alanschu

Yeah we learned early that the person in front needs to duck if they plan on stopping to shoot, to let the person behind them help shoot as well. After some fun (and sadistic) times by myself as the replacement AI director, my friend has gotten pretty good at the game (though he still struggled with 4 tanks at once hehehe). Don't underestimate the power of the melee attack for keeping the horde off you (especially if you've been boomer juiced so you know that they are all coming after you). If you have good timing (and are in a corner) you can keep the horde off almost indefinitely, letting your allies shoot the crap out of them (full auto with Uzi/M16 is good times here). Of course sometimes you can't back yourself into a corner and 360 degrees of zombie munchies is game over haha. I find random very beatable (especially if you are able to avoid a tank encounter), but it still provides enough tension that some sloppy play (or bad luck) will lead to a wipe and restart. Sucks getting a mob summoned right after you deal with a tank...(or one time, getting a mob summoned just before we met the tank!!!)

Meh, I pop heads with the assault rifle at range quite a bit. I often take down zombies at range with liberal use of dual pistols as well, which have pretty decent accuracy if you're crouching.

Expert is usually a tough go, but often beatable. For two levels anyways haha. Usually I am limping my way into the last safe room, often with one or more group members dead.

Well, technically the Source engine is 10 years old and at its core a heavily modified Quake 1 engine. Valve is always updating it, adding HDR, swarming AI, multicore support. I think the Source engine in HL2 is roughly equivalent to UE2, while in HL2:E2 and L4D it's more comparable to UE3. Is it? It thought that Source was a new engine.

Flavour I think.

Haha yeah I like the film grain too. I remember playing one of the Silent Hills and it looks pretty distracting. I agree that Source has aged really well. I still feel that the characters in Half-Life 2 still look pretty damn impressive.

Congrats......Paul!!! Muahahahahahaha. <files for stalking purposes> "

Haha you'll find that issue even with human players

I think a pretty solid road game by the Oilers. The only goal was on a bad decision by the rookie goalie to try to play the puck, which almost resulted in a really bad goal, but it caused the Oilers to start scrambling in the zone. However, the goal was an absolutely beautiful tip by Parise!

My friend and I found a way to change teams and play as infected. Needless to say it was awesome challenging him and all in all being a jerk. It's with enabling cheats, so it's not the true vs. mode. It also meant I was a cheap ass and would spawn tanks when he was about to win, but I mean...I was laughing hahaha (actually what was really funny was when Louis the bot decided that Bill could be saved from the 5 tanks beating on him, and leaves the secure safe room, letting me and a horde of zombies flood in haha). However, once I started to learn the 3 primary zombie types (boomer, smoker, hunter), it was a ton of fun. Getting some bile on the guys and watching the horde come is awesome. You can always see an aura around them, and you can tell their health as it's green/yellow/red. Usually I wait for a mob to come running in if I am hunter or smoker, and hope to get the jump on someone in the confusion. I pulled my friend down off a ledge and into the mob one time as the smoker and he get wasted pretty quickly haha. With just the two of us the hacked versus mode was a ton of fun. I loved jumping off of buildings with the boomer and landing between the squad and exploding in gooeyness haha.

Okay there is one major issue with the AI...though I usually find myself laughing at the absurdity of it: They don't recognize fire, so they haev no problems running into areas that are on fire to get better LOS or whatever. It's really funny when one bot is incapacitated in the fire, and the other goes to rescue him, burning himself alive too haha. Though I think it's only really an issue on expert and advanced since everyone takes more damage. My friend and I usually laugh, but it is pretty annoying.

I have no real issues with the friendly AI. They aren't as good and dynamic as my friend, but they are excellent for avoiding friendly fire, as well as making sure to not hit things that might alert the zombies. If you get tied up by a hunter or a smoker, they do a good job of freeing you. One time when I died and respawned (in a locked door) one broke off from the group to come and rescue me, which was good. Biggest beefs with the AI so far are: A bit too focused on healing human players, even if they needed the healing more. Minor gripe. When a player is incapacitated and "dying," with lots of zombies nearby, they spend a bit too much time trying to rescue the downed player (of which the progress bar is reset if they or the downed person gets hit). They should just eradicate the zombies first, and help the guy up for free, but at the same time, sometimes the guy that is down isn't getting mauled, and reviving him might be better. A minor gripe again IMO. I need an ability to tell them to move. I set up some traps with some gas cans, and it's not uncommon for a guy to be standing next to it...well...that means he gets cooked when I shoot it. There's one part of the demo where I try to set up traps and this would be sooooo handy Sometimes they will run in front of me while I'm shooting. Though I find this usually leads to me laughing...and I won't be tooooo critical, since I do the same to my friend haha. However, if you run in front of them when they are shooting, they are pretty good at stopping their fire. A minor gripe, but sometimes they can get confused if two human players are not too far apart, but not too close, and they'll kind of run back and forth between them. I love the "dead" music...it's soft and angelic, and it fits sooooo perfectly after you die, and you see the rest of your squad getting wiped out one by one by zombie hordes haha. Very cinematic.

Another swarm!!! (wish I still had my pipebomb!!!!) Cornered! Incapacitated! (I can still shoot my pistols, but my health slowly goes down...or quickly if zombies beat on me...and I need someone to pick me up to my feet) Molotov ****tails...not quite as much fun as pipebombs....but still good times! Hurry up Francis! Almost in the safe room (level end). Flood is my friend. Bill and Francis are AI players, going by their character names. Louis was played by Slasher (me) and Zoey by Flood! The climactic sequence from "No Mercy!" (the name of the movie we're in haha). Curing the infection. One bullet at a time!

Pipe bombs are good times (and this one is nothing haha) Pull pipebomb out: Give 'er a toss: Watch the zombies flock to it (ooo shiny!) Kaboom! The effect is best during a swarm, as it seems zombies are attracted to it which leads to much laughter and splatter haha.

Sweet thanks (I kept the Vampire ones though hehe) Splatter! Boom headshot! A Boomer! Beating them off with melee during one of the zombie swarm parts

It says that I have used 45.42 of 30 MB of attachment space.....but I haven't attached anything ni quite some time. Is there a way for me to quickly remove old screenshots from threads long dead?

Or if you don't preorder the game... I think you have to wait until the 11th for that.

You can play single player, or a two map "campaign" with other players (AI plays other members of the squad if you don't have 4 human players). I didn't really have an issue with the AI personally, but all I really want them to do is shoot zombies and heal me/themselves haha. I played through the minicampaign like 3 times last night with a friend playing with different weapons. I love the assault rifle.

Your loss by the sounds of it Play L4D with me then!

Demo available on steam if you preorder the game. Mucho fun!!!! I love popping zombie heads, but the mob scenes where tons swarm you are great!!! So much fun!

haha 5 unanswered by the Pens, 4 unanswered by the Oil. Messed up game!

uncredited. i don't remember seeing him, however. i loved la story. it was strange, that i can't argue. taks Is that the one with the freeway sign that would talk to Steve Martin? Oh, and Three Amigos is awesome!!

A lot of games have championed choice and freedom, but typically it's only a facade with superficial differences until the end when the ending plays out a little bit differently. Even a game like Fallout which allows for different outcomes in each town, does so because each town tends to be an isolated unit, in essence it's own little mini game. What I do in Shady Sands has little outcome on what is done in the Boneyard, for example. One thing that intrigues me of Bioware's upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, is that it claims to support storylines that are distinct depending on faction choice, but also distinct based on the choices you make in your own faction. Does an MMO experience, with presumably a large player base and as well, the prospect of subscription revenue, make it more financially feasible for a game developer to provide a game experience that truly allows diverging gameplay? One thing that some developers (notably Gabe Newell) have mentioned is that it's tough to have a lot of optional and divergent gameplay, because most people only play through a single player game once, and it's very easy for many players to never experience significant chunks of the content. With the idea that players get many different stories in one universe (this is good for many shared resources and content...allowing the game to overlap), perhaps they are more likely to replay though the game in several different ways in order to experience more new content (since they'll hopefully know it's there...the MMO experience means that there will be interactions with other players without having to go to a game forum or something similar). From a developer perspective, hopefully they'll play the game a variety of different ways, extending playtime and netting additional subscription fees (which would still be cheaper than buying a whole new game for the customer). Optimally, along the developer line, players will enjoy the MMO aspects of the game, and perhaps maintain a subscription and continue to play the game. I sort of went on a bit of a tangent there at the end, but I can see MMO's as being a way for developers to allow for divergent gameplay, as well as also provide a gaming experience that appeals to several different people, and hopefully expose people to other game types that perhaps they might never have known about. Any thoughts?

When in doubt put them all the way down haha.

All my posts are of the highest quality. REALLY! Well...they were until you had to go and bugger it up with this post!