8-Bit Left 4 Dead: Team Shoot Louis, Retro Style!

Image by Cystie via Flickr

I’ve mentioned the sights of car rentals and buses flying through the air at you before, but never before did I think an 8-Bit Tank would be the culprit.

If you’re on the edge while waiting for The Passing, and have gotten a little bored of Left 4 Dead 2 itself, why not go zombie retro? Pixel Force have packed all the fun of Left 4 Dead into 21 MB while giving you that cozy nostalgic feeling that only an 8-bit game could bring.

You can download the game here. Sadly it is not playable over mobile broadband, as far as I can tell. 😦

If you’d like a little more view into the game before you put your hard earned time into that 21MB download, there’s a little video over at Shack News.

Left 4 Dead 2: The Passing DLC

Image via Wikipedia

Somewhat old news, but I’d like to cover it for the sake of covering it really (I probably could have updated via mobile broadband went it was first announced, but oh well!) Valve recently(ish) announced the first add-on for Left 4 Dead 2, where the new survivors (Ellis, Coach, Rochelle and Nick) will meet the survivors from Left 4 Dead 1 (Bill, Francis, Zoey and Louis).

“The Passing will become the most important campaign in the Left 4 Dead story, as all the Survivors are being called together in one campaign,” Valve’s marketing VP Doug Lombardi had to say. “It will also be a huge offering of new gameplay content, with something new for every game mode plus a new uncommon common and weaponry.”

So, we get a new campaign, a new co-op mode and a few new features such as weapons and new uncommon (I refuse to say uncommon common). The new campaign will take place after Left 4 Dead 2’s Dead Centre (remember Ellis’ little “car hire“?) and before Dark Carnival, so it’ll be interesting to see how they slot that in there without breaking the continuity.

According to some sources, we’ll be taking control of the L4D2 cast and not the L4D1 cast, so it’s yet to be seen how they’ll take part in the game play or storyline.

Here’s for playing as Zoey and spamming the death scream voice command again!

Shoot… Or Run… Or Melee?

Image by Cystie via Flickr

Another Left 4 Dead 2 post! Today I bring the whats and what nots of fighting our dearest friend, the Tank!

However, before we continue, a note from the star himself, Tank:

Dear Humans. This is Tank. You probably know me from hit Xbox 360 game Left 4 Dead. Well, Tank need to get something off chest.

It make Tank sad that as soon as you see him, you start shooting at him. Tank not mindless killing machine. Sure, Tank enjoy smashing human skulls to paste. What 12-foot tall, 800 pound, horribly mutated creature wouldn’t? But there is another side to Tank. Tank also enjoy stamp collecting, scrapbooking, and updating blog under pen name “Love Muffin”. Tank took origami class once at adult-learning annex, but fingers to big, so Tank smash teacher. Got B-minus.

So, when you see Tank on the streets of city, instead of shooting, try asking Tank how day is going. You may find that you and Tank have more in common than you think. Of course, Tank will still smash you, but you will die having made new friend. And that make Tank happy.

-Tank

If you’re still here and you still want to know how to make sure your skull isn’t turned into a fine paste, read on!

A user on the Steam forums posted this, (Urik) and it looks like it might just do the trick when it comes to facing our next Tank. This shows the amount of bullets, reloads, hits and time it takes for each weapon to kill a tank on Expert mode (click for bigger)! So the next time you look into the night’s sky and see a car rental drifting through the air at high speed toward you, remember – you should have picked up the frying pan. Screw the shotgun. Cook that mother fucker.

Left 4 Dead 2 Achievements

Image by Cystie via Flickr

Alright, it looks like we have a list of achievements for Left 4 Dead 2. These are for the Xbox 360 version of the of the game, but I expect there is little difference, if any, to the PC version. I’m having a go at posting using my mobile broadband today, so apologies if anything looks messed up, I’ll fix it later!

There’s not really any plot spoilers, but I’m going to hide the achievements just in case someone who doesn’t want to see them accidentally clicks on a post about achievements. Suffice to say, they’re looking pretty fun, and are a bit more creative than Left 4 Dead’s achievements.

Oh, and there’s an achievement regarding the clown zombies. But personally I won’t be going anywhere near them, freaky little things.

Click ‘Read the rest of this entry‘ to see the achievements!

Australia and Left 4 Dead 2

Image by Cystie via Flickr

I haven’t talked about this yet, although I have been watching closely to see what happened.

No doubt you’ve heard about this in the news, especially if you’re a gamer

First off, Left 4 Dead 2 was banned from Australia for this reason:

The game contains realistic, frenetic and unrelenting violence which is inflicted upon ‘the Infected’ who are living humans infected with a rabies-like virus that causes them to act violently… However, it is the use of the ‘melee’ weapons such as the crowbar, axe, chainsaw and Samurai sword which inflict the most damage. These close in attacks cause copious amounts of blood spray and splatter, decapitations and limb dismemberment as well as locational damage where contact is made to the enemy which may reveal skeletal bits and gore.

Why they just don’t up the rating to 18, I’m not sure. It seems as if even the adults over there are being told they can’t play a game with gore in it.

However, Valve has re-submitted a modified version. Quote from here:

Valve recently submitted a modified version of the game for classification by the OFLC. This modified version has a significantly less amount of gore. Decapitation and dismemberment were removed, blood splatter is almost completely non-existent, and the ever-ambiguous ‘piles of dead bodies’ issue has been solved by removing dead zombi-, err, rabies-infected living humans, as soon as they hit the ground.

Looks like Australians will be able to play… But a heavily modified version. I’d be annoyed if I lived over there. Personally, I think the gore should be swapped with rainbows, the tanks swapped with car rentals and the witches swapped with friendly girl scouts. It’s for the best, for our innocence!

Five New Left 4 Dead 2 Campaigns

Image by Cystie via Flickr

Image by Cystie via Flickr

An update! I haven’t made an update for the last two days, as you might have noticed. If you didn’t notice… Then shame on you. I was planning to update via mobile broadband, but in the end I didn’t have the time to write anything resembling an informative post.

I found some interesting stuff to write about over the weekend though. Left 4 Dead 2, Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 being the ones that stick to mind. There’s also the movie Zombieland, that I watched this weekend, to talk about (it’s awesome, don’t miss it).

First off, let’s have a look at the new Left 4 Dead campaigns. These posters come thanks to this Taiwanese website. There are five at the moment… Will we be seeing a sixth?

So far we have: Dark Carnival, Dead Center, Hard Rain, The Parish and Swamp Fever.

It looks like Dead Center is a homage to Dawn of the Dead. Awesome. Hard rain looks interesting too, I wonder if we’ll see zombies popping up from water to attack us? Oh, and if you were wondering, yes. The two most terrifying beings are joining forces to rain down hell upon us. Zombie clowns. Clown zombies.

Image by Cystie via Flickr

Image by Cystie via Flickr

Image by Cystie via Flickr

Image by Cystie via Flickr

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rumor: Two new Left 4 Dead 2 campaigns revealed (destructoid.com)
• TGS 09: Left 4 Dead 2’s Dark Carnival here, demo coming (destructoid.com)
• Rumor: ‘Dead Center’ and ‘Hard Rain’ are final Left 4 Dead 2 campaigns (joystiq.com)

Left 4 Dead 2, New Game Mode!

Image by Colony of Gamers via Flickr

Valve have recently announced a new game mode for Left 4 Dead 2, Scavenge mode!

I know what you might be thinking… Scrapheap challenge? Do we get to build a giant robot? Of course not, you can’t have zombies and giant robots in the same game and you’re crazy for even suggesting it. What about a rocket launcher, can we build that? No rocket launchers.

As a survivor you’ll be doing four main things:

• Being eaten by zombies.
• Collecting gas cans.
• Filling up a generator.
• Being eaten by more, bigger zombies.

The basic concept is like normal versus mode; four survivors versus four special infected. There are a few twists this time though: first off, the survivors will not being doing the normal “get to a safe room before your face is eaten off” routine. This time they’ll be aiming to keep a generator topped up with gas cans that are scattered throughout the map, making camping that little bit harder.

Image by Kimli via Flickr

The generator starts on 120 seconds; and each can adds 20 seconds onto that when poured into the generator. The mode can also go into a sort of “overtime” if a survivor still has their grubby mitts on a gas can.

The game will have 3 rounds per team, and the winners will be the team with two out of three rounds. If teams draw, the amount of gas cans that were used and seconds each team managed to stay alive comes into play to determine which team should win.

As infected, you’ll be doing everything you can to separate the survivors from their precious little gas cans. See a survivor running away with a can? Deal with them.

You’ll still be capable of doing the normal pounce, drag, puke and melee routine that the original infected will bring to the game, and all of these make the survivor drop their gas can apart from the boomer puke. But the rancid smell of ‘Food’s here!’ might be enough to force a survivor to drop their gas can in favour of defending themselves from the incoming horde.

In addition to the attacks from the original infected, you’re now able to take control of the The Charger, the Jockey and the Spitter; the Charger being able to knock survivors down or slam them into walls with his charge, the Jockey being able to basically… mount a survivors head and steer them into trouble and the Spitter being able to spit acid on survivors, the ground, or even on a gas can to make it explode. However, I would predict drastic changes in some of these abilities, as it might get a little imbalanced.

Image by Slightlynorth via Flickr

One thing that has bothered me is why the survivors are so desperately trying to keep this generator stocked with fuel.

What does the generator do? The survivors will be under constant attack from hordes of infected, so it can’t be something to do with keeping them out. Are they keeping it fueled so the food in the freezer doesn’t spoil? Maybe they’re trying to charge the batteries of a car? Why don’t they get a car rental like they do in every other campaign… well, near enough. I will admit that one is a helicopter… and maybe one is a boat, but that’s besides the point! Of all the articles I’ve read about this, no one has addressed it. There’ll probably be a good reason. Maybe the generator is a Transformer?

The new mode comes with six maps pulled from the story campaigns, and the game is released November 17th. Looking forward to it!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Preview: Left 4 Dead 2’s new Scavenge mode (destructoid.com)
• Left 4 Dead 2 Scavenge Mode Preview: Giving Multiplayer The Gas [Preview] (kotaku.com)
• Left 4 Dead 2’s new ‘Scavenge’ multiplayer mode revealed (joystiq.com)

Left 4 Dead 2 $25 Million Ad Campaign

Image by Colony of Gamers via Flickr

After the release of the first Left 4 Dead, the game has become a massive hit, selling 3 million copies. As I have described before, the game brings the zombie apocalypse to your computer in an entertaining and challenging way. Released on November 18th 2008, the game has been out for nearly a year now.

However, at this year’s E3, the not-long-awaited sequel was announced to the excitement and frustration of many. Why would someone be frustrated to hear that we’re getting more zombie action, you might ask? The main gripe is the game comes very close to the release of the original. Gamers were promised downloadable content for the first game, but were only offered two in the end. One being the addition of survival mode and one being the addition of a new campaign, heavily targeted towards versus mode.

Image by Colony of Gamers via Flickr

Current numbers are that Left 4 Dead 2’s pre-sale numbers are already exceeding the first game’s pre-sales by 300%, but now Valve are to set into action with an ad campaign that will cost $25 million. Be ready to be plagued by zombies while watching prime time television, while reading your favourite magazines, and don’t mind the giant zombie on the billboard while you’re driving to work. I half expect to see zombies on buses, car hires and tattooed to people’s heads. 😀

In comparison, Valve’s ad campaign budget for last years game was $10 million. Expect to see more than double the zombie mayhem you saw last year… If you didn’t see anything last year, maybe you’ll see something this time!