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Left 4 Dead 2 |OT| The South Rises Again
- Thread starter ClovingWestbrook
- Start date
doktorpeace
Banned
Just played through Dead Center on Xbox.
Way outperformed my expectations, despite horrendous lag and being stuck playing it on a crappy old SDTV.
I'm already forgetting about Zooey... Nahhh. You can't forget dat ass.
Way outperformed my expectations, despite horrendous lag and being stuck playing it on a crappy old SDTV.
I'm already forgetting about Zooey... Nahhh. You can't forget dat ass.
Campaign Thoughts
Here's how I rank the campaigns at the moment.
1. Hard Rain
- This is one of the most atmospheric campaigns Valve has created ever! The storm effect is awe-inspiring. God, I want to play it again just to get caught in the rain (and I will play it again, many many times!).
- The environment becomes your enemy as the campaign proceeds, with water becoming something to be respected and treated with caution around (Getting caught in the open when the storms begin can be very bad as mobility is limited by both storm and water). I really like how when you begin your return with the gas, the level is severely waterlogged. It makes the roofs and little bits of high ground extremely valuable.
- The Cane Field is a lot more intense than the Blood Harvest corn field, especially when you factor in storms and witches (they won't move around during the night sections when the storms are active, but they're still deadly when you can't see ten feet in front of you).
- Those wily earmuff uncommons will always find a way to sneak behind you, especially since it's easy to forget that pipe bombs don't lure them.
2. Swamp Fever
- I see Nick was schooled in the arts of shooting helicopter pilots, like another survivor we're all familiar with.
- This campaign was gorgeous. The water, the swamps, hell, even the mud looked fantastic.
- I liked the flow of the maps, humans will try to stick to dry ground to avoid dragging their legs through the heavy bog-water.
- The cabins and shanty towns were perfect, they fit seamlessly into their environments and really added to the flavour.
- The Mudmen uncommons are probably the most stealthy of all the uncommons, and you can always tell when one is on top of you. That mud is VERY disorienting, and can be downright disastrous in a horde.
- The Plantation Finale was great, it blew my mind how big the plantation house actually was. The two tanks at once and then running like hell to get to the docks and Virgil's boat, epic shit.
3. Dark Carnival
- It's campy from the get go, but not to the point that it strains credulity. It hits a nice balance between campy and serious.
- Clowns, games, and carnival games! The atmosphere is spot on. I especially like how the Clowns honk if you melee them in the face (got the achievement for doing that ten times).
- Bahaha tunnel of love. I wonder how many binds Scarlet is going to get from that bit of DC.
- I loved the roller coaster crescendo, when I first saw the tracks I thought, "I hope we get to run on those". Two minutes later, wish fulfilled!
- The finale was awesome. Lights, music, fireworks, escape!
4. The Parish
- The daylight setting works pretty well, there's just the right amount of haze and colour.
- Riot police uncommons are good adversaries, you have to take special care around them to make sure they go down.
- CEDA was shooting regular people, called it!
- New Orleans gets progressively more destroyed.
- I really like the survivors' exchange before they radio the military, especially how Nick is still bitching but agrees to go for it in short order.
- This finale is tough as hell. If you don't keep moving at a steady pace, the common zombies will take too much health by attrition and you'll be too low by the time you reach the end of the bridge. We survived with 3 people (Scarlet didn't make it at the end, we should have slowed down a bit at the end to keep some of the zeds off her) by basically only stopping briefly at the cargo trucks to heal and pick up ammo, etc, and when the first tank showed up. Outside of that, we all stayed to the same side of the bridge and kept moving as fast as we could.
5. Dead Center
- The hotel fire was awesome, especially the little touches like the hazy corridors and the firetrap doors. Walking on the outside of the building was neat too.
- I was hoping to see more NPCs or unseen people holed up somewhere, this is soon after the infection began after all.
- The gun store was sweet, we wandered around trying to decide what guns we wanted to carry. The crescendo with the guy and his Coca-cola craving was pretty neat.
- In zombie apocalypses everybody goes to the mall. This mall in particular is huge, especially the atrium in which the finale takes place. I love this particular section of the mall. It feels very authentic.
- The finale is intense, we wiped quite a bit on it before we realized that all four of us had to move together at all times to maximize our chances. Ellis's lines about the car and its driver were amusing.
Misc
- New guns feel great, the old guns feel great too.
- Melee weapons are well implemented.
- Ammo upgrades are useful, especially during hordes. Be careful with the explosive ammo, though, you can easily do damage to yourself or teammates.
- The new crescendos and new flavours of finales work great, they require a hell of a lot of movement and coordination. Tense as hell!
- Realism mode on Advanced or Expert are helped greatly if your team relies on melee weapons (they're insane for racking up headshots).
- The new SI are very deadly, especially the Spitter and Charger. The latter bowled me a great distance a few times on release night, the most deadly incident being when I was thrown several hundred feet off of the bridge in The Parish. Sploosh.
- I like the character of Virgil, he appears in three campaigns and is the rescuer in two of them. It's a neat touch to tie all the campaigns closer together and to make the world a larger place.
In conclusion
- Hell of a lot of new content, too much to succinctly list.
- This is really better than L4D1 in every way (levels, weapons, character interaction, etc).
- Anybody complaining about the atmosphere of L4D2 being inferior to the first game is a fool. PERIOD.
- "Expansion". Ha... ha... ha. At 36 bucks Canadian, this was a steal.
Here's how I rank the campaigns at the moment.
1. Hard Rain
- This is one of the most atmospheric campaigns Valve has created ever! The storm effect is awe-inspiring. God, I want to play it again just to get caught in the rain (and I will play it again, many many times!).
- The environment becomes your enemy as the campaign proceeds, with water becoming something to be respected and treated with caution around (Getting caught in the open when the storms begin can be very bad as mobility is limited by both storm and water). I really like how when you begin your return with the gas, the level is severely waterlogged. It makes the roofs and little bits of high ground extremely valuable.
- The Cane Field is a lot more intense than the Blood Harvest corn field, especially when you factor in storms and witches (they won't move around during the night sections when the storms are active, but they're still deadly when you can't see ten feet in front of you).
- Those wily earmuff uncommons will always find a way to sneak behind you, especially since it's easy to forget that pipe bombs don't lure them.
2. Swamp Fever
- I see Nick was schooled in the arts of shooting helicopter pilots, like another survivor we're all familiar with.
- This campaign was gorgeous. The water, the swamps, hell, even the mud looked fantastic.
- I liked the flow of the maps, humans will try to stick to dry ground to avoid dragging their legs through the heavy bog-water.
- The cabins and shanty towns were perfect, they fit seamlessly into their environments and really added to the flavour.
- The Mudmen uncommons are probably the most stealthy of all the uncommons, and you can always tell when one is on top of you. That mud is VERY disorienting, and can be downright disastrous in a horde.
- The Plantation Finale was great, it blew my mind how big the plantation house actually was. The two tanks at once and then running like hell to get to the docks and Virgil's boat, epic shit.
3. Dark Carnival
- It's campy from the get go, but not to the point that it strains credulity. It hits a nice balance between campy and serious.
- Clowns, games, and carnival games! The atmosphere is spot on. I especially like how the Clowns honk if you melee them in the face (got the achievement for doing that ten times).
- Bahaha tunnel of love. I wonder how many binds Scarlet is going to get from that bit of DC.
- I loved the roller coaster crescendo, when I first saw the tracks I thought, "I hope we get to run on those". Two minutes later, wish fulfilled!
- The finale was awesome. Lights, music, fireworks, escape!
4. The Parish
- The daylight setting works pretty well, there's just the right amount of haze and colour.
- Riot police uncommons are good adversaries, you have to take special care around them to make sure they go down.
- CEDA was shooting regular people, called it!
- New Orleans gets progressively more destroyed.
- I really like the survivors' exchange before they radio the military, especially how Nick is still bitching but agrees to go for it in short order.
- This finale is tough as hell. If you don't keep moving at a steady pace, the common zombies will take too much health by attrition and you'll be too low by the time you reach the end of the bridge. We survived with 3 people (Scarlet didn't make it at the end, we should have slowed down a bit at the end to keep some of the zeds off her) by basically only stopping briefly at the cargo trucks to heal and pick up ammo, etc, and when the first tank showed up. Outside of that, we all stayed to the same side of the bridge and kept moving as fast as we could.
5. Dead Center
- The hotel fire was awesome, especially the little touches like the hazy corridors and the firetrap doors. Walking on the outside of the building was neat too.
- I was hoping to see more NPCs or unseen people holed up somewhere, this is soon after the infection began after all.
- The gun store was sweet, we wandered around trying to decide what guns we wanted to carry. The crescendo with the guy and his Coca-cola craving was pretty neat.
- In zombie apocalypses everybody goes to the mall. This mall in particular is huge, especially the atrium in which the finale takes place. I love this particular section of the mall. It feels very authentic.
- The finale is intense, we wiped quite a bit on it before we realized that all four of us had to move together at all times to maximize our chances. Ellis's lines about the car and its driver were amusing.
Misc
- New guns feel great, the old guns feel great too.
- Melee weapons are well implemented.
- Ammo upgrades are useful, especially during hordes. Be careful with the explosive ammo, though, you can easily do damage to yourself or teammates.
- The new crescendos and new flavours of finales work great, they require a hell of a lot of movement and coordination. Tense as hell!
- Realism mode on Advanced or Expert are helped greatly if your team relies on melee weapons (they're insane for racking up headshots).
- The new SI are very deadly, especially the Spitter and Charger. The latter bowled me a great distance a few times on release night, the most deadly incident being when I was thrown several hundred feet off of the bridge in The Parish. Sploosh.
- I like the character of Virgil, he appears in three campaigns and is the rescuer in two of them. It's a neat touch to tie all the campaigns closer together and to make the world a larger place.
In conclusion
- Hell of a lot of new content, too much to succinctly list.
- This is really better than L4D1 in every way (levels, weapons, character interaction, etc).
- Anybody complaining about the atmosphere of L4D2 being inferior to the first game is a fool. PERIOD.
- "Expansion". Ha... ha... ha. At 36 bucks Canadian, this was a steal.
So, anyone seeing weird issues with stat tracking? I've only had a chance to play one game on Dead Center so far, but it recorded it as two games. And that's not the only weird part:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/LMN8R/stats/L4D2
Total Playtime: 1h 29m 12s (this sounds right)
Past 2 weeks: 30m (wtf??)
Makes me wonder how accurate the rest is.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/LMN8R/stats/L4D2
Total Playtime: 1h 29m 12s (this sounds right)
Past 2 weeks: 30m (wtf??)
Makes me wonder how accurate the rest is.
Dead Prince
Banned
(PC) I have BT Headset. How do I get the game sound to output to speaker. voice chat into headset?
blackMamba1187
Member
Anyone want to play? coop-advanced? Steam version.
The Storyteller
Member
I haven't had a chance to play a full campaign yet, if anybody gets a game going I'd love to join.
Kuro Madoushi
Unconfirmed Member
Anyone encountering random minimizations? 
marvelharvey
Member
I believe someone else mentioned this a page or two backKuro Madoushi said:Anyone encountering random minimizations?
NullPointer
Member
No doubt Realism is how this game is going to be played amongst my local Left 4 Dead circle. It adds just the right uptick of tension by reducing the amount of handholding the game does for you, requiring you to know where your teammates are at all times without the outlines to help you, and it fits more into the Zombie mythos by making headshots more crucial than ever.
If anything, I'd love to see Valve expand on this concept for even more replayability with the campaign. Add more bits to realism, along the lines of Halo 3 skulls, to activate different modifiers. First one that comes to mind is Non-Immunity - if a special infected gets you in their grasp for long enough you have a timer (that only you see) before you turn into a random special infected yourself. Others could be no-hud, no unlimited ammo for the pistol (start with melee weaponry).
Love the game as is so far without reservations - even though its mostly the same sandbox at work, its various pieces have been balanced and tweaked to make the game stand alone (kindof reminds me of the difference between Halo 3 and ODST). There's more variety in the objectives and the environmental dangers, more path choices to be made while making your way to the next safehouse, more reliance on finding even tier 1 weapons. More opportunities for interesting weapon combos and thus, team roles.
If I have any nitpick at this point, its that the friendly AI is even less of a help this time around since more of the objectives are tuned to multiple *active* players taking a role. Playing this game in single player requires you to take even more dangers upon yourself than in the original. That's a good thing or a bad thing depending upon how you look at it.
Overall I'm happy with the purchase, even though I'm overwhelmed with the other games I'd picked up in the past month. This'll do Valve. This'll do.
If anything, I'd love to see Valve expand on this concept for even more replayability with the campaign. Add more bits to realism, along the lines of Halo 3 skulls, to activate different modifiers. First one that comes to mind is Non-Immunity - if a special infected gets you in their grasp for long enough you have a timer (that only you see) before you turn into a random special infected yourself. Others could be no-hud, no unlimited ammo for the pistol (start with melee weaponry).
Love the game as is so far without reservations - even though its mostly the same sandbox at work, its various pieces have been balanced and tweaked to make the game stand alone (kindof reminds me of the difference between Halo 3 and ODST). There's more variety in the objectives and the environmental dangers, more path choices to be made while making your way to the next safehouse, more reliance on finding even tier 1 weapons. More opportunities for interesting weapon combos and thus, team roles.
If I have any nitpick at this point, its that the friendly AI is even less of a help this time around since more of the objectives are tuned to multiple *active* players taking a role. Playing this game in single player requires you to take even more dangers upon yourself than in the original. That's a good thing or a bad thing depending upon how you look at it.
Overall I'm happy with the purchase, even though I'm overwhelmed with the other games I'd picked up in the past month. This'll do Valve. This'll do.
jaundicejuice
Member
Cimarron said:
Yeah, me and my friends have been playing on advanced while we learn the maps and honestly the Dark Carnival finale felt as difficult as Dead Air on Expert. Maybe it's because we stood our ground; the spitter, charger and jockey make a world of difference.
If Valve does indeed continue to support Left 4 Dead with some genuine content updates I hope those three new special infected are added. They're such a game changer in the crescendo events.
i gots the Swamp Fever!
picked it up on 360 yesterday morning and got to play one campaign with some cool random peeps on Normal. it fucking rules. so much fun.
i just had to pick it up on release day. it was worth the extra $20 or so to not wait until crappy ass Black Friday to pick it up.
i havent gone back to Parish yet, but the technical issues i had playing the demo were not there (or at least not noticiable) when i played it. it looks and runs a lot better than i expected. Swamp Fever looks beautiful.
new weapons and infected are brilliant. the Director is brutal and wonderfull.
i cant wait to pick up the PC version. ill probably wait until it goes on sale though (never found folks to go in on a 4 pack with), and maybe wait until i upgrade my GPU. we'll see. the 360 version will hold me over until i pick it up though.
anyone who wants to add me on 360 please do so. more L4D friends the better. (my GT is in my profile)
picked it up on 360 yesterday morning and got to play one campaign with some cool random peeps on Normal. it fucking rules. so much fun.
i just had to pick it up on release day. it was worth the extra $20 or so to not wait until crappy ass Black Friday to pick it up.
i havent gone back to Parish yet, but the technical issues i had playing the demo were not there (or at least not noticiable) when i played it. it looks and runs a lot better than i expected. Swamp Fever looks beautiful.
new weapons and infected are brilliant. the Director is brutal and wonderfull.
i cant wait to pick up the PC version. ill probably wait until it goes on sale though (never found folks to go in on a 4 pack with), and maybe wait until i upgrade my GPU. we'll see. the 360 version will hold me over until i pick it up though.
anyone who wants to add me on 360 please do so. more L4D friends the better. (my GT is in my profile)
dragonlife
Member
So, I broke my rule and played online with another GAFfer and someone from another forum...
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
The third campaign is fucking CRAZY at
We retried so many times and still can't do it :lol This is the first co-op game I've played where the tension is high and you have to, well...work together! This type of play style is new to me since I'm an RPG hermit but holy shit is it awesome.
EDIT: Snuggles...did you join my game in Campaign 3? For some reason I didn't realize until the second to last attempt we had :lol I saw you pass me by as Rochelle and it didn't say Rochelle And then I thought I had forgotten the first guy's GT and said that was it and forgot...and then just a while ago I realized that can't be because he was freakin' Coach :lol God, I feel stupid -_- Dude, why didn't you join the party?
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
The third campaign is fucking CRAZY at
the house where you get double-teamed by Tanks while waiting for rescue.
EDIT: Snuggles...did you join my game in Campaign 3? For some reason I didn't realize until the second to last attempt we had :lol I saw you pass me by as Rochelle and it didn't say Rochelle
And then I thought I had forgotten the first guy's GT and said that was it and forgot...and then just a while ago I realized that can't be because he was freakin' Coach :lol God, I feel stupid -_- Dude, why didn't you join the party? johnFkennedy
Member
dLMN8R said:
There are some stat issues on the 360 as well. I was killing zombies with the chainsaw until the thing broke and after all was said and done it said I had only killed 6. Also, I killed at least 3 kinds of special infected but it only registered 1. Maybe the stats just take awhile to track?
Dead Prince
Banned
yeah. ;(x3n05 said:
Looking for suggestions for wired headset. not big fan of over the head or anything bulky. i guess i'm okay with a lightweight over the head headset then.
Seriously, that shit was insane. I get the endless crescendo events, but they still need some short pauses between waves at least. It's just completely nonstop. We had to bump it down to Normal from Advanced, and even then we still died once before beating it.Firestorm said:
Gotta be a bug or something...
TheCardPlayer
Likes to have "friends" around to "play cards" with
doktorpeace said:
We've got Rochelle now. And she's just as good! Rochelle Aytes is so damn hot.
crimsonheadGCN
Banned
Not sure if this was posted yet, but someone has found a way to make the original Left4Dead campaigns work in Left4Dead 2.
crimsonheadGCN
Banned
Bebpo said:
Events that cause the horde to be alerted to your position. Like in the Subway part of No Mercy, where you have to activate a large electrical generator to open up a door.
dragonlife
Member
I did the exact same thing :lol It was during a horde attack. I loved seeing the circle of damage indicators slowly dropping to one, then noneiamblades said:
MickeyKnox
Member
Anybody up for some campaigning? I know Red is finishing up a Parish run, but anybody that wants to join in just send me a steam message.
itsinmyveins
Gets to pilot the crappy patrol labors
People better get ready to play some campaigns in about 6-7 hours! I only managed to get through one yesterday, so if any of you guys (catfish, rez, chinner and etc) are playing later, let me know.
RocketDarkness
Member
The Parish finale is just ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
So, um, I dunno how many people noticed the URL at the bottom of the Midnight Riders posters (I'd hate to think I am the first person to, either), but...
http://www.midnight-riders.com/
There's, uh, four of these guys. I can't help but think we'll be playing as the Midnight Riders sometime in the future, but I hope and pray that it's not for Left4Dead 3.
http://www.midnight-riders.com/
There's, uh, four of these guys. I can't help but think we'll be playing as the Midnight Riders sometime in the future, but I hope and pray that it's not for Left4Dead 3.
Son of Godzilla
Banned
So I totally just had a 5:00 am weekday drunk moment.
I get it.
fry.gif OH, NOW I GET IT.
LovingSteam said:
I get it.
LovingSteam said:
fry.gif OH, NOW I GET IT.
OmegaDragon
Member
ItsInMyVeins said:
I'd like to join you, I want to play an entire campaign with four human players. I've finished Dead Center and Dark Carnival yesterday. Both we started with 4 players on advanced, but people quit, so we turned it down to normal for the finale of Dead Center and chapter 4+finale of Dark Carnival. Man those last two were hard, even on normal.
Me: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Ridley187
procrastinator
Neo Member
Shawsie64 said:
I've been playing it fine all day yesterday. I figured it was just the retail codes that were delayed? Or was it just everything except the steam pre-orders?
Revolutionary
Member
Fixed.RocketDarkness said:
Exhilarating as shit, too.
drkOne
Member
Finished Dead Center yesterday. The fire, rooms full of smoke, the gun store, all that was awesome.
The finale was a nice change too.
Tried to finish Dark Carnival after that, but 4th stage with the Crescendo took us a couple of tries, and then two wipes on the Finale, we just decided to call it a night.
The game feels really refreshing after playing L4D over and over. And I think it'll last for a long while.
The finale was a nice change too.
Tried to finish Dark Carnival after that, but 4th stage with the Crescendo took us a couple of tries, and then two wipes on the Finale, we just decided to call it a night.
The game feels really refreshing after playing L4D over and over. And I think it'll last for a long while.
GhostRidah
Member
Hard rain on advanced realism is fucking epic!
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
swoonswoonswoon
Knights of Columbus!
<3 Rochelle! (new avatar is hot)
i laughed so hard at that curse.
man i wish i didnt just buy MW2. i have a feeling this game will easily take away all of my free time. luckily i have some vacation coming up.
i noticed some framerate issues in the demo, but never had the connection problems people were complaining about.
i only played one campain yesterday, but i didnt notice any lag or framerate issues. maybe it was a local server i was playing on (didnt ask), but everything was fine.
hopefully that trend continues for me. we'll see. odd that i never had any connection issues at all in the demo though...
<3 Rochelle! (new avatar is hot)
i laughed so hard at that curse.
man i wish i didnt just buy MW2. i have a feeling this game will easily take away all of my free time. luckily i have some vacation coming up.
kai3345 said:
i noticed some framerate issues in the demo, but never had the connection problems people were complaining about.
i only played one campain yesterday, but i didnt notice any lag or framerate issues. maybe it was a local server i was playing on (didnt ask), but everything was fine.
hopefully that trend continues for me. we'll see. odd that i never had any connection issues at all in the demo though...