2008-11-30

I am seriously embarrassed about playing versus in Left 4 Dead. Not because I'm a bad player, no, while I may not kill as much zombies as others, I still have the common sense to avoid most of the mistakes "noobs" make.
Except for one.
Friendly fire.
Don't get me wrong, I don't shoot at others because I am griefing or because I'm an asshole, or because I don't realise to use melee (I use melee a lot, I always try to shove special Infected off my friends unless I'm miles away, when I will resort to shooting), all those times are accidents. You know, I'm firing at something, and then one of my team-mates runs in front of me. Or there's something behind me, and I turn around guns blazing and accidentally hit a friend. Or I'm trying to shoot at something that's close to a friend, and they make a sudden move and suddenly their head's in my sights.
And I feel terrible when it happens. And I just can't seem to stop doing it. And because community's seriously frowning upon friendly fire, I dread playing versus. Because it's okay if I hit someone I know, they probably won't be too mad at me because they know it's an accident (and believe me, they already know my team-killing fucktard ways), but if I hit a complete stranger I'm playing with in versus, who knows what they might think of me. And I don't want anyone to go ballistic because of it.

I already stopped using shotguns because of my tendency to fire at friendlies. Now I rely on the assault rifle because it doesn't make as crazy damage as shotgun does.

And we still haven't finished any campaigns on expert. It's a bitch. We got to No Mercy finale, and then kept getting our collective butt handed to us, usually by the first Tank, and if we somehow managed to escape that, the next horde overwhelmed us completely. Never even saw the second Tank.
Not that we were doing so hot in the earlier scenes either. I think the second part ended in Slaver running for the safe room after Tank had killed me and another friend, and left the last one incapped. There was a Witch outside, as well as a Hunter and a Boomer, and Slaver just kept yelling "DIE ALREADY!" at the incapped friend so that the scene would end. (I love the end of the second part, everyone's always in horrible shape after all the subway slaughter and once we have the saferoom in our sights, we just decide to make a run for it. And then we're limping furiously towards the saferoom, and because Director's a fucking sadist, it always spawns a Tank right that moment. And there's probably a Witch waiting for us right in front of the door too. And I remember the one time we were sure to make it, we were just outside the pawn shop, and because I was dying and seeing in black-and-white and had never played that part before, I didn't know the car had an alarm. So of course I accidentally shot it. And then the horde killed all of us, and everyone was like "CHROOOOME!" Hee hee, good times).
And I think the third scene ended in ME being the one making a beeline for the saferoom, killing the Tank through the tiny hole in the saferoom door and then just waiting it out until the rest of my still-living friends hauled their asses over. But hey, at least I took care of the Tank!

Good times.

Yeah, you don't wanna play with us. Although I wouldn't have the guts to pull stunts like that playing with strangers. With friends it's a whole different story, they probably won't mind. Like I didn't mind all those times I got killed by a Tank while the rest of my team were running for their lives because "it's on fire, let's just hide and wait for it to die!"
I also have the tendency to fail hard right after managing to do something right. And probably awesome. Like at the end of No Mercy, I'm standing on top of the building with the radio inside, and the Tank is coming, and I have a molotov in my hand. I wait for the perfect moment to throw it at the Tank, and I wait patiently and just as it climbs the wall and stands next to the minigun, I throw it. And it's a perfect throw, and I'm like FUCK YEAH AND NOW WE JUST RUN. So I run. Backwards. And I fall. And then I dangle from the edge of the roof, while there's a fucking Tank on the loose. Good thing I'm behind the building, the Tank probably went after someone else, and then there's a friend helping me up, and just as I start running away to get back to the battle, something hits me and I'm incapped and I turn around and there's the fucking flaming Tank punching at me.
Extraordinary fail.
Another time we're on the hospital construction site, you know the most annoying part of fourth scene, right before the saferoom? It's the most annoying part of the whole No Mercy, in my opinion, because the team's always half-dead from waiting the elevator, and there will always be a Tank and personally I hate fighting Tanks in cramped spaces. Especially if your whole team is limping. It's like we're lying on a silver platter for some zombie rape.
So we're limping through the construction maze, being horribly aware of special Infected because we're about to die. A Boomer calling out a horde would be the last nail on our collective coffin. So naturally there's the Tank soundcue (which has been stuck in my head for a day now. It's a bit distracting, gotta admit), so we opt to running the fuck away. I have a molotov, and somehow I'm behind the Tank while it charges at the rest of my team, and I'm in a hurry because the Tank's getting away, so I just throw it. And it looks like it's going to miss and I'm like fuuuuck now we're certainly going to die. But no! It bounces from a structure and hits the Tank head-on! I naturally die immediately after the Tank comes after me, and so do two of my friends, and Slaver's the only one left, limping away. The Tank naturally dies of the flames, and then Slaver's alone against a bunch of zombies. First there's a Boomer he shoves away and kills without it alerting the horde, then a Hunter attacks but thankfully misses and Slaver kills it, and there's the tell-tale green cloud of smoke in the distance and Slaver goes apeshit because if he gets captured, it's game over. Somehow he kills even the Smoker, frees the rest of us from closets and together we make it to the saferoom. It was awesome.

I also have the most rotten luck. So when we finally finish No Mercy, I naturally miss the helicopter by dying brutally. We kill the second Tank and go straight to the helipad to wait for the evac, and of course a Smoker pulls me down from the helipad. After I get freed from that, I get pounced by a Hunter, and when I try to return to the helipad, a horde greets me around the corner. And then I turn around to see the Tank standing right next to me. The Director doesn't want me to finish campaigns.

And could you wager a guess: what in the world happened in this very room?



Yes. A Witch happened.

Oh, and aside from those pesky friendly fire incidents, I've been doing pretty good in versus. As Survivors you can do almost anything by staying together. Can't stress it enough. Even a bad team of Infected can take out a group of Survivors who are not staying together. And a good team of Infected can't do shit against a group that stays together (the Tank's a tiebreaker, and I think spawning as one shouldn't be as random as it is now. I hate listening to the "why did you get a Tank and we didn't?" whining every time a team doesn't get a Tank. OR Director should be controlling it much more like it controls the campaign: if you're doing great, Director ups the ante, and gives the enemy team a helping hand by spawning a Tank).

And I still love playing as the Infected. I don't really care about the Survivors, and although the game experience is whole lotta different from Director-directed campaign, playing as Survivors is always bit of a turn-off for me.
But Infected, oh how do I love them. And Tank, oh how do I love you. I finally got to be the Tank for more than ten seconds, and it truly is the most awesome thing in the history of everything. I completely raped the Survivors, incapping all of them and getting the All 4 Dead achievement in the process. Tee hee. Zoey tried to run all the way back to the saferoom, but I followed and punched her dead. Hee, it was completely awesome.
And it annoys me to see Tanks do stupid mistakes, like attacking a Survivor that a Hunter is pinning down. Argh, idiot Tank, go after the ones still on their feet! If you're there on their heels, they don't really have the time to help others, thus the Hunter can freely incap and kill the Survivor. Besides, the Tank kills the Hunter if he attacks the Survivor. And don't start punching a guy who's already incapped! That's what AI Tanks do, and that's where AI Tanks lose, because while they're punching an already helpless guy, his friends have all the time in the world to shoot you in the back. Once you incap someone, move on to another, and leave them to die. Besides, you don't have to kill the Survivors to get a game over for them, as you should know by now. And I'd go after the healthiest Survivors first, because you can ALWAYS catch up to those who are limping. And they're easier to incap by your fellow Infected anyhow.
And how awesome it is to be in the team with 1300 points, while the enemy team reaches measly 4 points.
Well, actually, it's kinda lame. Everyone in the enemy team always ragequits after that, and who in the world enjoys a complete rape right after getting out of saferoom. Except the Infected. And the Boomer who scores 2000-something points by being awesome. Tee hee.

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2008-11-27

Wb, me!

Guess who's back in the game.



And as you can see, the new PC handles L4D pretty nicely, the resolution alone is pretty insane (yes, I am playing with 1280x1024 and near-highest graphics settings, and it runs as smoothly as it possibly can). For now I'd say getting this PC was worth the while.
L4D seems to be pretty light either way, back when I played the Demo on my old PC, the game actually ran pretty nicely. I mean, I wasn't even playing on the lowest graphics settings - at least texture detail was high - but my resolution was 640 x 480 (this is how it looked, yay PSOne graphics ftw!), and I got all the lighting effects, and actually a pretty decent FPS. And I had been quite sure that the computer would refuse to run it in the first place.

So how about Team Fortress 2?
FPS stays on green almost in every situation (saw it flicker in yellow when there was dozens of stuff on the screen at once), and I get about the same graphics as I did playing on little brother's computer last summer.
So all in all? I'm pretty much extremely satisfied.

I have much to do, organizing files, installing stuff and so forth, so I'll leave a more in-depth entry about Left 4 Dead for later, for now I'll just say that I love versus. I got to play some bits of the co-op campaign on a friend's PC last week after the game came out, so I was somewhat familiar with it, and last night the first thing we did after I got the game, was to find a server and play some versus. I had played it once before, and the game whined to me about needing to play the campaign first, but I didn't really care.
And yes yes the best part about versus is getting to play as the Infected. The best part about playing as the Infected is spawning as the Tank. Okay, yeah, I can't really say since I was a Tank for about ten seconds last night. I spawned at the end of No Mercy just as the Survivors were stumbling to the evac helicopter. I managed to incap one of them, though, so job well done, and only one escaped alive, as rest of my Infected buddies managed to pin the others down. (Yeah, I'm the Tank in the screenshot I posted.)
I like being other Infected as well, Smoker's probably my favourite since you don't have to go get so intimate with the Survivors as the Smoker. I like lurking about rooftops. Hunter's fun as well, although I seem to be just horrible at aiming my jumps, haha. But I've had my best ownage moments as a Hunter pinning down a lone Survivor while others are being harrassed by a Boomer and subsequently a horde. Oh, love. Boomer's surprisingly fun as well.

What sucks about versus is the crazy console-reminiscent lobby system that absolutely sucks because you don't know what kind of ping you'll have until you're actually in game. So it's mostly just jumping from one server to another until one with not-as-crazy latency comes along.
Or since I usually have at least three buddies to play with at any given time, we make a server of our own and then search for a dedicated one, which seems to work pretty well. We get nice ping, and the server usually fills up quickly.
And then we get our fair share of idiots: one of my buddies was playing versus for the first time last night, so of course one of our team-mates started whining at him that he sucks, but. Me and Slaver kindly told him to stfu, and he still had the nerve to start a votekick against my friend. Which backfired royally, because after that there was a vote to kick the whiner, which - needless to say - passed 3 to 1.
I can only imagine how much he must've been raging, hee hee.
But just what the fucking hell, you choose a random public server and then start whining about the noobs? Besides, dear idiot, you weren't doing too hot either (I was kicking your ass in scores and I was playing for the second time), so please do take a look in the mirror before mouthing off a "noob."
Yeah yeah, I know, the whole teamwork thing, of course it sucks if someone on your team seems to be lost, but ffs you can still treat the player nicely and try to understand that the game's been out for a week and not everyone can be fucking brilliant at it already.

But yeah, it's like fighting windmills, fighting these idiots in online multiplayer communities.

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