Left 4 Dead Ramblings, Praise, etc.

[Arcalane]

So. Left 4 Dead Preorder Demo. So far so good. Or should I say awesome?

I'm going to ramble a bit here. Feel free to add your own comments on things you like or dislike about the game so far.

Ragdoll Physics. The zombies getting shoved around and such by gunfire, environmental stuff, melee attacks... this is amazing and awesome. It's really satisfying to melee a zombie into an oncoming rush and watch them scatter like bowling pins, or punt one into his buddy and blow them both away with a single shotgun shell.

Pipebomb. Remember that sequence from the Intro where they suddenly play 'fetch' with the pipebomb? They really do do that. Zombies seek out loud noises, and the pipebomb is rigged with a the remains of a smoke detector, as well as a nice bright fuse. After a few seconds, it explodes; this gives the zombies plenty of time to crowd around it. You can use these to great effect as major distractions, but they can be more trouble than they're worth in some areas...

Game Speed. The preview videos made L4D look a lot faster paced than it actually feels. I'm not sure if this is due to me being more cautious in singleplayer or what, but either way, it's not as fast as it looked, but it's not too slow either. The Director seems to know just when to throw a horde at you, and where to place those accursed specials.

Director. A complete and utter bastard. A glorious bastard. A bastard of bastardly proportions, unmatched by even the most bastardly bastards bastarding around this bastard of a world right now. Think you know what it's going to do next? Oh no you ain't. Whilst the possibilities are somewhat obvious (hmmm, zombies are going to come over that fence when we push this button!), and you can learn to predict where a horde is going to come from, that doesn't mean you should take it easy. The Director is quite capable of making things hell... though it doesn't seek to totally annihilate you either. Expect a challenge. Expect the unexpected. Expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Here, have some screenshots.

I honestly can't pick out anything bad so far, save that the matchmaking scheme is a little wonky right now.

Also, hands up who noticed the Flavia paint cans on the rooftop at the start? Looks like they're reusing a few props...

[Tyakoto]

Reusing a few props, and a few sound effects. One of the spots I was in I was hearing TF2 sounds for I think it was richochet or impacting the wooden walls.

[Doom]

Reused sounds, it's short........
That's all I can really say bad about it; everything else is awesome. :v

[Purplecat]

Well, even TF2 reused some sounds from HL2. It is to be expected with Valve involved. >_>

Apart from some problems due to me being a listen server, it's been fine for the most part. Steam do like to use 100% of the CPU in the middle of the game, and I even had a crash once as Steam reconnected to it's servers.

Plus dedicated servers are delivered as broken, which is a huge miss.

Otherwise, I had quite some fun with the game. It's really worth to buy it, as i'm quite sure they polish things before the first public demo release... and the game release itself. Found no problems with the game design itself.

[Arcalane]

[Purplecat]

[Jinx]

Holy cow this game is made of epic and win. The only gripes I have seem to have been fixed in the latest update patch (I haven't tried it out yet though). The shouting of spahs from TF2 seems to have carried over in the form of saying "Look" on the other players so you say their name. "Bill. Francis. Bill. Francis. Bill..." Makes me crack up every time An awesome tip to anybody who doesn't know: you can use melee to shove hunters off of people (I'm not sure if FF damage can happen when somebody is hit by a hunter or not) and if you melee somebody who is wrapped up in a smoker's tongue they're freed. I love the dependence on your teammates, makes for some really memorable experiences, just got to be sure your teammates aren't secretly out to kill you by setting off car alarms and then shutting the safe room door before you can get in (I'm looking at you Ailure )

EDIT: And for those who haven't seen it yet: L4D Achievements. A couple hints of things to come in the full version... like an impossible difficulty?

[Wulfie]

[Arcalane]

[Mirri]

I liek brainz :B