Surely they missed an opportunity with the name…

If you’re one of those people addicted to Left 4 Dead, and unable to resist anything 8-bit, then this is just the perfect thing for you:

I learned about this whilst leafing through the glossy pages of a famous gaming magazine.   The game, developed by PixelForce NES, lets you run through the entire Left 4 Dead campaign in full 8-bit glory (in authentic two-player co-op), and will be available for free download on PC sometime in January.

I think this is a great idea but I can’t help but feel they missed an opportunity with the name.  I mean, am I the only person that would have called this Left 4 Dead: 8-bite?

TL;DR – Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

For a very short time I worked in a white tablecloth restaurant that could be called “fine dining”. It was known for its high quality dry-aged beef and took special pride in the wine pairings. For anyone who’s not familiar with it, the goal of pairing is to find the right wine for the right steak. E.g.– Cabernet Sauvignon ages well in oak and often has a sweet, smokey taste. This flavor goes perfectly with red meat but not so much with poultry of fish (which are usually paired with a white wine).

Why is this important? The idea of pairing is that by combining two ingredients the attributes of each will compliment the other and turn a plate of food in to a one of a king meal. Let’s see how this applies to video games.

A few months back I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. At about that same time I also dove back in to the Capital Wastes with the new DLC for Fallout 3. I was halfway through this bleak, depressing book when I loaded up my old save and– The Pitt never looked so full of despair. It was like I’d been playing the game with blinders on up until that point. As much as I love playing Fallout, my mind can drift when I play it (specially during the long treks to those un-quicktravelable locations). At the same time, whenever I let my mind wander – in traffic, at work – it was always The Road that I thought about.

We’ve all read a sad story, or a tense chapter and felt affected after we put the book down– it’s the same as playing too much Tetris and seeing falling blocks everywhere. Perfect example; pull an all-nighter with Left 4 Dead, then read some of World War Z and tell me if the next day you don’t absent-mindedly examine your workplace for prospective safe houses. A good book will refuse to let you keep your mind off the story after you close the cover, and a good game will refuse to let you take your eyes off the screen while you play it. The Road had put me in the headspace of characters in a post-apocalyptic world. By doing that it gave more of an impact to playing Fallout. I guess I started taking the game a little more seriously.

After that I turned the difficulty up a little to make it feel like there was more risk to my actions. I started playing it smarter, like the Father character in the Road. I checked 360 degrees every few paces conserving as much ammunition as I could and bypassing every enemy that didn’t detect me. Instead of seeing Fallout from the perspective  of “I can do anything to anyone and just reload the game”, I saw it closer to “anything can happen to me, I should be careful”.

Left 4 Dead Achievement Generator

Check it out yourself here. If you come up with one that’s better (I doubt it, I’m kind of a genius), paste the code in the comments. I dare you.

Showing Up Late

All this talk about Left 4 Dead has left me a little jealous and mad at myself for not picking it up yet. I was going to stop and buy it up on the way home from school today, but I got unexpectedly called into work, so no dice.

I heard that the best thing about it is the multiplayer, and I want to hop on the killing train before it leaves Zombie Station. Maybe tomorrow. No, wait, maybe Wednesday.

Bow Chicka Bow Bow

Dudes and Dudettes, look at that picture above, snapped during an online sesh with Tyler yesterday.

There are four players in Left 4 Dead – this fact never changes. So why are there only 3 sleeping bags? And why is one of them rolled up, clearly unused? Are there some post-zombie-slaying orgies on up in here?

“A Zombie Lover’s Paradise”

Hi Mark!

I just wanted to let you know that both Tyler and I will be picking up our pre-ordered copies of Left 4 Dead this afternoon. Yeah, remember how we played the demo a week early because we pre-ordered the game? That was pretty sweet. Later today, you might see us online, knee-deep in what IGN.com touts as a “zombie lover’s paradise” (they gave it a 9.0, too). Catch you later!

Probably having more fun than you,
Russ

P.S. – Did I tell you that you get to play as the zombies? I’ll tell you all about it someday.

Left 4 Dead-mo

As I type this, the other two halves of Threevue are busy playing with each other. Oh, and they are in the middle of a co-op Left 4 Dead match.

You see, I was left 4 dead by them, because they both got access to the demo by pre-ordering the game, which I have yet to do, and it’s making me very jealous.

I hope it red rings their Xboxes.

Demotopia!: Left 4 Dead

Got my hands on the early demo of Left 4 Dead this morning, thanks to pre-ordering the game at Gamestop.

First impression: fast, bloody, fun. The game runs surprisingly fast, and for good reason – scores of zombies can come flying at you all at once, and you need the game’s speed just to survive. What results is a frantic, quick experience. The game is (necessarily) gory, and my favorite element is the fact that if you shoot an enemy right next to you, blood will splatter onto your screen. It’s a pretty sweet touch. The gameplay itself is very simple – zombies don’t drop ammo, and you don’t really have to spend time looking for it, either; there are certain caches in the game that you’ll run across for resupply. Also, there is no navigation system, you pretty much have to find where to go next on your own. This really adds to the “trapped in a city” vibe of the game.

Teamwork is at the core of the game, which is further emphasized by the ability to share items and the need to save your teammates from certain attacks/pins by the zombies. The zombies themselves are varied. There are regular zombies as well as suped-up undeads, which are all planted at random places all over the map. What surprised me the most was how interactive the zombies are; some will just sit there while others will come right for you. Although with enough provoking, they’ll all want some of your brains.

Bottom line: It’s just as fun as I hoped it would be. There are a lot of elements that I will be in the full game, like the fact that you get to play as the zombies, that I can’t wait for. Until then, this is a demo that I will actually play more than once, which is saying a lot.

Oh, and the way that the zombies react to the pipe bomb is beyond awesome.

I Won’t Be Left Without Left 4 Dead

I did something yesterday that I haven’t done in a long time; I pre-ordered a game from Gamestop. I can’t even remember the last time I did that, but it’s been at least two years. I pre-ordered Left 4 Dead because a) the Gamestop guy wasn’t pushy about it, b) it might actually be hard to find this on day one, and c) it’s the only fall game that I know for sure will be worth my $60. I mean, when was the last time that Valve disappointed?

Left 4 Dead Demo: “Early November”

In the wake of all sorts of new games coming out in the next few weeks (Fallout 3, Dead Space, Fable 2, LittleBigPlanet), I’m most looking forward to the demo of Left 4 Dead that is going to be available in “early November“.

Box Art Reminds Us What To Use When Playing Games

Hands. They’re all the rage these days. So much so that they are interesting enough to be the box art for upcoming games Left 4 Dead and Dead Space. Oh, and the word “Dead”, that’s totally in, too. Although it might be hard to play any games without any thumbs. They couldn’t find a better hand model? David Duchovny was busy?

I will admit that Left 4 Dead‘s box art is 10x better than The Orange Box‘s.

Left 4 Dead

Maybe I am an idiot. I had never even heard of Valve’s upcoming Xbox 360/PC title Left 4 Dead until a few hours ago, and now I can’t think of a game I’m anticipating as much as this one. Well, maybe Resident Evil 5.

Let me break it down for you:
- First person shooter from the people that made Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike and Portal.
- The bad guys are zombies. Zombies that can run.
- Four player co-op (only?), with real teamwork involved.

I would post a YouTube video right about now, but I couldn’t find anything that looked any good. Instead, please please please go here to IGN and watch this Hi-Res video.

Threevue Review: Left 4 Dead

Mark:
Man, I really wish there was a game where you were in regular city streets that are filled with crazy zombies that are trying to eat you, but you still have a bunch of weapons with a ton of ammunition. And wouldn’t it be cool if the zombies spawned in different places every time so you could play it over and over and it wouldn’t get boring? Also, I wish that game would have two player, wait no, four player co-op, so you and three friends could run around blasting the undead together, but if you didn’t have three friends, the AI was good enough that it would actually help you instead of hurt you. And it would be rad if you and your friends could give each other health and stuff when you need it? But most of all, I wish there was a game that had all this, but there was a mode where you got to play as a zombie and had to try and kill people online. That would be really fun.

What did you just say? A game like this already exists? That’s very exciting. Oh, but there’s a catch. No story? I guess I can deal with that, it’s not like COD4 online has a story (although offline it does). It’s kind of short, too, with only four “episodes” you say? That’s not too bad, as long as they all feel at least a little different, which I guess they do. Well, it seems like even with those few hang-ups, this could be a really great game, and one of the best multiplayer experiences of the whole year and possibly beyond. What’s this game called?

90/100

Russ:
I reeeeeaaally liked The Orange Box. I never played Half-Life 2 until then, and the whole experience is something that’ll stay with me for a while. Not to mention the awesomeness of Portal. So when I heard that Valve was making a new zombie FPS game, I was all over it. Matter of fact, it was the only game I pre-ordered this holiday season. It’s got everything you could ask for – 4 player co-op, fast gameplay, and a helluva AI system.

When you team up with three other friends, there’s a lot of fun to be had. Not just in trying to complete the missions, but in messing around and creating a general ruckus. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t have a whole lot of depth to it. Although what is there is awesome, it just happens to run dry before you really want it over. And as much as I love the co-op, I wish there was a bit more story (or any, for that matter). Although the game has varied AI which makes the experience a little different every once in a while, it does tend to get a little stale after a while. That being said, I look forward to keeping this game in my library for future DLC, and to play it every once in a while.

89/100

Tyler:
If 2 years ago someone would have asked me to make a list of every conceivable attribute that I would want to see in a co-op FPS about zombies, L4D would have ticked so many of the boxes that I would be hard pressed to say that Gabe Newell is anything but my personal omniscient fairy godfather. This game has given me complete trust in Valve, so much so that I would buy stock in those sons of bitches if the recent economic crisis didn’t leave me eating Pork N’ Beans out of a tin can at the switch yard.

The key to the game is the people that you play with. Friends = good game. Anyone matchmade from xbox live = shit sandwiches all around. But when you do get the right group together, the game can illicit a small fraction of the terror that would be felt by a swiftly advancing mob of feral cannibals, and that is an admirable achievement in itself. One of the main qulities that I think everyone wants to see evolve in the online arena is teamwork; I’m tired of the PCrs hogging all of the cohesivness. L4D is a game where working together is not an option. It’s nice to see that. To quote Jim Sterling:

Hey dickheads! Left 4 Dead is not Halo!

92/100