Left 4 Dead - Opening Cinematic.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/42271.html

"We made it, I cant believe we made it.."
"Son we just crossed the street.."

That's awesome. I'm actually eagerly awaiting this game...strangely enough media coverage is close to zero in my neck of the woods on the game, while it seems to be promoted pretty heavily in the US with commercials and all.

At the risk of sounding like a fanboy: Valve has built up quite the rep for only releasing games/products that are nothing less than great in the past few years, so I have high hopes.

Reminds me to go and buy the Orange Box...I need to play Episode 2 and portal. HL ftw.

imo Half Life 2's episodes are getting kinda tired. I wish they'd make a full-length game and just end it.

BTW, at least here you can get portal as a separate game now. Not that you would want to.

Oh I can get it seperately here too. And TFC2, and Episode 2. But they're each about 20 € with the orange box being 35€ or so.

Now, I don't NEED to own TFC2 but I definitely want Episode 2 and Portal...those two together are more expensive than the entire Orange box. So yeah, TFC2 + HL2+ Episode 1 on top of that for 5€ less won't bother me much.

Supposedly, episode 3 will be longer and answer questions that episode 2 left open. But then they said the first thing about episode 2 too.

I can only run away for so long. And the chick drooling over your character is getting a bit old. And the same kinds of battles over and over again get old. It's like having a 30 hour version of FEAR. Sure, FEAR is great... but only for the first 10 hours or so. After that it starts to get a little old.

lol. True, I suppose. But from everything I heard episode 2 is still some quality gaming, and that is apparently relatively hard to come by these days.

Bioshock has been sitting on my desktop for a week now, but I can't bring myself to start it while I'l playing Fallout 3...wouldn't want the experience of one getting lost in the other, and F3 is proving to be a formidable force so far.

I don't think you'll find Bioshock as immersive. I mean, it's a great story (imo) and a very wonderful environment, but it's entirely linear. I'm certain you'll prefer fallout to it any day. That doesn't mean it's a bad game, of course, just beware.

Mm, k. Well, even if it's 'just' scary then that's all I really want. Nothing like playing a horror shooter with surround sound in the dark.

No matter. I have a feeling I'll be good with F3 for a while.

Bought The Orange Box yesterday...and I installed Episode 2 and Portal right away. Played the first few minutes of Ep 2 (shocker didn't take long to hit ) and then quit, simply because I was tired and didn't want to ruin the 'feel' by making a half-assed start I'll report back when I finish it.

The whole "gift your games" thing on Steam is really neat, btw. As I already owned HL2 and Episode 1, I can give my 'new' copies from the Orange Box away to friends, didn't know that. I think one friend who owns HL2 will get episode 1 and another who 'doesn't like shooters' will get HL2. Will be a nice christmas-ish present.

Finished both Episode 2 and Portal over the long weekend. Remarks:

Portal

Everything everyone said it would be. What a game. Maybe a little bit short, but other than that almost perfect. One puzzle had me scratching my head for a little while (because it involved calculating an angle which I am mentally incapable of because it involves geometry and I'm geometrically retarded ) but other than that everything made such wonderful sense, in a weird fucked up portally way.

Loved the way the turrets would go "please don't hurt me" and "I don't hate you" after you knock them over. And the dark humor in general...truly great. Like when Glad0s is taunting you in the end fight



I won't even start about the stroke of genius that the credits are.


Episode 2

First things first: design-wise, it's almost perfect. I was never bored (even during the NPC explanations), I actually cared about the NPC's and the combat was challenging without being too hard.

But it felt so short. The game sums up as "fighting through antlion tunnels, then driving over to White Forest, then blowing up striders and done!". All of those parts were awesome, don't get me wrong. It just felt like the scenery didn't change much. I also disliked the way the other NPC's were swooning over me. I can take the vortigaunts and the resistance praising me as a hero, but the fact that Alyx, her father and the entire gang constantly go "oh yeah Gordon can do it Gordon can do anything!" was a little unsettling after a while. It's almost as if I walked into some antlion pheromone goo which caused every NPC to develop a major mancrush on me, or something.

Hunters' AI is amazing. Those bastards are TOUGH, jesus. They're fast, they can hit hard from far away and close by, incredibly resilient to gunfire and they actually step aside when you try to run them over by car. Oh and they flank and chase you. Impressive. The endfight was great. And the ending...well, probably one of the bleakest endings I've seen in a while. Alyx sobbing over her dad as the screen fades to black: chilling.

Some things clearing up around the Gman, too. But still no real revelations...

Playing Medieval 2: Total War Kingdoms expansion. Man, I'd forgotten how addictive this game (and the entire TW series really) can get. In case you didn't know/forgot: Kingdoms offers 4 campaigns (Americas, Teutonic, Brittannia, Crusades) on 'smaller maps'.

Of course, with the many different factions on every map replayability is high. I pretty much ravaged the game this weekend...played through the Americas campaign with Spain on Saturday, and did pretty good in the Crusades campaign on Sunday (playing as Jerusalem).

Americas was HARD. Supply of troops is so low that it's hard to succesfully make a stand against the native factions...I actually started over after mucking up my first game. At one point there were 8 (EIGHT) full stacks of one native tribe with generals headed towards my by then already thinned out cities...it was a total loss. So I restarted.

Then I learned that the best way to establish yourself was to launch a blitz attack on a faction nearby and annex their lands and cities as soon as possible. After that I just sat back, updated the infrastructure and started building a few elite armies. And man, cavalry is so unbelievably important against these crackers. They're pretty much the only thing that saved me in 70% of all my battles. But they're so scarce that I had to build them all over my 'empire' and then I had them troop up in certain cities.

In the end I wiped out all enemies except two strong tribes (Tarascans and Apache) and a few French settlements, but fighting those armies with nigh unbreakable morale in rocky lands is no laugh.


Crusades is going a LOT smoother...I have to hold 25 territories (including a few specific cities) and destroy the Gyppos. Having ample experience with those nasty sandloving bastards I immediately dispatched army after army into their territory (you start off with a good few elite armies, including one led by Richard the Lionheart) and after a few close battles broke their center of power and started mopping them up. I lost pretty much all my elite troops in the process but now I have a huge hinterland surrounded by only the sea and no freaking gyppos left.

After that I've been capturing rebel settlements, updating infrastructure and buying regions from friendly factions. I have close to no military and invested heavily into trade, so I'm absolutely filthy rich. 480.000 florins and counting. I bought my last 3 regions from allies for about 30-40k each.

At 22 territories and with Egypt gone I only need 3 more territories and to hold Baghdad for 10 turns, which is way out East. So...I'm guessing this game will end with a humungous invasion force into the Middle East, kicking Mongolian and Turkish butt.


TW FTW

Spent way too long playing it last night. Came in at 10 from doing a bar visit with some friends, showered and checked my emails...and figured I'd start the Britannia campaign, just setting it up, so I could play for real today.

So, yeah, I chose the Norwegians (vikings!) and a little while later I look at my watch: 1 AM. Goddammit. Medieval is sniping me into a sleep-deprived wreck.

On the bright side, i managed to gain a solid foothold in the North of the UK and destroyed the Scots in the process. William Wallace appeared with a full stack at a given point, but he was pretty pathetic.

Good fun. More playing tonight.

Ok, I finished all 4 campaigns in Kingdoms, Americas even twice (as Spain and as the Apache). What a glorious game. Time for something less cerebral and more twitchy...Bioshock, here I (finally) come!

lol, you're freakin' unstoppable. In a month I'll hopefully see you in left4dead.

Haha, there's a good chance of that happening. We'll see.

I played some Bioshock yesterday, and it's already got me hanging on. Even only an hour into the game I can already tell that this is a game of rare class....the voices, the atmosphere, the design, the water. Dang.

And finally a game where 5.1 surround makes a big difference. With the sound cranked up this game is pretty chilling with its fast enemies, dark setting and metallic sounds. My woofer was working overtime.