Saturday, 31. July 2010, 08:05:17
No blog posts for ages. No worries, i'm still alive. Mostly fighting off damn zombies on daily basis
Have bought the L4D2 game during summer discounts on Steam. Better late than never. I've always wanted to play a zombie game but for some reason never picked up L4D1. And quite frankly, there aren't any other similar games. There was Resident Evil, but if you're not a fan of weird camera angles and stupid controls, you don't have anything proper zombie to play as first person shooter game. Maybe excellent They Hunger but it has no co-op.
So, L4D2. I really liked the campaign. Really nice locations, dark atmosphere and nice graphics considering the Source engine isn't up to heavy weights like Crysis. But with it's dynamic lighting, shading, Source feel and fast performance it still feels awesome. And computer controlled bots, man, their Ai is advanced. They know how to walk on many surfaces, walk over obstacles, windows, they can sometimes care about co-players better than real human players. Played the offline campaign with them and it was just pleasure to play with them. Sometimes i wish NPC's in all games would be this smart or at least adaptable to the environment (we all know they usually got stuck at the first 20cm high ladder). So, i played offline with bots for a while. And then decided to go online. And it was also fun to play campaign with real players. But what i like even more is the Survival mode. I've always been a huge fan of tower defense games and FPS games where you had to hold off hordes of enemies from reaching a certain spot (like Assault modes in Unreal Tournament). And this is where i want to spend some more time commenting stuff...
The idea of Survivor mode is great. Hold off zombies for as long as you can. The concept is great, but the actual "implementation" is completely ruined by many stupid things...
Casual zombiesThe main idea of zombies is that they are stupid and slow. Zombies in L4D are nothing like that. They are fast. But ok, i can forgive that as it's not really annoying. What i can't forgive is the fact that they seem to be smarter and more agile than me or any other human player. Why? They can climb ANYWHERE, even on rain drainage pipes on buildings, on scaffolds, on ledges twice or three times as high as i can climb on, they can even climb over 3 meters high fences. Hell, they can even get them self up on ledges where i would just hang off hopelessly waiting for a buddy to get me up. It's just moronic and ruins the concept of fighting off zombies when you are the one who is a slow retard that can't climb anywhere.
But you have the guns yey...
I'd really like to see additional settings in the lobby to limit zombies climbing capabilities to same height as you can climb on and to limit them to ladders only. This way they don't have idiotic advantage over human players. I'll write about this some more under "The Uninfected" section.
Achievements like medals and such could be ignored if such setting is enabled, making it fair to those who managed to achieve good times with full zombies capabilities enabled. Oh, and same should apply to Tank and other tougher zombies as well. Or make it optional as separate option for casual zombies and tougher ones. So you can really tweak the game toy our taste, having stupid zombies with limited capabilities and tougher smarter zombies with full capabilities. Or vice versa. Or with/without both.
The TankYes, The Tank. The heaviest and toughest zombie to kill. The concept behind the tank is good. A challenging enemy. But because they've done many other things wrong, Tank is just a one freakishly annoying f**k that i just can't stand on any map but Bridge. It would be all fine if it was tough, clumsy and stupid. But no, it's again as agile as casual zombies with hundred times the strength and it can throw blocks of concrete at you from a distance. The thing is, no matter where you are, where you're holding a position, the Tank ruins the entire game. Chargers, ok, they can compromise your perimeter and they are tougher, but you can still fight them off effectively if team is good. But once the Tank comes into your holding perimeter, it will all just go straight down no matter what you do.
There just isn't any weapon that would bring it down fast enough.
There should really be a setting to completely turn off Tanks. Sometimes i just wish to fight of waves of zombies without stupid Tank ruining everything after 4 minutes... Achievements could be ignored just like with settings for casual zombies, so it's fair for those who play with Tanks enabled.
The UninfectedYes, the uninfected humans. The players. I've talked about zombies being more capable than humans. At least they can't use rifles lol. But still, i hate their really unfair advantage. I think humans should have just the same capabilities to make the game more fun and fair.
There should also be a checkbox in the lobby to give human players ability to climb over fences, rain drainage pipes and scaffolds and at the same time ability to climb back if you're hanging off something for as long as your health is green (meaning you have enough strength). Once you don't have green health anymore, team members have to assist you. I can say for sure that it would be a lot more fun to discover new safer locations to hold off zombies there, play tricks with zombies by running around buildings and luring them into bottle necked places where your team mattes gun them down. As always, to make it fair to other players that already achieved good times, ignore the medals if this option is enabled.
The GoodiesAlso one critical issue with the game are goodies located all over the map. I mean, usually there are just one or two spots where you can hold zombies off for more than 2 minutes and usually, it has no guns, health packs or ammo pile nearby. What's the point of having health packs and ammo pile half a mile away if there is not even virtually possible to get there and back during the waves of zombies? The critical holding spots should be decently supplied with ammo, health and different kinds of weapons, so you can properly call the game "Survivor" mode, not a "Hide there and die just as fast" mode.
It ruins the whole point. I mean, if you're a survivor, you'll probably try to make your supplies as good as possible, not have them scattered around the map. Having ability to place one unlimited ammo pile anywhere you'd want like you can place special ammo boxes (explosive, incendiary) would certainly add an interesting tactical option. Again, this would ignore medal achievements.
LocationsEven though maps have brilliant level design with some really nice architecture designs, they ruined the entire game with WAY too many entry points where zombies flood in. There are pretty much always in any location minimum of 3 entry points, most of maps have even more. And in most cases it would be fine if zombies weren't fuckin' supermen who can climb anywhere. Then add annoying Spitter goo, Tanks and Chargers and you have a ruined game. Adding setting in the lobby that would block certain additional access points would be cool. But not necessary if Valve would add settings mentioned in above sections.
Only and The Only map where players aren't stupidly handicapped is the Bridge map. My favorite maps really. Only 2 entry points, wide, but still, just two. Out of which, only 1 is swarming with zombies, other one is active just here and there. Very long distance to gun down zombies and Tanks.
Stationary turretsIt just makes me wonder why they placed them on maps but you can't make any good use of them. For example on the Bridge map, it's accessible but since it's pointing in the wrong direction, it's completely useless. Same applies to Swamp Fever Plantation map. It would make sense if zombies would only arrive through front gates. But they don't, so it's just pointless in every possible way.
Like one player said once to me when i asked... "It just gives you a false sense of hope". And then we both loled
Achievements and tweaksAs i've mentioned several times already, there is no need to kill all the scores made by players so far.
Using any of the settings mentioned above would just ignore users from achieving anything. So existing scores using default settings are still valid while extra tweaks add additional fun factor to the game.
If anyone has ever played Unreal Tournament with additional mutators, you know that even small tweaks inside mutators can make games fun as hell. And funny. Or, the scores could be stored but with special icons next to it notifying others that you've used those tweaks. So you could even compare times of the tweaked games.
Here. I think i've covered everything. I really hope Valve will add this to L4D2 and not wait for L4D3 with these tweaks. Shouldn't require much work either since everything is there, they just have to adjust game parameters. Because i'd really like to play a zombie shooter game where i can play it the way i want it (for a change) and just enjoy gunning down stupid zombies with my team mates.
Gabe Newell, if you're reading this (very unlikely hehe
), please do make these additional settings available in L4D2. I'll buy L4D3 for sure if you do
WIDGETIZE