Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

[sportsdude]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Is the teammate AI better or worse than the first? I heard worse. I was thinking of giving it a rent for the Carnival level though I hated the first game. It does still have level select right?

teammate AI seems pretty bad, though I don't ever remember it being too good in the first one aside from the fact that they never incurred any friendly fire incidents.

Yes there is level select.

[muggins]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Please don't play this by yourself it is meant to be played online with 3 other people

[Cyros]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Please don't play this by yourself it is meant to be played online with 3 other people

goh isn't an Xbox Live Gold Member.

[ExtremeGamer]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

goh isn't an Xbox Live Gold Member.

And he hates pretty much every game at some point, so it's all for not anyway

[Brandwin]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Sorry I had to bail last night Chubby and Pounding Beers. I was hoping we would get past the last scene, but we just couldn't do it.

[Phobia]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Is the teammate AI better or worse than the first? I heard worse. I was thinking of giving it a rent for the Carnival level though I hated the first game. It does still have level select right?

I say better and here is why. In the first the teammate AI stayed right on your hip. So it was near impossible for boss infected to hurt you. Your teammate AI would knock them off or kill them very quick. Then they never did any friendly fire. They almost followed you to strictly.

In the 2nd, they drift off a little more leaving you more open to attacks and forcing you to stay with them more so than them always following you. Then they also do friendly fire which it is not excessive but it is enough to feel like a real game.

[Phobia]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Improvements that make Left 4 Dead 2 better than the first(I am on PC).

1) The damage to the zombie models is pretty darn cool. Chopping off body parts, slicing their gut open, blowing them to little pieces, etc. Pipe bombs sends bodies and body parts flying now.

2) Balanced the zombie bosses a good bit more.

3) The map HARD RAIN is amazing and reminds me a lot of the first game. It has that "danger" at every turn fear. The coolest part of the map is the weather is random and the director AI that controls the zombies controls the weather and will create huge down pours where you can barely see the hand in front your face. Zombies coming running full speed appearing just a few feet from you out the rain is intense.

4) The new boss infected are cool and very useful to fix some of the issues with the first. The first game people would get in a corner and could be untouchable. In L4D2, The Spitter fixes that issue. It launches a green acid that burns and kills the survivors pretty quick and forces them to move. It is also great for spitting it on the ground when they are trying to pick up a downed survivor, burning more than one at a time or blocking a route they are trying to go, slowing them down in the process.

If you go against a team that is real organized and stays packed together. Well the new boss THE CHARGER breaks up these tightly organized groups. It charges through a group at a very fast speed, grabs a victim it hits and continues to run until it slams into something, then it pounds the survivor into the ground. It also knocks any other close together survivors away. Great tactic is to try and line up a path you can run and hit the group and have a long clear path until you run into something, this way you take the survivor real far away from its teammates.

Then THE JOCKEY is so fun. It is similar to the hunter where it jumps around. But its main use is to grab on a lone survivor and bring them away from his team mates. The jockey jumps on the head of a survivor and then you get to control where the survivor goes as he claws at his head. Last night on one of the new maps it is on a bridge and I jumped on a lone survivor and steered him off the bridge to fall to his death lol. It is also good to steer them towards the boomer, smoker, or into trouble.

So now with so many different boss infected it is always something different going on. Tank, Witch, Hunter, Smoker, Boomer, Jockey, Spitter, and charger.

5) The new special infected are cool to. They are basic zombies but stronger and have certain ways to take down. We ran across some Police special infected last night. They have full body armor and blast head shield.

6) Mele weapons are a great addition. I used all kinds of different ones last night and they all work good. Bat, Cricket bat, katana sword, machete, guitar, frying pan,

7) New kinds of secondary items. Adrenaline gives you a boost of speed and I think health for a short period of time. Makes all actions faster. Shock pads heal a downed teammate, Boomer bile you can throw on the zombies or special infected and it makes all the zombies go for that target. So cool to see zombies fighting a tank lol.

8) The biggest new addition to L4D 2 is the levels. They are all different and not just the standard go here and hold out type. They have mission types. One mission I played you got to get to the safe house but then you find out it is locked by a guy on the inside and he wants some coke, so you got to get across the street and get a pack of coke in the store. The key is whoever is carrying the coke can't shoot so the others have to protect them as you try and make it back to give him the coke. But the zombies come in waves. Nice new little touch.

Plus the new maps are very big with multiple paths you can take so each time you play it, it is a good bit different in your approach. But the main thing is the levels they just are built a lot better with less flaws for people to take advantage of. A tleast for now until they find some flaws lol.

Left 4 Dead 2 = A-
+ Great balancing
+ Great new effects
+ Great new weapons and additions
+ Great new levels and basic improvements to game play
- Not a ground breaking step up
- I rather dark maps

[Brandwin]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Phobia, you might want to put #8 in spoiler tags. Some people may not want to know that.

So are all the maps in the day time, or is it a 50/50 split between day and night? I perfer night maps as well.

[sportsdude]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Sorry I had to bail last night Chubby and Pounding Beers. I was hoping we would get past the last scene, but we just couldn't do it.

no worries. we'll get around to finish it at some point, and I think you guys saw just how hard the finale of The Parish is. I've tried it about eight times between easy and normal and finished it just once, and that was on easy.

[Brandwin]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

I tried this morning with computer teamates on advanced, yeah... that didn't work out.

[sportsdude]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Phobia, you might want to put #8 in spoiler tags. Some people may not want to know that.

So are all the maps in the day time, or is it a 50/50 split between day and night? I perfer night maps as well.

Dark Carnival is at night, Hard Rain goes from day to night. The Parish is all during the day. Swamp Fever looks like it goes from night to day. Dead Center you're inside a lot but when you're outside it's daytime.

On a different note, when I first heard about the scavenge mode addition, I thought it sounded pretty stupid. Yet I played a few rounds last night before CB and dookie hopped on, and it was actually pretty fun.

Also, I don't know if anybody else, aside from CB, experienced this but the dedicated servers appear to have some major lag issues. Every game I joined that was dedicated I had no better than one red bar on ping. CB and I had some issues with this until we switched to a host server and it was much better. But for now it appears the dedicated servers have some issues to be ironed out.

[sportsdude]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

just got done playing with ESPNdeportes and CB, good times as always fellas.

too bad we absolutely suck at scavenge mode. But as poorly as we did I've got to say I really enjoy that mode. When I first heard about it, I thought it was some silly tacked-on idea and that I wouldn't ever play it. After a few rounds tonight and last night, that's definitely not the case.

Scavenge is a nice versus mode that doesn't take forever. One of the things that sucked about versus mode in the original was that it would take around two hours to finish a full campaign, and often you'd have teammates drop. It also sucked if got stuck with bad teammates. But in scavenge mode the rounds don't take nearly as long so if either of those things happen you don't care that much.

[ExtremeGamer]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Love Scavage Mode, very cool vs. gametype. I only played with randoms last ngiht, but it was good times, got on a team that we just mowed through people.

[Brandwin]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Yeah, Scavage Mode is a blast. I played with randoms as well. I am seeing lag here and there. Anyone else?

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead 2 (360/PC)

Yeah, Scavage Mode is a blast. I played with randoms as well. I am seeing lag here and there. Anyone else?

I've experienced some lag at times too. Like sportsdude mentioned there seems to be some issues with Valve's dedicated servers that need to be worked out, but if you get into a lobby where somebody is hosting a local server, it's generally very smooth.