[360/PC] Left 4 Dead 2 Review

[Kielaran]

There is a bit more of a difference here though, considering I don't recall Valve making PS3 games.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by Food Nipple

I would much rather them put effort into virtually any other area of the game. It's a multiplayer game. The bot AI is there so that if I have to pee, I can flip on bot mode and hopefully not have lost too much health by the time I get back.

There's just a few seemingly simple changes that we're asking for, so bots are more than just a wasted character. I would be happy with the following:

• Bots pick up grenades and hand them to you, like they do with pills, when you don't have one.
• Bots prioritize staying close to human players over killing infected.

Those two changes would greatly reduce the annoyance of bots.

[Food Nipple]

Originally Posted by Kielaran

This. The game is really just about 4 people trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. There isn't any story except 'let's go here so we can get rescued' and the rest of the compaigns are all about getting to that point.

Personally, I really like the way Valve handles their story through a lot of little details, rather than a cutscene. Take a look at the begining of Blood Harvest. There's three sleeping bags on the ground because they sleep in shifts with one person keeping lookout, and if you looks at the ashes in the campfire, you can see that they've been burning money to keep the fire going.

That kind of stuff makes for much better storytelling than just playing a cutscene at the end of a level.

[Ten19]

I don't believe there IS a PS3 version at the moment.

[AgtFox]

Originally Posted by Ten19

I don't believe there IS a PS3 version at the moment.

That would be my joke from earlier:

Would be hard on this game

Highly doubt there will ever be a PS3 version of this.

[total]

Originally Posted by AgtFox

Highly doubt there will ever be a PS3 version of this.

I seem to remember Valve saying that they had no intentions of making games for the PS3 and with the issues the port of the Orange Box had on the PS3 they didn't intend to have anyone port it for them either. Didn't Gabe basically call the PS3 junk?

[Ten19]

Originally Posted by AgtFox

That would be my joke from earlier:

Highly doubt there will ever be a PS3 version of this.

Aye, just wanted to make sure it was spelled out, just in case some people didn't catch on.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by Food Nipple

Personally, I really like the way Valve handles their story through a lot of little details, rather than a cutscene. Take a look at the begining of Blood Harvest. There's three sleeping bags on the ground because they sleep in shifts with one person keeping lookout, and if you looks at the ashes in the campfire, you can see that they've been burning money to keep the fire going.

I never noticed either of those, especially the money angle. That's awesome.

You'll also get a lot of story from the grafitti on the walls, especially in safe rooms.

[Suave Peanut]

Originally Posted by Ink Asylum

You'll also get a lot of story from the grafitti on the walls, especially in safe rooms.

Exactly. They make a point of not shoving the story in your face, but it's still there if you want to look for it. It seems unfair for people to say that there isn't a story just because they don't force cutscenes on you.

[AgtFox]

Originally Posted by total

I seem to remember Valve saying that they had no intentions of making games for the PS3 and with the issues the port of the Orange Box had on the PS3 they didn't intend to have anyone port it for them either. Didn't Gabe basically call the PS3 junk?

Right, I just didn't add in that information to my guess of it never coming to PS3. Figured most already knew

[ElektroDragon]

Glad I'm not a reviewer... I'd give it a 2 out of 5. Don't like the unrealistic zombie animations. Don't like the graphic quality. Don't like the co-op focus. They improved none of this for the sequel. Only gets 2 stars instead of 1 because there is some plot mechanic involving Depeche Mode, I hear.

I do like how your review mentions the "social gamer". Something I am definitely not. I am from the old school time when games were a very isolated medium, and MMOs did not exist (thankfully). I'll stick with my AC2 and Dragon Age.

[Ink Asylum]

Unrealistic zombie animations? Are there real zombies they could have motion-captured?

Also, how can you dock a game points for focusing on co-op? Because you don't like co-op? Most games focus on either Single-player or multiplayer.

[iHap]

Originally Posted by ElektroDragon

Glad I'm not a reviewer... I'd give it a 2 out of 5. Don't like the unrealistic zombie animations. Don't like the graphic quality. Don't like the co-op focus. They improved none of this for the sequel. Only gets 2 stars instead of 1 because there is some plot mechanic involving Depeche Mode, I hear.

I do like how your review mentions the "social gamer". Something I am definitely not. I am from the old school time when games were a very isolated medium, and MMOs did not exist (thankfully).

[Ghostbear]

Originally Posted by ElektroDragon

Glad I'm not a reviewer... I'd give it a 2 out of 5. Don't like the unrealistic zombie animations. Don't like the graphic quality. Don't like the co-op focus. They improved none of this for the sequel. )

Thats like me complaining that the latest Madden doesn't have realistic gun effects.

"If this cheeseburger were in fact, a slice of pizza it would be good"

[AgtFox]

Originally Posted by Ink Asylum

Unrealistic zombie animations? Are there real zombies they could have motion-captured?

Also, how can you dock a game points for focusing on co-op? Because you don't like co-op? Most games focus on either Single-player or multiplayer.

I've gotten the recent impression that ElektoDragon goes against the grain with many games. I like seeing a contradicting opinion though. Guess my question (I haven't played either games, not really my kind of thing and is probably a major time sink) is if he is giving 2 out of 5 because he is directly comparing it to the original and he doesn't see a revolutionary step and more of an evolutionary step or some other reason.

I do think he's played the original game though since he gives a passing reference to that they improved none of what he pointed out in the sequel.

[Sandman]

I want to complain about the totally unrealistic magic effects in Dragon Age. Stone armor isn't pebbles constantly falling off a person, the person's skin actually hardens a bit like stone without effecting their movement...totally unrealistic.

[Food Nipple]

Originally Posted by ElektroDragon

I am from the old school time when games were a very isolated medium.

Well, I'm from the even older school time when there weren't single player video games. If you wanted to play Pong, you found somebody to play with.

[Telefrog]

Originally Posted by Food Nipple

I would much rather them put effort into virtually any other area of the game. It's a multiplayer game. The bot AI is there so that if I have to pee, I can flip on bot mode and hopefully not have lost too much health by the time I get back.

Anything beyond that is a waste of time.

It seems like there's always a string of complaints every time a single player game like Bioshock adds in a throwaway multiplayer mode, why isn't the converse true?

I know this sounds crazy, but I don't always want to play with four other people. Sometimes one or two people on my friends list want to play and we don't want to deal with some pubbie.

Also, as others have pointed out, local co-op on the 360 depends on you accepting two AI players.

I'd love more levels, special infected, weapons, game modes, etc as well, but a) we saw how that turned out last time and b) working on the AI for the game does not preclude another team from working on other stuff. Frankly, I think it's inexcusable that Valve just copy+pasted the already shitty NPC AI from the first game into this one.

[Tayaya]

Originally Posted by Wackman3000

I don't get why people complain about the AI.... This is a co-op designed game and I have yet to ever have a reason to play this game without 3 friends.

If you know they suck, why still use them? Or do you just enjoy pissing yourselves off?

Simple - on those nights no one wants to play, I can play single player. If i'm at work and it's slow, I can play single player. I work in an inbound tech support environment, so there are times we have no calls coming in, so I can sneak in maybe 1/3-1/2 of a level in between issues, then pause to take a call when it hits, then go back to playing. This doesn't happen often as we're typically very busy but on those days it's nice to be able to fart around in a game that I enjoy by myself without holding up the action for everyone else in the group as can happen in an MMO or if I was playing this co-op.

Also, even if you can't find a reason to play the game, which I admit is co-op oriented, in this fashion, the fact that it HAS a single player mode is reason enough for Valve to want to take steps to ensure it's enjoyable. In the first game, it's just fine and only a minor annoyance, but in this game, with the style of play changing somewhat at some times, this needs addressing.

Also: Achievements on the PC version seem broken. I've had to earn a couple of them twice (got some on the 18th but when I played on the 20th I had 0/50), and there are some (the campaign ones) that I appear to have never earned despite having finished the first 3 campaigns and dabbled in the others. I hope this gets fixed eventually, but it's not critical for me.

[Tayaya]

Originally Posted by Kielaran

That I have not seen so far. Ellis has a big personality, but the others have all seemed pretty blah to me. Maybe this will change as I play more, but I see the first set of survivors as having much more of a personality (except Louis, who I put the other 3 in L4D2 on par with in uninteresting).

What I'd meant is that they do have a little bit of dialog that shows that these people just met on the way to the evac center, and in between campaigns they added a bit to explain why you have to get to another evac point.... again.... despite having just been rescued.

Reading other posts, though, I see there are some hints and clues in the first game that I totally passed over. I'll have to go back and play that one some now to check this out!