Why Not Left 4 Dead 3?

There's a new expansion to Left 4 Dead 2, "The Passing". It inspired me to play some L4D, so it's doing something right, at least. It also inspired me to do some blogging about L4D, but my blog is so obscure that when I write about things, it actually becomes less known.

First, "The Passing" is alright.

The new gun seems cool, although I haven't had the chance to use it. El_Dawg used it for a while, and it was very powerful (He describes it as "absurd[ly]...good").

Survivor zombies are clearly a return to Valve's old idea of "a zombie that runs away, and you have to follow him and kill him before he wrecks you." Instead of wrecking you when the Survivor runs away, you are rewarded if you kill him. He drops items like health packs and pills. Seems odd to have Survivor zombies, though. The game implies that certain people are immune to the zombie virus, which is why the players haven't turned. These survivor zombies must have been very agile, since they managed to last long enough to become hardened survivors without getting hit once.

Lured by the idea of items items that reek of zombie, I ran down a stairway in hot pursuit, only to fall down a hole right next to a Witch. I approve. Anything that makes people run headlong into zombies is always good.

The titular Passing is an idiot. The guy, (Bill*), died before you even get there. They should have titled it, "The Guy Who Does Bill's Voice Wanted More Money". Bringing back the old characters does provide some hilarious dialogue though. It's fun to see what the different survivors think of each other after only recently meeting.

I think "Mutations" is going to be the real winner of all this. A new mode of gameplay every week is exactly what I needed to draw me back in. When I think about playing L4D, there's so much shenanigans** to playing that I generally just don't play.A new Mutation is novel enough to make the stupid crap I have to put up with worth the effort.***

I'm thinking of writing a brief guide to playing as the Infected. Everyone (including me) wants to run headlong at the enemy all by themself, and that's just assisted suicide.

*Spoiler Alert!

** Too many to list: Griefers can ruin the game, (I recently played a game where a survivor just stayed in the first spawn, and typed politically incendiary remarks into general chat. That game is still going, as far as I know.) Even one bad survivor on a team can lead to disaster, (also true of Infected, although not quite as mutually dependent.), and servers generally have unacceptably high ping. (155 is not a middling ping, Valve; it is 60 too high. 50 is a middling ping.)

*** Also, if I do 6 mutations, I get an achievement!

L4D2 Thoughts

I've been enjoying L4D2; I still maintain that we were deceived and betrayed, but that doesn't make it a bad game.

Apparently there's an system of selection for the production of zombies:

"Regular folk" -the average humans of normal weight and height in boring clothing- become regular zombies.

Fat people that wear sweatpants become Boomers.

Skanky ladies become Spitters; I don't know what their skankiness has to do with having Acid Reflux, though. (Insert joke here)

Douchebags that wear hoodies become Hunters. (It seems like Hunters do more damage once they have you pinned. I think it's probably a buff to keep up with the other zombie classes.)

Really tiny people become jockeys (It doesn't seem possible that they're children, there aren't nearly enough. Presumably, Valve decided to remove children from the games to avoid frightening/concerning people with having to mow down waves of toddlers. This results in even worse thoughts afterward: if they're not around now, they must have been eaten. There's no way they could have escorted every single human child out of the infected area.)

Smokers become Smokers. (It's a good thing I'm here to explain these things to you people)

El_Dawg, from the El_Blawg, proposed the idea that people who abuse steroids/Human Growth Hormone become Tanks. Stay away from Baseball stadiums when the zombie apocalypse comes.

Emo girls become Witches. I wonder why so many emo people were hanging around a sugar mill for the Hard Rain campaign of L4D2? (By the way, Hard Rain is the best level Valve has ever produced, in any game. Some of the best atmosphere I've seen in any media.)

Tom Robinson becomes the Charger. I'm not sure where the rest of them come from.

L4D2

Here's my take on L4D2:

It does the stuff that L4D should have done, and the only reason that they're not doing it as an expansion is that you can't do that kind of thing on the 360. I feel like I got screwed for paying 50$ for a game with essentially one game mode: hide in a corner and spam attacks.

L4D 2 Outrage!

I'm only half-kidding with the title of this post. L4D is a product which the producers sold to us as being something they were going to work on like TF2. We were expecting continuous development, and now we see there is a sequel in less than a year. (364 days exactly, which seems like a taunt to me).

This game is what we were expecting from the first game. They've fixed the problem with camping in corners, and left the original game as flawed as ever.

I didn't invent these expectations of updates. There's an interview where somebody who works on the game promises new characters, new weapons, and new game modes. We got a new game mode, flawed as it is, but I doubt we're going to get anything else we were promised.

Obtuse L4D Complaints

First of all, I like Left 4 Dead, despite the childish title. The game is fun, but there are a couple of things I want to complain about.

The Hunting Rifle is totally lame. Sure, it's the only gun that can reliably kill something from very far away, but you can only aim when you're safe, and you're only safe when you're not able to see very far. Its other ability, the power to penetrate through most objects, only sounds good until you understand what that actually entails. First of all, bullets can only go through brushes, which is a technical term for things like walls. Bullets can't go through cars*, trash bins, or boxes. Also, bullets can only go through one brush, so if that Hunter pinning your ally is behind two plywood walls, he may as well be on the moon.

L4D's newest addition, survival mode, is a good idea, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's inherently somewhat frustrating, but I think it's more frustrating than it has to be. I think I'd enjoy it more if it was less intense. There could be difficulty levels, and the easiest mode would let you play in a way that's fun without getting totally wrecked.

*Even the windshields and tires are completely impenetrable.

Shakespeare And TF2, Together At Last

Shakespeare's been in the news lately. The mayor of Chicago announced that Thursday is talk like Shakespeare day, and the Supreme Court Justices Stevens and Scalia have been cited as being on the side that believes that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare, instead having been written by Edward De Vere, Earl Of Oxford.

I'm happy to see a Shakespeare day, but this Earl Of Oxford stuff is embarrassing. This just goes to show that figures of authority in one realm shouldn't have any authority outside of their jurisdiction. Fortunately, they don't have any authority in this case other than their celebrity.

In Valve news, they've sprung a surprise TF2 update just ahead of a L4D update that's supposed to launch today. It's odd, because it doesn't actually have any real content, but it clearly implies future content. Now characters have an item slot for headgear. DUN DUN DUN! This could be the biggest update other than the class packs. They let you reset your stats, too. I decided to take a screenshot of my stats and reset them, just to see what happened. Might as well show you my old stats:

Huge L4D Update

Big L4D update, everyone. I'll post everything at the end.

They patched a bunch of exploits that I've never heard of, so I don't really care about those. I'm glad they prevented Survivors from climbing things that only zombies are supposed to be able to climb. They also did some things to make the appearance of the Tank and Witch consistent for both teams' run.

The part I DO care about are the changes to make zombies more powerful against the irritating strategy of "everyone hide in a corner and spam rightclick". Previously, only the Tank could beat this strategy, and the Tank never appears in the set piece battles. Now, a smoker can pull people out of this formation, and the Hunter does more damage on a pounce and has a better chance of penetrating through a guy spamming melee attacks.

This still doesn't fix the fact that any game I join is "clan vs. my random team of losers", but it's at least possible to beat the clan now.


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Now playing: Rush - The Necromancer
via FoxyTunes

General

• Fixed Survivors being able to climb surfaces marked for versus infected only
  
• Fixed a class of SurvivorBot bugs dealing with rescuing downed players
  
• Players can no longer grab ladders while flying through the air after a Tank punch
  
• Shooting near a car with an alarm that has already fired the alarm will no longer make chirping noises
  
• Improved loading time
  
• Fixed mini-gun physics exploit
  
• Fixed propane tanks (and other physics objects) causing players to fall through elevators
  
• Fixed rare achievement bug issues
  
• Fixed several map exploits
  
• Fixed various match making issues
  
• Fixed NAT traversal issues
  

Versus Changes

• Added HUD elements to show status of other infected players
  
• Changed color of infected player name in chat to red
  
• Fixed exploit where players could spawn infected bots
  
• Fixed instance where a Survivor changing to the infected team would be attacked by infected bots
  
• Normalized special infected melee damage
  
• Made the following client commands cheat protected: "Kill" and "explode"
  
• Fixed exploit where infected players could run away and teleport back to gain health
  
• Players can only change teams once per map
  
• Players can't change teams while other players are still loading
  
• Tank spawns at the same % through the map for both teams in versus mode
  
• Made the Tank and Witch spawn directly on the escape route
  
• Increased chance of getting the Tank or Witch
  
• Fixed team swap issue
  

Hunter

• Easier to pounce a Survivor who is meleeing
  
• Increased Minimum damage a Hunter pounce does
  

Smoker

• Fixed Smoker tongue tolerance
  
• Smoker now has to be killed or the tongue destroyed for the tongue to break
  
• Survivors cannot bash someone off the tongue until the Survivor being pulled is paralyzed or hanging
  
• Tongue attacks that fail to paralyze or hang a Survivor will use the shorter ability delay timer
  
• Fixed cases where the ability timer was not using the correct time
  
• Fixed case where you could point at a Survivor but not register a tongue hit
  
• Fixed Smoker tongue not targeting and landing properly through PZ ghosts
  
• Smoker tongue does damage every second while dragging paralyzed Survivors
  

Tank

• Bashable objects now appear with a red glow
  
• Tanks hitting a car with an alarm disables the alarm permanently
  
• Tank frustration timer is only reset by hitting Survivors with rocks or fists
  
• Reduced autoshotgun damage against Tanks
  

Witch

• Witch spawns at the same % through the map for both teams
  
• Avoids spawning within a certain % of the tank
  
• Fixed an exploit where the Witch could be woken up and tricked into attacking Survivors