Retro Review: Left 4 Dead 2

Back in 2009, a sequel was made from an already concrete formula which once again put four survivors smack in the unknown infected world of Left 4 Dead. There was a lot of stigma following Left 4 Dead 2, hell there was even a boycott. Reason was, people though that it would be fitting as a DLC rather than a full priced game. In the end they were wrong and learned never ever to question the almighty Valve. L4D2 ate up all the L4D players and then some. The L4D lobby is now the lonely older high school prom queen at the reunion who got fat and has way too many cats.

L4D2 was not just new maps and characters, it also had new guns and the ability to hit infected with frying pans! The atmosphere of L4D2 feels somewhat cheerier almost more arcade like than the first. Even the dark and Witch infested Hard rain campaign felt light and silly. Maybe it was the lighting or the new infected fighting quad but it was easier to have fun in L4D2. The new team consisted of Coach(his friends call him Coach) a big black man usually the brains of the team, Ellis the redneck who always had an irrelevant story that was always annoyingly interrupted by others, Rochelle pretty much Zoey in a different color way, and Nick the angry white con man who always yelled at everyone.

Not a lot has changed between games. It is still a constant struggle of survival among the hordes of infected and things that always seem to need fuel. There are a handful of new infected to make your romp through the  maps that much more terrible. Jockeys, little toad-like infected who jump on your head and ride you around like a midget hooker making it difficult for teammates to shoot the little fucker off you, Spitters, stomach acid spitting infected who drain your health with incredible speed if you stand in their puddles for too long, and Chargers who do exactly what their name says, one giant arm to charge into you, pick you up and tenderize you to death on the ground. These combined with the original cast of infected, prove a worthy challenge. The maps are more varied as well, from a sugar cane factory to a carnival to a plantation house.

Gameplay wise it's the same as the first, traverse the land through infected hordes using the supplies you find along the way. Teamwork is key so this game wont be as enjoyable playing alone. The AI gets a bit dumb at times so at least one other human player would be highly beneficial. Though the AI does have ultra mega sight and can drop a zombie a mile away especially if you're playing Versus mode. Some of the guns feel weak compared to the newly added melee items. I found myself using a katana or machete way more than my gun since it doesn't need to reload and you don't have to worry about fatigue.

It's not just a new coat of paint to an existing game, it feels like a solid sequel. The PC community has also modded the complete hell out of the game so it makes it that much more great. There's nothing more satisfying that running around in a minecraft skin beating infected to death with a medieval mace.That coupled with the hefty amount of DLC out for the game makes it a very worthy and fun game to be added to your library. Plus right now you can find it for less that $15 so there's really no excuse.

Mass Effect In The Gaming Journalism World

The Mass Effect 3 ending debate has been a hot topic for the last few weeks, and throughout it's course it has reveal some interesting things. The main thing that has stuck out to me is the continued criticism and bile certain gaming sites and "journalist" aim towards those in favor of a change in ending.

Supporters of a new Mass Effect 3 have been called entitled, biodrones, babies and many other crude things by the writers who are suppose to be the voice of our culture. Of course, this could be easily traced back to money, who pays more for an opinion and what brings the most page views. This to me points out a very alarming point in our gaming world, the one with the deepest pockets controls the word. What ever happened to unbiased news reporting? There are a few reputable writers out there that even though they don't particularly agree with the supporters, they don't go calling them names, insulting their cause or injecting their personal feelings to a non-opinion article. Forbes has been pretty much the only unbiased, loud-spoken voice of reason during this whole debate. A business publication is more credible than a handful of the top visited gaming sites. That should not be the case.

Is our gaming culture that easily bought out by big companies that there has to be an outside source to report the facts without going off into a rant about how much they hate the cause in order to keep their endorsement? Of course, after all the negativity and what I can assume is a drop in site activity, many of the game journalist flipped to the support side just so they could say they do. That is not good journalism. Not only does it make us look like indecisive band-wagoners, it makes the genre in general seem like one big joke.

Video game "journalists" are people too with many varying opinions. They can both report a story and opine about it, that is one hundred percent true. However, when you go on a rant about how the opposing side should just "stop crying and get over it" you lose some of that trust the reader has instilled in you. You make yourself look like you don't really give a shit about what the other side has to say. I believe that there has to be a certain level of professionalism and finesse when you post your opinion on something controversial that gets people excited. You can not shut your ears to the other side.

We need to have people we can trust to be the flag carriers of our culture. The obelisk by which we stand proud and vocalize our thoughts without being talked down to. We shouldn't need to look to other sources for credibility, it needs to be from our own. As long as advertisement dollars are at stake though, I am afraid of the hill the gaming journalism is going down on. I hope that a few hold fast and keep themselves true or we're going to be in trouble.

Neverdead

Alright so I didn't know when to post this so I'll post it up here. I did NOT finish playing through this game BUT, I will tell you all why. Now then, Neverdead.

 When you mention Neverdead to people you are usually met with questions, "Does this mean we can't die in the game?" "What's the health system do?" "Who are you and why are you in my house with that notepad?" It wasn't a very widely known game and apparently, that's how the marketing department wanted it. It was developed by Rebellion Developments and published by Konami so you would think with a Konami backing it would have been at least slightly more on the radar.

In Neverdead, you play as an immortal demon called Bryce who can never die. I'll give you a second to collect your brain fragments if I just blew your mind. From the first moment of the game, he comes off as tired of roaming the earth, apathetic and snarky, very snarky. Think Dante from Devil May Cry turned up to eleven. There is a small interactive cutscene at the beginning which is apparently suppose to tell you a bit about his past but ends up confusing you. Something to do with a fat clown with eight pack abs and a very annoying voice. Fast forward to the present game time. You are introduced to Bryce's sassy and edgy female sidekick Arcadia. She can die. You can not. therein lies the catch to being an immortal killing machine. You need to protect her or you will lose. So after being tethered to your in-your-face sidekick who kicks open the door to your apartment and starts berating you to get to work, you set off to your first assignment.

So in a game where you can't die you're wondering how damage is dealt. Well your body parts can get blown off and you must collect them every time they do unless you have enough regeneration energy reserved to just regrow them. This might have sounded like a good idea on paper, and it is, but after playing for the two or three hours I dedicated to this game, every time my legs or arms got blown off I groaned mournfully and started to begrudgingly look for them. The body part mechanic is different from any other game but the fact that the slightest  hit from an enemy sends your arm or leg flying off across the screen makes the feature seem more like a chore. There are parts of the game that treat you like a pinball that force you to rip your head off and throw it through a vent or a seesaw mechanism to get through a specific part of the level. The problem is the frequency that this happens (It happens about 4 times in two hours) and the camera handle when you're just a head. You misjudge your jump and you have to do the entire bit over again because the camera didn't want to tilt in the right direction.

I need to address this very quickly because it seriously bothered me. Remember somewhere in that word wall up there when I said you couldn't die? Well I lied, I'm sorry. Usually that loss comes in the form of small, white, spiked balls that suck your head and body parts into their stomach when you get blown apart. Your arms or legs aren't too bad since you can just regrow them or kill it with your other arm but they usually go after your head if and when it gets blown off. If they suck you in you have one chance to get free in the form of a quick time event slider and if you fail, you are stuck forever being digested by it as Arcadia put it. They are in EVERY fight. You will not go into a room full of enemies and NOT see four or five of them rolling around. Some say it's for balance, I say it's to annoy the complete hell out of you when you have to do the room over again for the sixth time.

Characters? Alright fine. Bryce and Arcadia are annoying. Plain ans simple. The snap at each other every chance they get and you would think it gets better over time but nope, still annoying after the seventh hundred condescending joke. There is one character which I found way more interesting than Bryce and Arcadia and he's only shown very briefly at the end of the first level. I'll just say he has knives stuck in his body that never run out. Who knows though, maybe Bryce and Arcadia develop a deeper relationship throughout the game.

The guns in this game seem to be made out of cardboard and shoot gum wads because they are useless. There are gun upgrades but even when I added two to my perks list, my guns still didn't do much damage. Your best bet is Bryce's sword which controls with the right thumbstick weirdly enough. You need to flail it around for it to work which I found pretty ass backwards and gave me horrible flashbacks of Too Human's controls.

All things considered, the Neverdead concept sounds great but falls flat on it's face in execution. It needed that over the top feeling to it to make it truly stand out. I feel that if this license were handed to someone like Platinum Games they would make an incredibly kick-ass game. Right now it's a boring hack-and-slash game with a twisty story and a single golden idea. The game isn't bad it was just not very well fleshed out. Maybe my credibility is shot at the beginning where I said I couldn't finish the game but if it didn't grip me and keep me focused enough to push through, there is no point in playing on.