.  (Or is that just when you're getting beat up?)  So I guess it's the opposite of Doom in that respect.

This might be fun, but only if you get friends to play it with you. Also, it would be nice if I could stay connected for more than one map without the game dying. And if the textures worked consistently.

That would be the Tank for me.  The Witch you can usually avoid but adds tension.  The others you can take out with a few shotgun blasts and have time to deal with the consequences of their attacks.  The Tank just plasters you, and even on normal takes several clips with everyone firing.

The tank goes down decently quick even on Expert if people shoot the thing in the head from the front instead of emptying all of their ammo into its back. The tank takes shit for damage when shot from the back. Well, also depending on where he attacks you. The subway cars are the best IMO since you can kite them forever almost if you get it right.

The fucking witch when dropped in a couple places where there is literally no way to avoid pissing it off, is basically like, *witch lunges, someone gets instagibbed*

The tank also has the unique disadvantage of not being able to fit into tight spaces, so you can frequently get yourself on the other side of a narrow doorway or something to keep him from getting to you.  Or you can just run around him and take turns "drawing aggro" to keep him from ever getting close enough to grab any one person.

If you get attacked at a saferoom by one make sure everyone gets in there and shuts the door to end the chapter because they -will- break the door down.

CAN'T DOWNLOAD.  RACISM.  ALSO, MOUSE STOPPED WORKING.  GAIJIN SMASH.

You can't play the Infected in the demo, right?  Not to rain on the general parade, but I've read a couple of reviews that said Infected play is 5 seconds of life followed by thirty seconds of waiting to respawn. 

This game is all about atmosphere and too much customization would detract from the atmosphere.  Some different outfits, maybe, but how much will letting you change your clothes here and there add to the game?  Some games the customization adds to the games, I don't think this is one of those games.

I am a master of disaster at this game.

I would expect this.  The teams are not supposed to be symmetrical.  Given that the survivors are limited to 4 and have to fight hordes of regular zombies as well as any infected bosses, players playing the bosses should expect to be dropped quick and select their times to attack very wisely indeed.

I know when I'm playing the infected I'm not going to attack if I can help it.  The bosses are at their most aggravating when they hang around hiding from you and distracting you from the stuff coming the other way.

Unless I draw the Tank.  Then I'm going to charge right in and start throwing people into the nearest open flame.   :awesome_for_real:

Jesus Christ, Valve is now offering L4D as well as every single Valve game ever made in a special deal for $99

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/1134

I call it a powerplay to take over PC gaming until Christmas. Too bad I have most of those already.

Wow, I have all of those minus L4D which I'm going to buy tonight.  My steam dir is 32Gb :)

I finally played the demo last night and I'm sold!

Played the demo, preloading it right now. That looks like it will be fun.

Played the demo, this is going to be fun with people you know.

And you know us! So this is going to be fun to the EXTREEEEEEEEEEEME :drill:

This is the most exciting preload ever. I am frothy with anticipation.

I tried the demo briefly after work today; it strikes me as a very very very very very polished and advanced form of Serious Sam co-op, without the wacky weapons or static encounters.

That's what I thought too.  I miss the suicide bombers noise.

I think you completely missed the point of this game.  Grab a few friends and play it online on expert.  It is a great co-op experience.  There are tons of situations designed to make you rely on your teammates.  The fun comes mostly from the team work and coordination.

I agree that buying this as a single player game would be a waste of money.  Its short and pricey for a single player game.  As a multiplayer game its amazing (what it was designed for.)

Yeah, this would be a craptastic single player game, although I think the director could be put to good use in single player games. As online game, especially knowing Valve's track record for additional content after release, this game is  :heart:

Which it would be for me once something else shiney catches the eye of the f13 steam community.  I don't have friends I play co-op FPS with (my WoW friends have bad pcs that can barely run HL2 if at all)  other than the people here and even then, my play times are late and sporadic.

Reluctantly passing this up, I think. I just don't feel I'd get $50 out of it.

I think I'm the only person who would consider this on 360, as I still haven't had valve fix my steam account.

It plays very well with random tards.  To a certain point of tardedness, anyway.

It seems like the most challenging setting is the only one worth playing, and I totally suck at this type of game.

So, um, how does i play this when i keep getting "Cannot connect to client with null XUID!" errors or something in console?

hlep lol, i want to get brained by zombies!

My teammates cause me to weep with the stupid.  #1 problem so far:  people who refuse to go in the fucking safe room.  Three of us will be in there, and the fourth will insist on running around exploring, and then get caught by 30 zombies and die.  By the third or fourth time this happened and the fucker refused to go in the safe room, I finished him off myself.

That actually sounds like fun. :oh_i_see:

Ok, got it working, played it through. Is it normal to be hit with 2x zombie wave, 2x boomer, a smoker, a hunter and a tank all at the same time?

Confirming it.

memememememe

Dammit.

It's hard to explain how cool is to play with 4 friends on expert.
I dare to say it's impossible to progress, or we just suck SO BAD at zombie slaying (without blowing each other off, that is), but it's hystherically fun fun fun.

Can't wait to play with you all.

UP. The word you are looking for is UP. At least I hope so.

Someone has a zombie fetish... :ye_gods:

OMG, I can only laugh so hard. Yeah, sorry. duuuuh.... /blows himself up

EDIT: fuck, I am still laughing. I feel so stupid but for some reason I am so amused.

If a zombie apocolypse is happening, the survivors might as well get a little joy out of it while they can. :drillf:

Toying with the idea of getting the 360 version as my home computer is crap and I don't have a good setup for using my mouse in an action game. (It's sitting on a cardboard box) But I'm kind of scared that the Xbox community will be like it is for many online games - nonexistent.

It's weird. I'll have both version of the game for two separate groups of friends, so if you'll add me you can always be my zombie buddy!

Seeing how hard it is against the AI (on expert), I'm starting to wonder how any 4 survivors could possible beat four Infected who were communicating.  I mean jesus, the hunters time pounce together, the smoker grabs one other, and the boomer vomits on the other (or one of the incapicitated parties)= instant death.  Hell, even two Infected that coincidentally happen to attack at the same time during a zombie wave would win it 90% of the time.   A complete shutdown of 3 people (OMG CROWD CONTROL NERF) at the same time (with the Boomer also in the mix, although he has to be closer which would make things harder) would be pretty darn powerful, even with few regular zombies around.

You're assuming a lot.

Maybe, but do you disagree with him? Every single one of my failures on expert that aren't tank-related are due to two types of simultaneous attacks. 

I assumed it worked the same way for everyone else. A boomer spits on 3 of your guys and a smoker grabs the last one, you're pretty much fucked unless someone is smart with a pipe bomb. They usually aren't and said boning ends quicker than the first time you startled a witch by accident. A combination of any two different attacks at once, as it currently stands, will almost be a guaranteed wipe as far as I see. Maybe Valve is putting something in to stop it from being so easy- that's an assumption that I'd like to make.

It's expert. I am not even sure it's supposed to be possible to win on expert. And if it is, you have to feel really proud about it. So maybe you are right but ah well...

The last two I won, both a tank or a witch were killed.

On one of them we killed BOTH.

Edit: Boomer rushes are really fucking easy to deal with if you always hug a wall where mobs don't spawn. I really wish more players would figure out the lay of the fucking land - and maybe be a bit more patient.

Edit:
Yes, it's hard. And yes I feel good when I beat it, especially when all 4 people are still seeing color. But is it impossible? Not even a little.

Corners are your friend during a rush.  I'm always trying to keep near at least one wall.

I also like strategically placing fuel cans.

Unfortunately a lot people just don't get the point of most strategic games. FPS ultimately equals death match to a lot of people. I find most people are out to kill a lot of zombies while ignoring the fact that if you linger, the director WILL crush you. I had one group who stayed at the top of the subway safe room thinking that all they could do was climb up, then the director in all its glory, decided to send some in from the top. To top it off he sends in a smoker and a hunter. We wiped at the fucking safe room door.

Eeeeh, it goes both ways. I was in a game recently where we had to hold a train car for about five minutes against non-stop mob and boss spawns. After that we got a very quiet non-spawn run up to the minigun room (where we were flattened by a tank/hunter combo right at the initial window).

Expert is incredibly easy. I mean, not the first time you play it, but once you learn to play it's very very easy. Hordes are, in my opinion, far too easy. Just back into a corner and melee and you can usually single-handedly take out a horde with your fists.

When I play the demo on expert with my friends now, we have to use console commands to keep it challenging. We usually double the amount of zombies and then go from there. We even crashed our server because of how many zombies we at one time managed to spawn.

Seriously, once you get the tactics and learn the basic anti-zombie strategy, the (at least the demo) game is very very very easy. I have never played the game in anything but "expert", and to me, it is the only way to play the game.

That said, we've only seen 2 levels and they're not particularly hard to master and they are the FIRST two levels of the FIRST campaign. I imagine things like the rooftop (5th part of the 1st level) won't have as many corners to hide from, at least, I'm hoping not.

Yeah, I understand it is going to get harder. I heard that you'll face more than one tank at one point for example.

Damn. I suck at videogames.

Eh, not necessarily. He does admit to playing with friends. I spend most my time with pubbies because that really enhances the experience.

...for two weeks.

I'm not fickle. I played TF2 for a loooong time. It's the rest of you limey bastards that left.

Two weeks is a lot of fun!

Somebody needs to buy AI Director and put it into an MMO for raid encounters.

Left 4 Dead 2 Die: Online

MMOFPSRPG

Make it happen!

Why? WHY!? We all know someone would just under utilize the director or break the idea.

Well, incredibly easy my arse!

Me and 3 friends played for like 2 hours in a row, with voice chat and all. Took us 1 hour to finish the first level and we couldn't finish the second one, no matter what.
Sure we suck, no seriously we do, but incredibly easy? Or you were playing with a NPC (they are pretty efficient if you ask me, and never risk friendly fire. It's somewhat easier with less human players), or you are a band of cyborgs.

Again, I am not saying it's impossible as I said yesterday. But "incredibly easy"? 4 humans on Expert? No.

It's not consistent at all. Which is what i really like about this game. I've had Expert games which have ran without a hitch and were ezmode, and i have also had Expert games which had been freight train after freight train (the second one usually being on fire). There have been games in which we had gotten good weapons and didn't even need them, and there have been games in which we would get the rifles, etc... at the last table, having to plow our way through with shotguns and uzis - and that last table had had a Witch parked on it.

So your Expert mode might not be some else's Expert mode.

I played on the 360 for the first time tonight and realized that the game doesn't do well with thumbsticks. I Molotov'd my entire team to death and ran in the fire with them to make them feel better.

Having played all the way through the second campaign, this might well be GOTY for me (keep in mind that I love zombies).  In fact Dead Space is it's closest competition for me so far, although that is largely due to how much I love Dead Space's lack of an HUD.

Dead Space had the best immersion since, well, I don't know, Chronicles of Riddick maybe. Though some parts of Penumbra were pretty great also.

3 hours of my life just disappeared while playing this game.  Played the second and third campaigns all the way through (co-op) now and they are fucking amazing.  Even on normal, the last part of each campaign is brutal.  Expert would likely be nigh-impossible without a perfectly coordinated group.

Dead Space's immersion broke for me when I realized I was playing the video game version of Event Horizon.  :heartbreak:

That said, Zombies + Actual group coordination = love. I was playing last night yelling shit from every zombie movie I've ever watched and having a blast.

I downloaded the demo for this last night on Steam but when I tried to fire it up it gave me a "Pre-order" option but no "play demo" option.  This does not seem to be right. Can someone link me something I can play please?

You can't play the demo anymore. Valve rarely does demos, if at all. This was a time limited demo.

Oh my. They locked the demo? Maaaaaaaaann....

Valve are now my favourite developers

I have loved every single game they've released  :grin:

That, in no uncertain terms, is shit.

The AI Director constantly amazes me.  Ran through with some friends last night and we tested a couple different things...

What we could tell was that if you're team is pulling off alot of headshots and has a really high percentage of accuracy, the game seems to automatically toughen up by sending more and more hordes.  If you and your group was a bunch of poor shots (spray and pray), it seems like it gave you a little bit more leeway.

Not scientific by any means, but we noticed it on a consistent basis.

There is logic to this one though. The demo was allowed out because they wanted to get a headstart on having dedicated servers up for the launch. Now that launch has hit, they cut the demo to avoid having dedicated servers used for demo players. It's not your typical game, so the circumstances make servers a tricky thing and, right now, in short supply.

And while the buzz was certainly going on about this game and people were excited, you have to admit that the demo release made things go pretty crazy on the internet. I mean, it was taken pretty seriously in the blogosphere.  :awesome_for_real:

Im sure I could find out better by just looking online, but does this game have local multiplayer, or is it online only?

vvv  So the answer is no one system one screen play then?

Guess its another budget purchase then.  :heartbreak:

You can get your LAN on.

Its going to be hard to get my WotLK addled friends to want to get this without the demo now :cry:

Two things:

1) It's in the credits: Infected Sounds by Mike Patton  :heart:
2) Stats. I need stats. Where are the stats?

WAT? :uhrr:

360 has two player split-screen.  Split-screen was taken out of the PC version for the demo and is supposed to be reimplemented at some point.  There are workarounds though that can activate it.

I was about to call bullshit when I found it

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=745113

All you need is a 360 controller apparently.

http://img122.imageshack.us/my.php?image=l4ddemhospital01apartmesg0.jpg
http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=l4ddemhospital01apartmedv0.jpg

Whee. Did some single-player on easy to check out the levels.

No Mercy: Fun but the roof feels awful small compared to the interiors. I was hoping for a really huge skyscraper roof to fight on. :/
Death Toll: Got bored about 2 areas in and quit since I had some classwork to do.
Dead Air: Pretty fucking awesome. Has some "RE style" town design at the beginning 1/3rd or so though (meaning it makes no fucking sense how everything is laid out).
Blood Harvest: Didn't get to play it yet.

Been through all the campaigns now (although the achievement system is still a bit wonky, so I only have the achievement for completeing one of them) and Dead Air is by far my favorite.  I really liked Death Toll also although the end of that campaign and the end of Blood Harvest are a bit too similar.

Just finished Death Toll on advanced. That's... intense. Two fucking tanks to end it. I ended fighting the tank in the water with my teammates manning the minigun. Three of us ran toward the docks, but as we got on the ship a smoker snagged one and pulled him into the fire of the molotovs we had set behind us. Motherfucking epic. I can only play one game though; I get too jittery afterward.

Mike Patton did the sound of the angry GLaDoS orb in Portal as well.

Yeah, I kinda recognized him there. Here, not yet. I'll crank the volume up.

Man this game is fantastic. The offline is fun but the online is out of fucking control. The game is so much harder online with 3 other people. If someone drops out it gets even harder, our group had a hard time beating the first movie. Man this game is great. The VS mode is freaking fun as hell too. Being a Hunter is just a fantastic diabolical feeling of evil hahahaha. Too damn fun.

Fucking tank threw me off the roof. This shit is bananas.

Used my day off to mostly play this game yesterday, holy shit is it fun.  Just me and another friend have it so need more xbox people to come on board next time.  Yes I'm playing on xbox and no I probably won't get it for the computer, until some mods or something convince me otherwise. 

Had so many oh shit moments in just the few hours of playing I literally can't wait to play some more. 

It's fun, but I'm really bad at it.  I'm really glad I haven't seen a "friendly fire" tally in safehouse loading screens.  The zombies have nothing on my aim.

Think there's a tally at the end of the campaign.

Anyone found a use to the sniper rifle?  The M16 seems superior in every way.  Does it do armor piercing on the tank or something like that?

Sniping?

If someone is good with it I guess it's useful for when you really want to pick your shot (sniping smokers, getting a hunter off your teammate from far away without spraying your teammate with bullets).  I can't say I ever use it myself though.  Haven't done any vs. stuff yet though so maybe it's helpful there?

It's especially useful during Finales. You can snipe gas cans and propane tanks with it. Vel nailed most of the other uses and it's good on tanks for shooting their head, which is the weak spot of sorts.

My roommate uses it well to clear an area before we get near it.  Better in outdoors situations, but in the right hands very useful.

There is.  It's not pretty. >>

Why not simply snipe with the M16? 

The thing about the sniper rifle is that it's more of a railgun - it'll penetrate almost anything. It'll go through pretty much an unlimited number of zombies, so if you get the right kind of angle (head on) for a panic event, you can rack up a TON of kills. The key to using it effectively is trying to line enemies up so that you can kill  a bunch with a single shot. I feel like it's a big help for killing a tank in expert if you have someone headshotting the tank reliably with the hunting rifle, too.

That being said, it is still more conditional than the other guns - I never take it if somebody else on the team already has it, and if anyone else on the team gets killed, I'll drop it and take their weapon.

The sniper rifle is awesome for busting witches and tanks. When you get within range of a witch have everyone back up to as far as you can get while still having line of sight, and then have the rifle user unload into it along with anyone using an M16. She won't make it half way to you. It's good in finales where tanks approach from a decent distance since you can put a lot of damage on them before they get into melee range.

If it wasn't for NiX me and my crappy italian friends would still be stuck at stage 2. Now we are at stage 3. Yay!
What can I say? This game doesn't cease to amaze me.
There's definitely a Diablo feel in it, as in pure arcade 'n addictive fun, and the 4 player coop + random stages. If it had some kind of random loot mechanic (and I am happy it doesn't!) it would be Zombie Jesus. What a great great little game.

If hes charging after you, you can step off the ledge and grab on, and the tank will charge on over off the roof.

Picked this up tonight since I was a tool nd didn't preorder. 

Two thoughts.

1)  Absolutely intense.
2) I haven't had so much shit simultaneously on my screen that needed killing since Serious Sam.

I would do that, but the fucker literally launched me.

How do you grab on a ledge?

Walk off it.

And hope there's someone left to help you back up.

Yeah, if you're the last person standing, do not walk off the ledge. It's equivalent to you being knocked down.

Falconeer and his friends made me laugh so much. The amount of friendly fire was hilarious and made me appreciate the game on a level beyond seriously trying to beat it. If you just run around running and gunning it brings out a whole different part of the game.

Also, if you haven't played VS mode, do it. Do it NOW. I thought one side was playing horde over the other, but it actually switches up playing each stretch of a single "movie." Being the hulk is FUN!

I am finding that there are a lot of idiots online that don't know how to stay the hell out of the way or how to use a shotgun. When I use it, I have it as my back up. I use double pistols more often, then pull out the SG for some ass kicking when needed. l I noticed people just go crazy with it and shoot each other. On advanced and expert mode, one shot from a SG to a teammate puts them down. You can't be careless with all that power...

 

I can't stress enough how much we suck at this game. As I tried to explain to NiX (to justify all the bullets in his arse while he was sweating trying to lead us out of stage 2), southern Europeans can't be good at zombie invasions. We lack the experience! That's a US thing! Maaaaybe a UK thing too as of lately. Southern Europe? No way.
The best we can do is clean up a zombie infested creepy mansion with lots of organs and synthesizers in the background. Anything bigger than that is out of our league.

I played the demo and really liked that game.
Had a lot of issues with steam so I could not try full version but I fixed it so tonight is zombie slaying!

Damn a game with zombies is so sexy

I have now beat 3 of the campaigns on expert

it is such nerve wracking experience (in a good way) when you are at the finale of a campaign and you're half dead and there's only 2 of you left and you run through the woods towards the docks where the rescue boat is coming and there are zombies coming out of the woods everywhere and there is screaming and you finally fucking make it out of there after several tries. Good times.

Advanced is just not as much fun, but if you play with pubbies I can't imagine trying Expert with them. You need decent people to beat a campaign on Expert, but it's totally worth it when you do. It actually feels like you're a guy with a gun during the zombie apocalypse, compared to how you feel like an unbeatable zombie slaying badass on any lesser difficulty

I've only really had the time to play the first campaign, and i beat that on Expert with three other randoms. It's perfectly beatable if your teammates have a smidgeon of sense (and can aim). Hell, even aim isn't that much of an issue for most players, because they can just stick with the autoshotgun. They do need to be level-headed.


My personal favourite is having a teammate bunnyhop across my vision when i'm sniping and cop a rifle bullet to the head, because i'm shooting purely on autopilot.

The biggest problem I've found is most players still don't know how to put their backs to something where zombies can't spawn from. It's really not complicated, and yet it seems like fucking rocket science to some people. /ugh

Game is goddamn amazing though.

See, friendly fire on that sumbitch would be more fun for me than the actual game.

Fuckin' bunnyhoppers.

Maybe I'm European and didn't know it.

I have found I am absolutely amazing with the M4. We're talking a headshot percentage of 48%

Hacker.

I justified taking all the bullets in the back with Falconeer by leaving him and his friends to die at the end of the subway section :drill:

So pretty much everyone here is playing on Steam, amirite?

So who else has gotten their 'Kill all survivors in one run as a tank' achievement by tossing them all off the top of a building?  :awesome_for_real:

My best moment so far was my team and I against a wall, fighting a large horde of zombies.. only for said wall to be broken down from behind, and us getting eaten. Good times.

I think these zombies prefer to kick you and beat you up rather than eating your brains

Point of parliamentary order:  technically, they aren't zombies.  They just have a virus that has really fucked them up, removed capacity for rational thought, etc. 

kind of exactly like in 28days later then

Dammit. We can't kill tanks at expert. Need advices, protips. Eventually your fingers and eye-hand coordination.
We came out with a name for the tank music too: "oooh fuck, again with the Wipe Theme...".

Run like hell?

We tried. It then grabs a sidewalk and toss it with sniping precision, perfectly predicting zigzagging movements or accidental stumbling. One toss one kill. And it just doesn't die, while killing whatever it goes for in a matter of seconds. I know it can't follow you in tight spots, but what if there aren't any? Well, whine!

Run faster than the other guy?

Circle strafing? Tanks have problems turning quickly. Best way I've found so far to take them out is to have a few people with auto shotguns unload into him, they drop pretty quickly that way.

Tank Strategy:

MOLOTOV! Then the general strategy is to keep your distance and stay grouped and crouch fire at his head while he burns. When the tank gets to about 15 feet, split off in different directions and open fire. If the tank does knock down your partner (this only applies for campaign not vs.) melee him and run away, this will take his attention off your fallen team mate and onto you. At this point one circles to help up your team mate while the remaining two shoot at the tank. Make sure the injured teammate does not open fire immediately. It almost seems like the tank has a hate list and it's best to refrain from getting back on top when you have no health. Avoid his concrete throw by finding small objects to break up its path like pillars, cars, window frames..etc.

Really, the Molotov are key in this. Otherwise it'll take a lot longer to kill the tank, but the general strategy remains the same. They also do really well against vs. tanks too. Just remember to split off when he gets close as a majority of his attacks are AOE.

you kill the tank by leading him around. When (if) he downs one of your guys, another guy melees the tank (draws aggro) and then starts runnin while a third guy helps the downed guy up. Then you shoot the shit out of the tank.

Cool article from Gabe Newell on the Director (http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/gabe-newell-writes-edge)
 It gives some clues as to what kind of data it tracks to make its decisions.

What Nix said. IIRC it takes about 40 seconds on Expert for the Tank to burn to death on it's own from a molotov. So potentially Falconeer, you could just set it on fire and run around for a minute.

Thanks for the advices. The problem with running around is that it snipes every single one of us hurling rocks, at first shot. We tried circle strafing and running like crazy but it proved useless as it can predict our movement and perfectly hit us as sitting (or running) ducks. Frustrating. Will try again.

Are you keeping your eye on him when you run away? I think a lot of the tank strategy relies on your ability to keep an eye on what he's doing while knowing where you're going. As schild said, knowing the lay of the land is a HUGE benefit in this game.

seriously, melee him when one of your guys is down to draw aggro and then kite. The others pump him with autoshotguns in the face. He'll go down very fast.

The "burning him and runnin" only works if a) you have a molotov and b) you're able to successfully kite him (narrow pathways can deny you this for example)

Fyi, two of you should always have autoshotguns, if not all of you.

I don't know what to say.
First "autoshotgun him" isn't that viable when you don't have auto shotguns. And we only faced him wth T2 weapons once out of 25 times.
Second, melee him? You draw his aggro, he turns and knock you out. Game over.

I can't really apply any kind of tactic when he basically oneshots anything he can connect to. Melee or ranged.

Crawl into a hole and die then :why_so_serious:  I also had problems with tanks but I followed all the good advices that were posted and my group completely own tanks now.  We only have problem if we are surprised in a confined space.  I even got the tank buster achievement for killing one with out taking damage.

Molotovs really help. Plus, flaming tanks look  :drill:

Yeah he wont turn around and knock you out. See there's this thing called reaction time and he's not a very fast one. If you don't pick up autoshotguns on Expert then you already are doing something wrong. Even without t2 shotguns you still go up into his face and shoot him. He can only focus on one player at a time, so while he's chasing whoever the other 3 pile on him. They never last long if you do that. However most people just start running for some reason instead of taking advantage of his tunnel-vision AI

Tanks usually only are a problem for my team when we also get other boss zombies on us. Otherwise they're easy

Doing wrong?
Tell that to the director.
We have faced a tank in the same map now 20 times in a row and got autoshotguns only once. What possibly could we do differently to get better weapons? I don't think it's up to us.

That said, the advices are working and we got some better results. Kinda overwhelming still, though.

no, I meant that if they don't choose them when they're available, they're making a mistake. They are excellent on Expert for both tankslaying and hordeslaying (hordes are actually dangerous on expert)

I used to choose the auto-shotgun until I realized it's a flaming piece of shit during horde rushes. Horde rushes, pull out M4, crouch and let the headshots roll in. I usually get 1st or 2nd for most headshots because I can take about 80% of a horde down with them.

I'd say pick the gun you're comfortable with. The auto-shotgun is not the holy grail of guns in L4D. A lot of people ignore the fact that shooting a tank in the back takes longer than getting headshots on him. Whenever I get dropped by a tank I know I have time to look up and pop him in the face before he can strike the killing blow. I've died during tank attacks and still listed with double the damage as my team.

Falcon - 2 shotguns and 1 with the Uzi. Despite peoples hate for the Uzi, if you're only using the T1 weapons, it's best to run up with the Uzi and unload into his face while your teammate melees to take the aggro.

that's the thing though, you can use your M4 to get headshots for full damage, but the autoshotgun already does full damage at close-medium range no matter where you hit them (most of the game is at this range, and if they're on you it'll be hard for you to get any headshots)

Taking out 20 zombies in 4-5 bullets is very possible with the autoshotgun, and you very rarely run out of ammo. Which is why I love it so  :heart:

I wish they would remove the hunter power of crashing my computer so severely that I have to reload Vista from the factory settings and lose all my accumulated installations.  Seriously.  Only playing the hunter has the power to crash my computer. 

Clearly you are not using autoshotguns  :grin:

I am discovering, more and more, that successful Versus mode for Infected is 90% a good Boomer and about 10% a good Hunter.  If the same idiot keeps getting Boomer, and they never capitalize, you are doomed.  I've never seen a Smoker that really mattered much, they are by far the weakest of the three.

My brief experience with Versus seems to line up with that. I also find the Boomer the most fun, since it seems to be primarily about laying a good trap for the Survivors - lurking around corners or in unexplored rooms, and popping out in the middle of everyone to shower the living in vomit-bait.

The hunter is a bit more situational, but if someone gets separated and the hunter has decent aim with the pounce, he can do a lot of damage quite fast.

The smoker seems to only be useful in concert with the other Infected. He can either serve as a distraction, or pull away key survivors while the group is panicking over a puke incident or a pouncing Hunter. Or better yet, both. Teamwork among the Infected - or at least striking simultaneously - drastically improves their efficacy.

The smoker seems the most tactical, and hardest to use. I've only seen a few times where he really mattered. Once, in one of the Blood Harvest maps (Meh, can't remember which) we were in a house fighting a horde, and doing fairly well. Until I got pulled out of the second story window to the ground, and thus raped, by a smoker. My team not noticing I wasn't protecting that side of the room anymore, got overwhelmed.

Come to think of it, the best times I've seen for a smoker is when they're pulling survivors down off buildings. That one map with the petrol station and the construction lift that you raise to summon the horde? When the survivors are walking across that small roof, pulling a survivor down into the horde always seems to cause chaos. Inevitably one will jump down, and at least one more won't notice and will continue on. Fun fun.. 

Wow, the smoker is one of the best classes. Go in with a boomer first, try to paint at least 3 of them (to stagger them) and then attack with the hunters while a smoker takes a third. This usually brings a team down to yellow/red because of the ensuing chaos. The smoker is there to incapacitate one of the survivors and drag him away from the others while the infected occupy the remaining ones.

I agree that a smoker on its own is not very effective though, but you have a larger chance to survive your first attack compared to a hunter at least. Dragging people off ledges, forcing their team to clusterfuck is always nice too  :awesome_for_real:

Only tangentially related, by way of zombies:

Bush presser on zombies (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoXgRtDysLY)

That video is gold.

I fired up steam for the first time ever. I are newb. Downloaded the whole pack as I've never played any of them. Unfortunately, I get a real sweet system hang on the loading page that after the intro. Gonna have to find out whats going on there. Le sigh. I heart zombie apocalypse.

Boomers can be negated by slick players when they get Tier 2 weapons, since they can use the assault rifle and hunting rifle to peg them through walls. People need to use grenades more as they find them. You always get them in finales, and usually right before crescendo events so if you huck a bomb the instant a boomer tags someone you can buy a fair amount of time. Also, a reasonably alert group can render smokers useless as long as a tank isn't out. The instant you hear or see someone get snagged, shoot the tongue, tada, you're done. Meleeing hunters out of the air is pretty hilarious too.

Zooooeeeeeey...ooohhuuhhhh (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW8tE93Vx8Q)

I haven't had much time to play this game since I purchased it, but man... it's hella fun. Nice to have something casual that isn't Peggle or Geometry Wars.

This game is pure win, I mean slaughtering hordes of zombies can't be not fun can it?  :grin:
Can't wait for more campaign etc..

Well well, the finales at expert level are insane. I think my DNA just isn't prepared for this, no matter what. 3 tanks? At expert? While fighting hordes? Colour me overwhelmed. Oh, almost forgot, whine!!!

I almost spit out my cheerios onto my keyboard. Oh man. :pedobear:

Figured out my problem. Like a tard I forgot to set zone alarm.  :uhrr:

The matchmaking system in this game sucks raw unwashed yak balls. Whoever thought they could release a PC shooter without an integrated server browser was a retard and should be keelhauled in the Hudson River before being fed their own deep-fried intestines.

Seriously, is it THAT hard to pick games that don't have pings akin to having a paraplegic midget hobble back and forth with my commands? Unless I use the sekrit hidden server browser (open dev console, type "openserverbrowser") I tend to get stuck on a server halfway across the world or worse, meaning I get to leave the game and try Russian Matchmaking Roulette again.

And the server browser makes no distinction between restricted (e.g. friends-only) games and open games, nor does it show game lobbies, so I can't find a game that's starting and also has decent connectivity. Half the time I try to join friends-only games, and L4D then ungracefully fails by putting a modal popup window behind my server browser - I have to hit tilde twice to open/close the dev console to release the dialog's modalness, close the browser (because god forbid it be movable), and then close the modal dialog before randomly trying yet another server.

Spend 3 years polishing your gameplay experience and then 3 minutes on your game-entry experience? Way to go, pigfuckers.

Hey, they could contract DICE for the browser!  :why_so_serious:

Scary Stuff.

As a Hunter, I'm getting a lot more "second chances" then I thought I would.  Was on 2nd stage of Apartments today, and while 3 ran down the alley, one dicked around in the safe room and I pounced him (got 7-8 good hits).  Two teammates run back, shove me off him, shoot me a little, and immediate run back out.  the guy is facing away from me (toward the door) I pounce him AGAIN and get another 7-8.  This time, when the teammates ran back, they all fired until well after I was dead.   :oh_i_see:

I understand forgetting about a hunter when its dark, getting swarmed, etc., but in the safe room, brightly lit, 3 on 1, with no other zombies attacking?  Cmon. 

If you have a network problem, and you use Zone Alarm, it's always fucking Zone Alarm.

I do believe this game is the most fun I've ever had. Now if I can actually get any good at it is another story. Going to run through all the maps again on normal and see if I can get the lay of the land before I show up in a multiplayer game looking all stupid.

Not shooting the shit out of your team is 95% of not sucking at this game. You dont need to know map layout just follow your team and dont shoot them heh. Everything else is cake.

K. Been trying single player expert. Getting my ass whooped. Made it past the apartments after biting it a couple times. Cannot get past the frigging subway. Tanks eat the whole group alive. I get a lot of bad timing, but I can see where having actual people would make this easier. (Hello explosives.)

Now I'd just like to know the objective of the multiplayer game. Is it just get to the safehouse asap? It's ok to lose a guy and pick him up again later?

If you are close to the safehouse you won't have the option of saving your dead teammates. Otherwise the rescue spot will always be in front of you along the main path so you might as well get them unless they are griefers or something.

Auto-shotgun is quite good vs rushes as long as you get the before the spread out and circle.  Plus the tank does not take extra damage from headshots.

Autoshotgun: Good overall gun, just does no damage at long range.  It has a good spread so it can drop 2-3 zombies at once, great fire rate, and the best burst damage of any gun.  The downside is mostly its reload.  It takes longer to reload than any other gun and even longer if you interrupt to fire.  At the same time the ammo for the auto-shotty tends to go the farthest.

Assault Rifle: Good fire rate, excels at the mid range.  It can clean up a zombie horde just as well as the autoshotty if you sweep head height.  Plus it handles a spread out horde a bit better.  It doesn't absolutely destroy infected at close range like the autoshotgun though.  It also tends to chew through ammo faster.  A superior reload to the autoshotgun.

Hunting Rifle: High damage, extremely accurate, and its rounds go through multiple zombies.  The shotgun will pierce one zombie, this thing will go through 4-5.  If a horde comes at you, the hunting rifle can kill most of them with 4-5 shots (if they are lined up.)  The downside is that it has terrible accuracy on the move.  Each shot is very powerful and can drop a regular zombie in 1-shot on any difficulty.  The best way to pick off distant special infected also.  A phenominal anti-tank weapon.  Practice with it a bit.  It is very accurate when crouched, pierces almost anything (goes through most walls), and each shot is very high damage.  Against hordes do not aim for the head, aim for the body where it will go through 2-3 zombies.

The specials:
Boomer:  Pretty straight foward.  Bind a kill command, run into a cluster and vomit/explode.  Covered players cannot see glows through objects (including other zombies) to tell who is getting pounced.  It is extremely useful for slowing down players.  You usually set-up everyone to really wreck the enemy team.  The worst mistake I see players make as a boomer is trying to hide and survive.  Boomers are extremely loud and once you spawn they will find you in short order.  If you want to wait for some allies to get their spawn, chill in spawn mode, once you spawn you need to act fast.

Hunter: He's your damage.  Jump from up high or a longer distance to stack up more damage.  Set yourself on fire for extremely damaging pounces (they take the burn damage when you are on them if you are on fire.)  He's pretty straight forward and quite powerful.  Practice wall jumping and fancier pounces to make him more deadly.

Smoker:  A lot of people dislike this infect and underestimate him.  He's actually quite good.  His damage is poor, but he is the only infect that can forcibly separate the survivors and force them to back track to save someone.  Examples of when he really shines is when you pull someone off the roof after the lift in No mercy 3 or pull them out of the window in the room shortly after where they usually get med packs and ammo.  A good pull can set-up your hunters to get a nasty pounce on the guy who comes to save them.  The smoker suffers a lot from a bad team though.  Bad hunters steal his constricts by pouncing them (leaving him with no tongue and unable to deal with the guy who comes to rescue.)  If you have bad boomers you may never get the change to get a good pull.  He needs the chaos to work his magic.  However, when he works it, the survivors get screwed.

I really hate the auto shottie.  Too much friendly fire, too long of reload, and it seems like every PUG I'm in some retard gets it and tries to shoot at stuff halfway across the map.  It's basically for n00bs who can't aim.  I've never had an issue with ammo for the AR, because I use the melee strike and double pistols so much.

The assault rifle is the superior choice all the way around - it cuts through wood / wall better, and cuts through multiple foes like a sniper rifle.  There's not a single area that the sniper rifle is needed or that the AR doesn't do just as good a job. 

The game will continue your reload if you interrupt it with a push back attack. Hence with the shotties if you are being rushed, you can fire off a few blasts, hit reload, start meleeing, watch the ammo counter increment and then start shooting again when you have enough shells loaded instead of having to wait the entire time it takes to reload a full clip from empty. That makes the auto-shotgun great for "door defense" work since you don't get the long periods of no firing while you are reloading like you do with the non-shotguns.

Also, if you hit R before the autoshotgun is completely out of shells, you can fire instantly even during the load animation. That way you can just hammer R whenever you dont have an immediate target for half a second during a rush, without any penaltly.

And if you go down to 0, it's often useful to wait until 2 shells are loaded, then fire a single one (which slowly puts another shell into the chamber) then continue reloading. This helps move the delay from time-critical situations to non-critical ones, at the cost of a single shell.

I :heart: my autoshotty.

The auto-shotgun is great if you tend to take point.  For someone like myself who usually watches the rear and sides, the assault rifle is better.  More accuracy for tight shots and I don't hurt my teammates as much when I mistake them for a zombie.  With controlled bursts, it has plenty of ammo.

Autoshotty is great if the server is laggy. I lag so badly sometimes i cant hit shit with the assault rifle. Also a pointer on tanks once caught on fire they will die in 40 seconds or so on expert. They dont receive additional damage from the fire tho. It just starts a generic timer and when it expires the tank dies. So unless its the finale just toss a moltov on him from the furthest distance and just run away in a big loop. He wont be able to catch you if you aren't heavily wounded. You are almost assured to have someone die on expert without doing so. (barring 4 auto shotty spam and some luck)

Amazon has both versions of L4D on sale for $20 off today only (http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_82908931_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000304231&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0KJBVTC52EXE6MNND7VX&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=465078471&pf_rd_i=409566).

So is this a game people are still going to be playing in a month?

I sure as hell will be.

I'll be playing it MORE, because then I'll have exhausted my other games.

The missus just started playing it last night and she's kinda hooked, so probably, yeah.

Though what the game really needs is a goddamn M41-a. Zombies, aliens, makes no goddamn difference. The job gets fucking done. I think I'll get started on that mod now...

I am desperate for a legal pistol autofire mod.  This game and my carpal tunnel do not get along.

Have you tried binding your fire button to the mousewheel up/down?

So I just finally got this game 3 or 4 days ago.  I freaking love it.  Anyone else here still play it regularly?

Locking this. Check the steam forum.

I don't know how we ended up with 2 threads, but: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15346.0

that's the active one.