L4D2 is here and it’s better than sex!

After months of waiting, and hardcore practicing on L4D1, finally it’s here.  The game that somehow improves on the genius that was L4D.  More zombies, more gore, more weapons & more special infected.

The difficulty has certainly been ramped up in this one… on a full play through last night, normal difficulty, realism off, only 2/3 of us survived all 5 campaigns… strangely it was the same 2 every time. Yes @fatmankev I'm looking at you with your female boomer fetish.

One level had us walking through a witch infested sugar mill… and when i say infested i don’t mean the standard 1 maybe 2 witches, i mean we encountered at least 8, and as it was set in the day, they’re walking around making it MUCH harder to avoid them.

The special infected, now joined by the Spitter, the Jockey, and the Charger work together far better.  So many times we were jumped by 3 different specials at one time working as a team to screw you over. For instance, near a witch, a jockey will jump on you and ride you into the witch causing you to startle her… think you can back into a corner and punch to survive? NO! Apart from the stamina bar now appearing in ALL game modes, the charger and Spitter are there to stop this completely.  Stay still in a corner too long, here comes a Spitter hocking up acid at your feet, the longer you’re in the acid, the quicker you take damage, you can easily be incapacitated in under 10 seconds.  Maybe a charger will get you, running head on into your corner scattering your team and grabbing one of you repeatedly slamming you into the ground until either you or he is dead.

The director (now Director 2.0) is dramatically improved, it will change the level design depending on how you are doing, it will change the weather (Hard Rain campaign, heading back to the boat the storms force you to stick together or lose each other.  Storms = Horde btw, Heavy rain, reduced visibility, flooding which slows you down, and hundreds of zombies).

Thankfully we have new weaponry… melee… I’m a huge fan of melee kills anyway and one of my first achievements in L4D2 was the “decapitate 200 zombies with a melee weapon” achievement.  The Katana and Machete are fantastic for slicing through hordes, and the frying pan is so satisfying!  The only one I'm not keen on is the night-stick, it just doesn’t feel powerful enough (in fairness, it is accurate, i would rather take on the zombie horde with a Machete or Katana than a nightstick anyway).

So our first full play through was awesome despite the power cuts during 2 campaigns forcing our Xboxes to reboot.  We will be doing another quick run through a couple of campaigns tonight before the pub, and then to test it’s drunken appeal afterwards…  More soon.  For reference the players were Gazmo81, Fat Man Kev48, and Vryolaka.  Waiting for Deadly Dink and BennyK23 to join the fun.

XBox 360 Live Dashboard Beta

Just been accepted as a Beta tester for the XBOX Live dashboard update!  Link to the new features is below.

https://connect.microsoft.com/content/content.aspx?ContentID=13143&IsDraft=False&SiteID=719&wa=wsignin1.0 

No facebook or twitter yet though :-(

Off Topic – No IE Bundled in Windows 7 for Europe

Click this link, and you’ll see what I'm talking about in the rest of this post.  Oh and before anyone says anything, I'm not a MS Fan boy! I

No IE in Windows 7 in Europe

It was only a matter of time, I’ve been following the anti competitive cases against MS for a while now. They had to back down eventually. Despite the fact that their biggest competitors in the browser market are Mozilla with Firefox and as that is a completely free web browser developed as open-source (i.e. you can download the raw code, and do what you like with it… it’s a public project, that’s the whole point of Mozilla, a company run by users creating software for users). The only other competition is Google chrome and safari, safari has no leg to stand on as they own the Mac market being developed by Apple (internet explorer cant run on an apple Mac… where’s the anti-competitive law suit against them?) and Google are less concerned with the browser wars than the search engine wars now that Microsoft have made Bing live (their new, very pretty and quite good search engine­­). It just makes me laugh that everyone hates Microsoft so much that they are the ones having to bow to everyone.

Nobody else makes a worthwhile operating system. Surely it’s their prerogative to put their own software in the bundle?? Anyone who wants to use a different browser can easily download one and use it… but apart from the main couple of competitors, the rest lack any functionality!

The scary thing is, that I’ve always been quite anti-MS but now I’m defending them… perhaps it’s the fact that recently they’ve excelled themselves with Windows 7 being their best and most stable operating system yet… even though it’s still in the testing phase it’s great! Their new search engine is definitely worth using as a Google alternative, and their announcements at E3 were fantastic…

I honestly don’t feel that IE is forced on me, I don’t feel that windows media player is forced on me, I don’t feel that windows as a whole is forced on me. I choose to use IE because it works, and Firefox has become increasingly slow. I use winamp over windows media player because it had the functionality I wanted YEARS before windows media player, and I’m now comfortable with it, but WMP is now a viable alternative, and finally I use Windows because I really cannot be bothered to learn Linux and I hate MacOS, not that it runs on a PC anyway (well, I just don’t like anything made by apple, iPhone?? NO! Give me a Nokia N Series any day, IPod? NO! I use my mobile, Quicktime? NO! How many adverts and crap can you fit in one bit of software without being real-player! iTunes? Why do I want to use that when I can use winamp and rip my own mp3s??)

Rant over :-)

It’s all about the Saints…

Well as mentioned yesterday, I’m back on Saints Row 2. Really getting into it much more this time around, just shows the difference between Solo and Co-Op play on some games.  I still love my PS3 (I'll love it a whole lot more when i get my HDMI cable back up from the living room and can actually use it) BUT the game is just so much better when there’s someone else to play it with co-operatively. 

The diversions… I've actually finished some of them now, not so much because of the help, more for the fact that if Gazmo81 can do it, so can I!!

The cut scenes are fantastic, the fact that my character (a man, bright green Mohawk, moustache, mutton chop sideburns, all over tattoos) is wearing his little black dress and red stilettos in every cut scene and NOBODY bats an eyelid :-D.

It’s not a game for easy achievements, although going through the story in co-op earns you around 200G (40G for the campaign, 25G for doing it Co-Op, and then another achievement for finishing all 3 campaigns, plus probably another for doing all 3 Co-Op).

There’s so much to do in the game too, diversions and mini games, unlockables that aren’t linked to achievements at all, most that are un-documented and just appear after doing certain things.

The best distraction so far has to be “Fight Club”.  The joy of standing in a room with 6 NPC’s (more if co-op) and having only Melee attacks to defend yourself with is fantastic.  Yes you get weapons thrown in but there’s nothing more satisfying than a good old fashioned beat-down :-)

Anyway, progress so far… Gazmo81 and myself have taken down the Ronin and Sons Of Samedi… we are well on our way to taking out the Brotherhood too.  I now own and have fully pimped out every crib in the game, I've finished the fight club distraction and managed to find around 16 stunt jumps… My character keeps singing along to Aha – Take On Me (hmmm.. 10G for the first time he does that) and I'm working on the Nut Shot achievement.

Should be getting Prototype at the weekend, that looks to be an ultra-violent crackdown style game… SWEEEET!

P.s. FMK48’s card is shown just to show how far behind he now is… despite the 1000G from TMNT lol :-)

Left 4 Dead 2!!!

E3 the awesome games expo it is has had a fantastic surprise for us all recently with the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2! Due for release on 17th November 2009.... Bring it on!!

In the mean time Gazmo81 and myself have been steaming through...

Rainbow Six Vegas
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2
Crackdown
Saints Row 2
Halo 3
Gears Of War
Gears Of War 2
and hopefully if i can track down a cheap enough copy, Mercenaries 2 - World In Flames (i have it on PS3 just need it on 360).

Other than that the only other game i've played worth mentioning is Bionic Commando.

On another note I have managed to overtake Fat Man Kev 48's gamer score, helped slightly by 1000 pointing TMNT (courtesy of Gazmo81 buying it and lending it) and 750 pointing NBA 2K6 (i'm still trying for that last 250pt achievement). King Kong is the next to get the 1000G treatment, once Gazmo81 has finished it himself.

Saints Row 2 is the latest in a long line of Co-Op conquests, so far we've taken down the Ronin, just the Brotherhood and Sons of Samedi to take down next (then of course the DLC).

L4D Survival Pack is LIVE!

The L4D survival pack has gone live.  It includes the Dead air and Death Toll campaigns for VS mode, and a whole new mode to play.  Survival mode where you are pitted against wave after wave of zombies.  So far it seems that the tank spawns at 40 seconds, regardless of what else is attacking, after that it spawns at 1:40 and seems like it’s every minute from there.

There appear to be glitches in most levels allowing for easy golds.  So far i’ve found one.  The crane level appears to have one too, and there are rumours of the jesus rock (Death Toll – Boathouse) and the jesus room (No Mercy – Rooftop) still working on occasion.  The rankings for Bronze, Silver and Gold are as follows.

4:00 – Bronze Medal
7:00 – Silver Medal
10:00 – Gold Medal

So far Gazmo81 and myself have a gold on the Warehouse and with the help of Fat Man Kev 48 the bronze on the new level – Last Stand (on a lighthouse, awesome when the tank punches you off the top and you fly off the map :-))

3/4 of the way there!!

After a 2hr 17minute session on Death Toll – Expert mode.  Gazmo81 and I managed to survive the campaign, unfortunately we had to leave BennyK to take on a smoker, tank and horde all on his own… it was a tragic loss to the team, he nearly cried (he’s not survived a campaign on expert yet).  I can’t help but feel a little guilty as i’ve managed to survive 5 times on expert so far and poor Capt Ridikulous (the artist formerly known as Iron Man Jakes) and BennyK have had to sacrifice their lives for the good of me and Gazmo…. oh well better luck next time boys.

Oh yeah… it was all thanks to Gazmo finding the “Jesus Rock” for us to stand on :-) so far we have a room on no mercy, and a rock on Death Toll, and some serious tactics on Dead Air… only Blood Harvest left to do… it’s going to be an absolute arse!!!!

On another note, after the release of Resident Evil 5 i’ve been a little quiet on the L4D front.  I now have 5 achievements left to get on Resi5.  Headshot a zombie while he’s jumping, Deflect an arrow with a knife, Fully upgrade all weapons (i have 3 left to go, all part upgraded already), Complete all chapters on professional mode, and chain the maximum number of combos together.  The combos one should be easy, after reading a blog post on it, all you have to do is fight a big fat man in coop mode on Veteran, shoot him till he stumbles, punch him, sheva kicks him, and run up for a 3rd hit and bingo, there’s your achievement.  The weapons one should only take another day or so to do, then i’ll go for the headshot and deflect an arrow, both really need doing on coop as sheva’s AI is a bit trigger happy for doing these achivements.  Awesome game though, i’ve finished it around 5 times now so far for various reasons (3 to get all 3 standard difficulties and the other two for BSAA symbols and Treasures, oh and completing it in under 5 hours, and getting an S ranking on all levels…) then it’s onto mercinaries mode to get the rest of the unlockables.  I may go for 100% completion on this one, although i hear professional mode reduces your weapons effectiveness considerably and zombies do MUCH more damage….  oh well after L4D on expert, i’m up for a challenge! :-)