Left 4 Dead Review

One thing before I get started, if you’re reading this and you live in the US – HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Alright, let’s keep it rolling.  I have yet another game to talk about today, this time it’s Valve’s Left 4 Dead.  Now, I first have to issue a bit of fair warning.  For the most part I tend to condemn the behavior associated with “fanboys” of any kind – that is people whose loyalty to a game, developer, console, or company stays devout despite any wavering in said institution’s quality of product.  That being said, if there was any one developer that I could be labeled as a “fanboy” for it would probably be Valve.  Since Valve came about I’ve liked literally every game they’ve made.  I maintain that this is just a fact that they work really hard on their games and never let anything hit the market until it’s perfect, not to mention the fact that they tend to weave great stories into their games and, because they’re an independent developer, they have no fear of trying something different (the immensely successful Portal comes to mind).  The same could be said of Left 4 Dead.

As a testament to Valve’s openness to great yet unproven ideas, Left 4 Dead actually started as a mod based on Valve’s Source engine, but after seeing the great work the original team (Turtle Rock) was doing Valve picked the game up.  If you don’t know what Left 4 Dead is, it’s basically every zombie movie fan’s dream in video game form: four survivors are caught in the middle of the zombie apocalypse and are forced to rely on themselves and each other to make it through with their lives intact.  As a result of this simple concept the game is heavily based on 4-player co-op which is a total blast.  Honestly if you plan on getting this game but you’re not an online player I would have to say you’re missing out.  The whole point of Left 4 Dead is to play with some buddies.

The game is broken up into 4 chapters, each of which takes place in an entirely different locale.  The four chapters hold up on their own as individual “movies,” which further shows Turtle Rock and Valve’s commitment to tipping their caps to John Romero’s work as well as more recent films like 28 Days / Weeks Later.  They’ve gone so far to nail the movie vibe that upon completion, each act of the game presents you with credits which, rather than displaying actor information, gives you stats from that round of play.  Each movie is split up into 5 smaller chunks, and gameplay in these mini-levels is all about getting from one safe room through a pack of zombies to another safe room, with the inevitable hope for escape. As I said the levels vary quite a bit, whether you’re playing chapter one (titled No Mercy) wherein you’re trying to escape by chopper from Mercy Hospital, or my personal favorite chapter 4 where-in you’re attempting to be rescued by the army from a zombie-ridden Allegheny National Forest.  I have to say when I started chapter 4 and saw a sign for Allegheny Nation Forest I had to give the game 10 bonus points, just because that’s practically my back yard.   The point is the locales are varied enough that the environment never gets stale.

Graphically the game is pretty impressive.  The Source engine continues to amaze me, particularly the fact that despite its age it can still produce excellent-looking games via Valve’s revisions and improvements over time.  Left 4 Dead almost has a cel-shaded look at times, and a brutally realistic look at others.  You’ll go from looking at one of the game’s characters and think “jeez, this is one or two passes away from being a new class in Team Fortress 2″ to being attacked by a gruesome and disgusting zombie and thinking you’re watching a horror movie.  All around the environment and look of the game have been executed with precision.

The enemies, surprise surprise, are zombies.  This is a potential fault of the game because, despite the fact that killing zombies is fun, once you’ve killed 1,000 of them you might get a little fatigued.  Thankfully this potential problem is remedied by a repertoire of super zombies, each having their own abilities making them much more intimidating than your standard infected.  Whether you’re running away from a massive tank zombie, quietly sneaking around a witch zombie, or getting lassoed by a smoker zombie’s tongue you’ll always have a reason to keep on your heels.  Obviously this helps to create a great feeling of tension as you make your way through the game.  The coolest part of the game is the “director AI” which changes each level everytime you play it.  Basically the director AI chooses when to let loose a super zombie on you, when to unleash a zombie horde on you, and when and where you get extra weapons and ammo.  Because a level is different everytime there’s a load of replay value, which is good because all said the 4 chapters can be beaten pretty quickly.

That’s where I get to some of the negatives of the game.  The chapters are short.  If you move slow through a chapter it might take you as long as an hour, but if you really step it up you can make it through a chapter in a little over 20 minutes on an easy difficulty setting.  So what that means is that the entirety of the game’s campaign can be as short as 2 – 4 hours.  Obviously that’s kind of disheartening.  Still, the director AI gives plenty of incentive to play through the game multiple times (as I have) without getting tired.  There’s also a competitive multiplayer campaign where you can play as one of the zombies and try to thwart other human survivors.  That being said, for a $60 release I would have liked to see another chapter or two.  I’m assuming that the idea is to release new chapters as downloadable content down the road, and once that starts to happen I’ll be a lot more satisfied about the game’s length.

Another complaint I’ve heard is that you can’t zoom, or use iron sights with the weapons.  Personally I think this is a meaningless complaint for a few reasons.  First, there hasn’t been a single Valve game using the Source engine that I can think of that has used a zoom feature where it wasn’t absolutely needed (i.e. for sniper rifles, or guns with scopes).  Second, I’d say 90% of the combat in Left 4 Dead takes place from within 5 feet of the character.  You generally find yourself surprised or in the middle of a horde of enemy at such a close range that there’s really no reason to have iron sights.  Lastly, the one gun that actually makes sense to have iron sights/zoom, the hunting rifle, does.

All-in-all I have to say Left 4 Dead is my “unique” game of the year.  You haven’t played a game like this yet.  Sure some people might point to Dead Rising and say that they’re basically the same type of games, but aside from the fact that they both have zombies in them, they aren’t.  L4D is a purely cooperative experience that must be played with friends, and will give you a ton of memorable moments to remember as you play.  Don’t believe me?  Just watch this short video that’s been circulating the internet, it’s pretty funny and completely representative of a good round of Left 4 Dead (NSFW, there’s a few well-deserved F-bombs thrown):

So if you’re looking for something a little different this year, something that’s pretty unique and extremely fun, give Left 4 Dead a shot. If you’re still not sold and concerned about the length of the game you could always wait a few months and pick it up when the price drops a bit.

Now Playing:
Dropkick Murphys – Boys on the Docks (Live)
Call of Duty : World at War

Gears of War 2 Review

Okay so we’re making some progress on the deluge of games coming out lately!  Last week I did my review of Fallout 3, and today I’m going to talk to you about Gears of War 2.  It goes without saying that Gears 2 is one of the most popular titles that has come out this year, and it’s certainly a goliath when it comes to Xbox 360 exclusive titles.  The Gears of War franchise is fast approaching and overtaking the Halo franchise’s position as Xbox system-seller, and for good reason in my opinion.

Gears 2 was one of those games that just is.  What I mean by that is it’s an immensely popular game that you know you’re going to buy if you’re a gamer with a 360.  It’s like how football fans regard the superbowl.  Sure your team might not be playing but chances are you’re going to watch regardless.  In that way I wasn’t really excited for Gears 2.  I knew it was coming, I knew I was going to play it because I had it preordered, but I was more interested in titles like Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty : World at War – games that were shaping up to be great but didn’t exactly have the “blockbuster” tagline that we’ve come to associate with Gears of War.  It may be because of my hands-off approach, but I have to say I’m splendidly surprised by Gears.

The biggest critique you may have heard about the original Gears of War was that it was a bit repetitive, and not just from a gameplay aspect.  Not only was a lot of the combat the same throughout the game, but the environments were near identical.  That’s right, the good old gray and brown palette that had become associated with so many Unreal Engine 3 games from the early bit of the engine’s lifespan also plagued the first Gears of War.  I’m happy to say that Gears of War 2 is completely different in this regard.  Barring the first act of the game which plays out in areas that are similar to the first, the game’s environments are of a much larger range representing many different colors from red fire to blue snow, and even a bit of green forest thrown in for good measure.

Epic didn’t skimp on varied gameplay, either.  You’ll find yourself in a lot of different scenarios, most involving riding in huge vehicles or…well, on mythical beasts.  The point is you won’t get tired of the same old ‘take cover, shoot locust’ gameplay over and over.  The game features some huge setpieces and as implausible as they are they’re damn fun levels to play.  I think what surprised me the most about the game was how long it was, and especially the fact that they kept the gameplay varied and interesting enough that it didn’t get old.  There are a couple boss battles that put those from Gears 1 to shame, a competent storyline, a few new characters and of course the old standbys.  Epic has also added much more fun-to-play boss fights for the most part.  All told it took me at least 8 hours to complete which is nothing to sneeze at, especially when you’re playing through with a co-op partner who has already beaten the game rather than playing alone and having to figure things out as you go.

On to multiplayer.  As I just mentioned 2-player co-op is back, and that’s definitely the way to play through the game.  There’s nothing better than playing together with a buddy, and just like Gears 1 there are plenty of scenarios baked into the game with cooperative play in mind.  After that you have the more traditional competitive deathmatch-style multiplayer, which I have to be honest I haven’t exactly played much of.  I find that if I’m looking for a competitive multiplayer experience I tend to put in Call of Duty : World at War rather than Gears 2.  I have no doubt that the competitive multi is fun unless they’ve departed greatly from the first game which I played a ton of, but I find World at War to be exceptional.  Last but not least (and this is all-new for Gears 2) you get a 4-player cooperative “horde” mode, in which you and 3 of your friends can fight off up to 50 waves of enemies that are progressively more and more difficult.  It isn’t cooperative play in the most traditional sense, that is to say it’s not story-related and the horde mode has nothing to do with the Gears 2 campaign, but it’s surprisingly fun nonetheless.  I was able to make it through all 50 rounds and that alone took around 5 hours to do.

So what can I say really?  Gears of War 2 is the cheesey action movie game of this holiday season.  The story and dialog are laughable a lot of the time, but the gameplay is fun enough to keep you coming back for more.  Also the game is damn pretty, and that never hurts.  Is it game of the year?  Not mine.  Is it a game you should own if you have an Xbox 360?  Of course.

Now Playing:
Kamelot – The Shadow of Uther
Call of Duty : World at War

Live Mesh for Mac

Here’s my video post for the week.  I decided that since I did a video about Dropbox, and since I sort of criticized Microsoft during that video for not rolling out Mac support with Live Mesh, I’d go ahead and follow up now that that support is available.  Live Mesh is a lot like Dropbox with some unique features that make it either better or worse, depending on your point a view.  Take a look and leave a comment if you have anything to say!  Thanks for watching!

Now Playing:
Jedi Mind Tricks – Tug of War
Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty : World at War

The New Xbox Experience

This morning (yesterday morning, by the time you’re reading this) I awoke and one of the first things I did was turn on my Xbox 360 to grab the latest software update from Microsoft.  This update at last brings the New Xbox Experience (NXE) to Xbox 360 consoles the world over, giving the platform a refreshing and perhaps much-needed new look.  Of course software plays into Microsoft’s hand quite handily, so they’ve been able to essentially give us an entirely new console experience without giving us a new console at all.  So, how does it work?

Well the first thing that happened after I installed the NXE update was I was prompted to create an avatar.  This is a feature that’s becoming more and more popular these days on gaming consoles, and I’ve blogged about it before.  Basically your avatar is a cartoony representation of yourself.  You get to pick your body type, skin color, facial features, what kind of hairstyle you’d like and so on so that your friends can see and interact with you online.  The hope down the road is that more games will integrate NXE avatars into the gameplay by pulling in a gamer’s avatar rather than relying on their gamertag or gamerpic for identification.  There are two games right now that do just that – firstly is the new title called Kingdom of Keflings, a sort of RTS in-which a giant version of your avatar manages and builds infrastructure.  I haven’t played this game but one of my friends assures me it’s fun.  Secondly is the old standby Xbox Live Arcade classic Uno.  Uno however just lets you project your avatar’s likeness into the game for identification without adding any true gameplay value (after all, what can you add to Uno?).

The new guide system is really pretty, if a initially somewhat confusing.  Everything is much more graphically designed, and artwork has been placed where once there were only lists of text.  There are also many more “blades” on the new dashboard, including sections such as My Xbox for all of your personal info, the Friends section to see and interact with your friends’ avatars, Video and Game Marketplaces, and the Events sections just to name a few.  Basically it’s a lot of content that was already on Xbox Live, but now it has been organized in a much prettier and easier-to-interact with way.

Another of NXE’s cool features is the new party system.  You’ve always been able to get in parties when you’re playing a game, but this functionality has been applied to the dashboard experience as well.  Basically parties let you get a group of your friends in one voice chat instance, and then the party leader can move everyone in the party from one activity to the next.  I tried playing around with the party system a bit today and I have to say it works pretty well once you figure it out.  From the dashboard I was able to get together with a couple of my friends on Xbox Live, and then from there we moved into a few games seemlessly without having to worry about sending or re-sending invites.  The parties also finally add private voice chat for more than 2 players, which is a huge feature that I’ve been waiting for since voice chat was first revealed.

With NXE you can now control a lot of your Xbox 360 from the guide as well, not just the home screen dashboard.  If you’re playing a game or watching a movie and you don’t want to exit, you can do pretty much anything you’d want to do aside from playing with system settings from the guide.  The new guide lets you form parties, listen to music, play whatever is in the disc tray, send messages and view game information.  Top it off with the same fit and finish as you’ll find in the rest of the NXE and you have a winning piece of functional software.

The last feature I want to talk about is Netflix integration.  Netflix has moved into the video streaming space, and more and more players are starting to take advantage of that.  The most popular Netflix set-top box is the Roku which costs $99, but if you take into account the Apple TV these gadgets can cost as much as $300.  In the Apple TV’s case you even have to do some firmware updates just to get the thing to work with Netflix.  Netflix on the Xbox 360 with NXE is extremely simple.  So simple and convenient that I had to fire up my Netflix subscription again just to take advantage of it.

With the launch of NXE, Microsoft has also unveiled their Netflix “Watch Instantly” application which – you guessed it – lets you watch streaming Netflix content.  The application is only about 3 megabytes and installs in seconds, and once you get everything setup you’re presented with all of the Watch Instantly Netflix titles that are on your queue.  That means you get to watch HD content on your TV instead of from behind your computer.  The quality is typical streaming quality, that is to say it’s not the best, but I never ran into any buffering hiccups and the interface is easy to use and very slick.  My only gripe about the whole thing is that originally you were supposed to have the ability to bring parties in to watch Netflix movies.  Unfortunately that feature didn’t make it into the initial release of the NXE, but hopefully they’ll hit us with a patch down the road which takes care of that.

Overall for a free update you can’t really go wrong with the NXE.  It brings the Xbox 360 out of the playskool bright-primary-colors era of 2005 and gives us something much easier on the eyes.  It also adds a lot of functionality, some of which is shallow and aesthetic but there are also plenty of features that make you wonder how you ever lived without them.  Bravo Microsoft.  I also have to give them a tip of the cap for having a relatively painless upgrade process.  For me I never experienced any network issues or errors, everything worked as it should.  That’s a huge contrast with Sony’s recent Playstation updates which have been pretty hit-or-miss, and have needed patches a lot of the time.

Now Playing:
Joystiq Podcast
Gears of War 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Left 4 Dead

Fallout 3 Review

Before I start into the actual post, let me first apologize for completely slacking last week.  I didn’t put up either of my usual 2-a-week text posts, or my video post on the weekend.  Honestly I don’t know what happened.  Monday night (when I usually write Tuesday’s post) I was busy, same thing on Wednesday night when I write Thursday’s post, etc. etc.  Like those excuses?  Anyways, it seems like there’s been a drought when it comes to tech news lately, unless you consider layoffs as news, so I might start focusing on the gaming scene a little more.  After all, there’s a ton of games to talk about.  There’s been a blockbuster title every week for the past month, so I figured I’d do some quick-fire reviews of some of them.  As always, no spoilers.

I’m going to start with Fallout 3.  Fallout 3 was a game that I was a little concerned about when going into it.  I remember even remarking to a friend that it had the biggest potential to be the “letdown of the season” – it seemed like there was a hell of a lot of hype devoted to it and, for whatever reason, I couldn’t justify it.  The hype must have worked though because when I was in GameStop preordering my holiday games it slipped out of my mouth despite not really intending to play it.  It definitely wasn’t on my must-play list.  Thta being said, and this may be because I had somewhat low expectations, Fallout 3 turned into my surprise game of the year.  Keep in mind that when I say that I literally mean the game that has surprised the most, not necessarily the best game of the year.

My main concern about Fallout 3 was the combat system.  To me, the V.A.T.S. system seemed really gimmicky, and although it was labeled as an additional feature I was concerned about it being required rather than optional to use.  As it turns out, V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) is really cool.  If you haven’t played Fallout 3 yet, I’ll run it down for you.  Basically it’s a targeting system which lets you freeze the game, pick the points on the enemy you wish to attack (each is labeled with a percentage, this is your chance of hitting whatever body part) and then you effectively play again and you watch your character shoot at the enemy in the places you chose.  It’s surprisingly hard to describe despite the system’s simplicity, but needless to say it’s pretty fun to use.

I started out very hesitant to use V.A.T.S., but eventually I solely relied upon it to take down the enemies.  Still, even though it’s cool, I can’t help but think that it’s a band-aid on a larger issue.  Fallout 3’s engine (the same as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) isn’t really built for ranged combat.  Even in Oblivion I had some issues using a bow instead of the standard sword and shield setup.  The same thing carries over into Fallout 3, but because the game is almost implicitly centered around gunplay the problem is much more accentuated.  For that reason I can’t help but think that Bethesda put int V.A.T.S. not as a cool feature, but as a fix for the problematic in-engine combat.

As expected the game world is fantastic.  It’s the closest experience from an atmospheric standpoint to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that I’ve ever had.  It’s not quite as good as S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but it’s damn and given the game’s size that’s a huge accomplishment.  Without going into too much detail the game takes place in Washington D.C. after it has been decimated by a nuclear war.  Some time has past since the bombs fell, and the world is appropriately desolate and devastated.  Along with that the story is very good, which is essential.  A lot of people has criticized the game’s ending but, given the wealth of side quests available, I appreciated the story being concise and somewhat short.  I played all but one of the quests (including side-quests) and it took me over 80 hours to complete this game, so if you’re concerned about the length of the game you shouldn’t be.

So overall, without having played Gears of War 2 or Call of Duty: World at War to completion, I can say that Fallout 3 is one of my games of the year.  It’s almost a shame that it came out during the busiest time of the year because I would have loved to devoted more time to exploring the world of Fallout 3.  I have to highly recommend this game.  Go pick it up!

Now Playing:
1UP Yours Podcast
Call of Duty: World at War, Gears of War 2

Gears of War 2 Limited Edition Unboxing

I switched it up a bit this week and decided to do an unboxing rather than a screencast for a couple reasons.  First and foremost is the fact that I couldn’t think of anything else to talk about, and second I figured it would be a good way to switch up the content.  When I originally started doing videos I didn’t plan for them all to be Mac-related screencasts, that just happened to be how it turned out.  As always thanks for watching!

The seeds of change have been sewn

It shouldn’t be news to anyone at this point.  Here in the United States we’ve made some groundbreaking change in the hope for a better tomorrow.  After months of nail-biting, finger-pointing, and heinous attack ads we can finally move forward and put this dark time behind us.  I am, of course, talking about the unveiling of the new Windows 7 at PDC2008.  Did you expect something else? =)

I have to admit that the first time I saw screenshots from PDC2008 of what Windows 7 would look like, I was kind of concerned.  The UI is very blue.  The toolbar has been reworked; it’s now larger and reminds me of some of the older distributions of KDE linux I used to mess with.  For some reason when I see the new Windows 7 clock in the lower right hand corner I have flashbacks to Knoppix, and the horribly ugly digital clock they had set as default.  It also looks a bit like an operating system that may have been specifically developed for UMPC or tablet devices.  Obviously these observations are completely arbitrary because I haven’t actually played with Windows 7, but those were just some of my initial reactions.

After further examination though, I’m really starting to understand the new direction they’ve taken and am growing to like the new taskbar.  The taskbar as it was really isn’t that much different in Windows 7 when you think about it.  There has always been the ability to add little quick-launch items in the taskbar (I know it was in XP and Vista, can’t remember any further back), but now Microsoft has decided to expand that functionality.  First, they made the quick launch icons much larger – about the size of standard icons you’d find on your desktop.  Then they added the ability to easily “drag and drop” new applications to the taskbar so it’s easy to customize with whatever applications you want to have available.  Obviously these icons serve as launch and switching points, so in effect the new taskbar works similarly to how alt+tab works in previous versions of Windows.

Another cool feature is when you open up multiple windows inside the same application.  For example if I’m working in Word and I have two documents open, if I point my cursor to the Word icon in the taskbar I’ll get two preview thumbnails, one for each window.  A similar feature is already in Windows Vista, but now as I said it works for multiple windows and also it allows you to interact with the application from the thumbnail.  You can do things like open/close the window obviously, but more interesting is the new feature called Aero Peak.  Basically what happens is, if you have 2 windows open, say 2 very similar Word documents, you can hover your cursor over one of them and all of the other windows on the desktop will turn into glass.  This allows you to get a good look at whichever window you want without having to physically cycle through the windows on the desktop.  My only question about this feature is what happens when your taskbar gets filled with a bunch of applications and you have a lot of windows open…seems like things could get cluttered in a hurry but that’s yet to be seen.

This version of Windows is definitely an aesthetic upgrade.  I don’t mean that in a condescending way, as if to imply that the only updates to the OS are visual, but they obviously want things to look nice for the user on top of having new features to play with.  The new taskbar integrates into the look of the UI very nicely, and Aero glass is definitely back in full effect.  That’s cool with me, I always liked the look of Aero.  I think that the new look will lure in users as long as the OS is stable and efficient with system resources at the same time.  All indications say that Windows 7 will run on much more modest hardware, including the likes of netbooks.  That’s a huge deal because the birth of this netbook craze has really pushed people to move back to Windows XP because of Vista’s hardware requirements.  According to a laptopmag.com article (click here to read) Windows 7 only uses up 512mb of memory.  It seems that Windows 7 has been sculpted with the Atom-based system in mind, which is good.

So in the end I’m kind of excited for Windows 7.  It’s much too early to build expectations, but I like the direction that the project is headed.  Rumor has it that Microsoft may get Windows 7 out the door as early as June 2009, but I’m expecting sometime in 2010 or later.  That tends to be the trend, especially if you look at Vista’s development time, and I don’t want them to rush anything.  This is a very important release.  One major release mired in negativity from the general public (Vista) is easy to rebound from, but make a habit out of it by rushing the next version and things will get difficult.

As a side note, if you’re feeling the Windows 7 love you can grab the PDC Windows 7 desktop wallpaper by clicking here. Is it weird that I’m using it on my iMac?

Now Playing:
The Real McKenzies – Wild Mountain Thyme
Fallout 3

Pandora Radio and complementary tools

Pandora Radio has changed the way I’ve listened to music.  It’s the most powerful music recommendation application I’ve ever used, and it’s led to me spending a lot on new albums.  If you’re a music lover looking to broaden your horizons, check it out at pandora.com.

In this video not only do I talk about Pandora Radio, but some complementary tools to improve your Pandora listening experience.  The first tool is PandoraBoy, a Google Code project that runs Pandora as an application (OSX only, but Pandora also has a platform-independent Adobe AIR application).  This is cool for a couple reasons – first of all, it lets you cut out the big advertisements that are on Pandora.com and in the Adobe AIR version of Pandora, and secondly it adds some functionality (Growl notifications, keyboard shortcuts) which only a desktop application can deliver.

The second tool is a plugin for Adium, which is (in my opinion) the best instant messenger client for OSX.  The script lets you use whatever is playing in PandoraBoy as your Adium status.  If you’ve used iTunes to show your Now Playing song in Adium you’ll know what I mean.  Check out the video and leave a comment!  Thanks for watching!

PandoraBoy
http://code.google.com/p/pandoraboy/

“Now Playing in Pandora” Adium script
http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=4604

Pandora Radio

Now Playing:
Young Dubliners – Follow Me Up To Carlow
Fallout 3