status 2013 December

Nothing much going on.

Stopped playing Starcraft 2 a while ago.

Occasionally I still think about the story of The Last of Us.

Tried Plants vs Zombies 2, got bored, got sickened by the money grabbing 'pay to play' model, didn't go back.

Played a round of Left 4 Dead, just the first map No Mercy, got a little nostalgic, but mostly bored.

Paged through my nearly 500 Fallout 3 screenshots. Got a little more nostalgia, but mostly I'm glad to be done with it. I sure would like to crack open Fallout (3) New Vegas, but Real Life won't allow that level of commitment right now.

I've lost the plot, what was I supposed to be doing, playing from oldest to newest?

I read back through the blog, following my bread crumb trail, fixing typos. Sometimes in my daily life I think about some aspect of gaming I really should write down. I am relieved to see I have already written many of these things down, sometimes even more completely than I am thinking about them now. I've been wondering if all this blogging would ever amount to anything, and now I know it has, at least for my memory continuity.

Left 4 Dead : Zombie Genocidest

Finally finished Zombie Genocidest.

This means I'm done with single-player; there's nothing left I can do on my own. And there's not much else I can do in multi-player, as there are not many people playing online any more.

I'll leave it installed; I might come back, as it is good clean mindless fun, and easy to get back into. But then, there's always TF2 for that, and there's almost always a good online game going on.

Left 4 Dead : maps

map "Horror House"

can't open in campaign mode

map "Breaking Point"

can't open in campaign mode

map "The Edge"

again, no campaign mode

I'm starting to wonder why that McDonald's map worked, and these all aren't.

map "The walk of Death"

OK, this opens in campaign mode. The bots won't pick up initial supplies, but would pick up later findings. There are lots of places where you don't see a wall, but there is one. The telephone poles you could perch on and snipe from in the finale were fun. The ending is glitchy and shows an unfinished map, and no credits.

Not bad for something not probably meant for campaign mode. No need to revisit.

map "Dark Arena"

doesn't show up in campaign

map "Dead Stock"

nope

map "Night of the Green Flu"

sadly no; disappointing, really wanted to see this one

map "Orange Dunes"

no

map "COD4 - Wetwork"

finally - another working survival map

The layout seems to have potential, but the bots are not very useful.

map "The Black Gate"

won't load in campaign

map "Bedrooms 3 Bite Size"

nope

Left 4 Dead, achievement catnip

While looking for more campaigns, I found a map, and found I could play it like a campaign. It's survivor mode! I was thinking about trying that out, but I thought it was online only. I got the Bronze Mettle and Silver Bullets achievements. Which brings me to - who cares about achievements? I should be too old and wise a gamer to fall for this kind of new-fangled marketing, but dammit they work.

When achievements were new in TF2, I could reasonably expect to collect most of them, and it seemed fun to do so. Some were so easy, and some you had to put some effort into. But over the years they've added so many stupid achievements, like ones that you could only get on one particular Halloween, that I gave up on all but the most reasonable ones. There was an achievement for the Pyro, a million points of fire damage, that seems reasonable until you see how slow the progress is, and you realize you are grinding. I'm going for a similar achievement in L4D now, the Zombie Genocidest - Kill 53,595 Infected. While I've been trying out campaigns, I've got it as high as 38k, and that took many hours. I feel like I'm already done with L4D, but I want to get this one, and so it makes me feel like I'm not done with L4D. I don't know if you can call it marketing, since I already bought the game. And I don't know if you can call achievements value-add, because I can't measure if I would have been any more or less satisfied without them. But I can tell it does feed the OCD and hoarding sides of me. At least its not making me fill my house up with junk and counting the same things over and over. But I could be playing something else.

At best, achievements help you gauge your level of expertise in a game, at worst they are a treadmill you wonder why you are on.

Left 4 Dead : a few more campaigns

I'll try a few more campaigns.

Back to l4dmaps.com to see what's at the top of the list.

"Death Aboard"

Not really memorable except for the tilted boat level. And if someone gets punched off of the lighthouse by a tank.

Overall OK, worth playing once.

"DeadCity"

What's with the Mardi Gras music? There's this one spot early on with infinite horde - never having seen that before in the game I stayed there for a while before getting bored, running past, and finding the exit. The last level with the random subway cars didn't make sense. Skip it.

"City 17"

If you are going to invoke the Half-Life series, you better deliver.

(later)

It was better than I expected, but still not worth playing.

"Redemption"

This is good, but there are a few minor bugs here and there. Could have used a bit more testing and polish. There was one show stopper where I got knocked into a corner by a tank and couldn't move (had to restart); not sure if that's an engine bug or the map. Maybe it is a bug on this map: it happened again, this time an NPC got knocked into the same corner by the tank. Another bug: first time to escape vehicle no one could get aboard, second time was OK though.

Overall, worth playing once; would be even better with some work.

"Silent Hill 1"

Download and extracted "silenthill_fix.rar" to addons; game couldn't see it. Moved vpk file to addons; still can't see it. Downloaded "silenthill_040310_865.zip", OK.

I never played Silent Hill, though I've read about it, I doubt I'll get all the references.

OK, this is boring, and the puzzles don't make sense.

Skip.

"Suicide Blitz"

Pretty good so far. The references to MST3K and X-Files are a bit much but since they aren't over the top its OK.

(later)

I'm liking this level. Interesting spaces, more pop culture references (arcade games, Dr. Who). Having trouble staying on escape vehicle, but its the challenging kind of trouble, not the frustrating kind.

That was pretty good; would play again.

"Dead Before Dawn"

Cute opening. Boring map, too easy. Like the musical interludes. In-game advertisement for your personal sites destroys immersion; even if subtly done its usually just plain wrong. I should probably just stop playing it, but there were a few neat tricks, and I'm running out of maps, so I'll continue.

There are some interesting puzzles and tricks that seem quite novel in L4D world, and then there are ancient cliches like invisible walls that prevent you from doing something obvious, like climbing through plain air, that hearken back to 90s FPS gaming. Schizophrenic.

This campaign has a lot of voice work, and surprisingly, its only bad, not awful. Unfortunately, communication via voice should be very limited, and if possible repeated, because you can't go more that 10 seconds without some gunfire, and all that voice work has gone to waste.

Done. Overall, I have to say its worth playing. For all the goofy and annoying stuff, there's lots of interesting little things I haven't seen anywhere else.

Would play again.

"One 4 Nine"

Off to a good start. One thing that I really like about the original L4D story is that they don't let you in on why this is happening. As an average citizen just trying to survive you might never know how it started. Many NPCs offer theories, mostly in the form of graffiti, but no one really knows for sure. And for an action game that's more than adequate; it fits the first-person storytelling. This campaign seems to hint at a possible source that is kind of out there, but plausible. I'm only part way through and I don't know how it ends, so this isn't a spoiler, but imagine a little bit of Zerg special sauce finding its way to Earth, and imagine what might result.
OK, I wasn't expecting the ending of a different movie. L4D is an action game, and doesn't have much tools for story telling. Trying to tell a story in this world, unless you keep it subtle and brief, just ends in silliness. I understand this now.

Worth playing, would play again.

"Precinct 84"
Sometimes crude, but overall well done. I like the grueling ending, though I had to seek help on what to do to win. The gas tank was not obvious.

Would play again.

"Derailed"

Nicely done. Lots of vehicles, machine guns, scavenging. A little flaky sometimes, like when you're on the truck and you jump there's no conservation of momentum and you could fall off the truck. There's another part where I think one player has to go it alone while the others provide cover, but my bot teammates just teleport over to me when separated.

This is a good place to get your "Red Mist" achievement.

Would play again.

"Fallen"

I know, its in beta. The maps are intricate, but are completely unrealistic. Its like playing FPS maps from 10+ years ago where stuff is just arranged just to look cool. It has the empty beauty of Unreal, the bland utility of Black Mesa and the nauseating physics of Ziggurat Vertigo thrown in. Maybe its on purpose, like a retro thing, but it doesn't not mesh with the realism them of L4D at all.

The deep pool of water is a neat idea, but doesn't play right at all. You can't drown in it, but you can get stuck in it. If you want a pool for the zombies to emerge from (scary good), make it a pool of dense fog or something.

There's a lot of interesting little things here that push the engine to its limits. The bots have some serious problems behaving here, like falling off of ledges, and especially in the finale, where gravity becomes a factor.

Its interesting to check out, but don't expect a normal game.

Maybe play again.

"Crossing Over"

Huge, empty, tedious.

The creator took the time to create interesting back story notes from the early days of the infection, and the scientists' attempt to understand the infection, but didn't even take the time to name the individual maps of the campaign.

Maybe worth playing once, but that's probably it.

"Quedan 4X Morir"

Had to use Google Translate to read some of the Spanish, but otherwise not bad. Crashed on last map. Tried again, it runs. Finished campaign; of course it ends silly, any time you try to get too serious in this type of game.

Nice effort, worth a play, but probably just the once.

"Dark Blood"

It says complete on the page for this campaign, but on load it says beta. On one map the water is really messed up, always blinking in and out. And being underwater doesn't seem to make sense in L4D.

There's no great innovations here, just a reasonably well layed out campaign. Worth playing at least once.

"Back to school"

The highest version I could find is beta 6. Short, but not bad. Would play again if finished.

"Vienna Calling 1"

Pretty bad. Levels are boring, make little sense. Some invisible walls, and awkward rubble. There is water that saps your health for no reason, and tiny ledges where your teammates can get permanently trapped (until they die). Has nothing to do with Vienna.

Don't bother.

"The Parish (L4D1)"

Uses maps from L4D2 - I'll wait until I've played that.

"Coal'd Blood"

Big, empty, dull maps, senselessly arranged. Some pathing problems for bots, but not too bad. Physics fail on elevators. Got incapacitated in a place bots couldn't detect.

Boring. Do not play.

"Blood Orange"

For something so surreal its surprisingly entertaining. It's almost like the survivors are on break, and doing a little Matrix style survival training. But at the end, the bots don't know to board the rescue vessel, so I have to let them die to finish.

Another interesting thing is you can take the time to experiment with weapons you don't normally use.

Worth playing at least once, maybe more.

"Chaos Theory"

It seems there are two main ways these add-on campaigns go: realistic or surreal. This one seems to go for surreal. You start at the dead end of some cave system, with no idea how you got there. And why do my bots all have Uzis and all I get is a pistol?

I got stuck in the middle of a room for no apparent reason. I've reviewed a whole bunch of campaigns now, and this hardly occurs even on some of the worst maps.

The areas of multiple special infected are interesting but weird (not in a good way) puzzles.

There was some kind of multi-color puzzle room; I was glad I could skip it.

The ending was very humdrum after all the attempts at doing something different for the sake of different.

Overall, not terrible (except the glitch), but not really worth playing.

"Bloody Sunday"

Right from the start map borders are rediculously overdefined (like a big flat wall painted with a vegetation pattern) or undefined (you can walk off map into mid-air and colors). I climbed over a ledge the bots couldn't follow - luckily they can teleport to catch up with you. I fell off a ledge and they couldn't see me; had to restart. Climbing down a simple hill became a near fatal event - luckily the bots could see me and pull me up. I jump in a rescue vehicle, and the bots don't follow - and I immediately die from a hunter.

More glitches, pathing problems for the AI. There's an elevator that none of the bots know to get on, luckily they can fall down the great chasm and climb up. I know this is BS because the AI works on plenty of other elevators. At the end - big drama - tanks appear, but so far away you get bored waiting for them to finally get to you. Again the bots don't know to get on the rescue vehicle, because it hasn't been defined properly.

As a final insult, the game doesn't even roll credits properly at the end, and I had to 'exit to the main menu'.

Don't bother with this map.

"Heaven can wait"

First map is linear and somewhat boring, but OK. I like when you can deal with a witch on open ground (plenty of space to run and gun). Gets a bit more sophisticated as you go along, but the layout usually doesn't feel like it makes sense. The last stand ending is strangely satisfying, even though its not clear where you're going.

Worth playing at least once.

"No Fate"

Shows imagination in some spots, not in others, but decent effort overall.

Last level, can't find trigger - oh its hidden in with some supplies. The bots don't know to get on the rescue vehicle, and the ending doesn't trigger the credits, so I have to manually exit.

I would have said worth playing, until the buggy ending.

"Dead Getaway"

Shows some attention to detail, but boring map design. Water puzzle was novel, though its somewhat beyond the physics engine of the game. Game crashed abruptly to desktop near end of level, not clear why. Restart, crashes again in same exact spot, right after you get back above ground, go around the police cars, and enter a break in the guard rail. There is no reason to try again.

Do not play.

"Lost in Linz v2"

Got stuck on a ladder - not sure if its the fault of engine or this map. Finally shook myself free by pistol whipping the ladder.

Overall, shows effort but nothing really interesting; maybe worth playing once.

"Surrounded by the dead"

Nice little intro, shows you where your starting equipment is. Map design, at least in the beginning, is nice. There was a really nice scripted event, but it triggers too early (busy climbing over truck) to actually see it. Went up a ladder and the bots didn't come to save me - could just be stupid bots. No problem, these maps are fun, restarting, then I saw an error message I've never seen before: NAV ERRORS Map is unplayable! CONTINUE. Funny, didn't see that the first time around. No infected to be seen until the first door button reached. Even after, hardly any infected on a previously crowded map. The train event was nice, but the invisible walls cheapens it. Continuing on, level design is good, you feel like you're actually somewhere at times.

Other than a few glitches, a good campaign. Worth playing again.

Left 4 Dead : finishing up

I couldn't finish the last story, The Sacrifice, without having to look up some help. Its really not meant for single-player, which is all I'm really into. There is a trick to finish it - minor spoiler - you have to do what the AI controlled characters can't. No big deal, got the achievement, and now I'm technically done with the game, as there isn't anything left to do but try it at harder levels.

I'm replaying some parts that I didn't quite finish (like beating a campaign without dying), and trying out some of the weapons I never really used. The weapons are sadly few in type, but they are all good. The auto-shotgun is lots of fun. A pistol in each hand, which doesn't make much sense in real life, makes sense here. I'm getting better with grenades. I briefly read that in Left 4 Dead 2, there are melee weapons; that should be interesting. But L4D2 is still $19.99 in the steam store, so it can wait.

The campaign, such as it is, feels really disjointed, as if there were connections, but I didn't get to see them, like maybe I accidentally skipped the cut scene every time. Reading the wiki page, I can see that half the chapters in the campaign were add on DLCs, and there was a comic book that provided more backstory. For single player, just little more connecting material would have been nice, even if it was just something that let you play them all in order.

I would like a little more campaign, looked online, found "I Hate Mountains", trying that first. Nice site, ihatemountains.com; this seems like a mature product made by dedicated fans, which is always a good sign that you're not wasting your time. I follow their advice to enable console, rebuild sound cache, etc. Game seems stuck at end of sound cache rebuild; end task. Oh, its right there in the documentation, have a game running first. OK, but this time the game exits; documentation doesn't say one way or another how its supposed to exit.

(later)

"I Hate Mountains" is really quite good, not quite good enough to stand with the original campaigns, but its up there. The giveaway is that its cobbled together out of existing media (images, bits of voicework) from the originals, and doesn't contain anything unique to itself.

I haven't yet mentioned one of the coolest things about L4D and that's the return of friendly fire. This has been dumbed out of almost every game, and its great to see it back as a tactical consideration.

Off to l4dmaps.com to find some more campaigns. Looks like Mountains got a 94 rating, and happily I see several others in the 90s. Selecting "Night terror Fix". Should I rebuild sound cache everytime? I start the campaign and rebuild, again after a long wait it exits to desktop. Don't know if it accomplishes anything. The "Haunted House" level is really cute, a nice mix of childhood memories of Disney Land and something more current. In the "Moria" map - small spoiler - I didn't get the idea of holding the use key down long enough to activate the switch. They could have telegraphed this somehow, maybe by making the bucket starting to shake, or just not making it so obscure in the first place. It's kind of out of place.

(later)

Done with 'Night Terror". It was a cute bunch of maps, worth playing through once, but once you get all the jokes and surprises, there's nothing more to it.

Left 4 Dead : getting to know you

OK, so its a littler deeper than nothing, and I'm starting to appreciate its sense of style. I'm really impressed at how they dressed up a bunch of bots in the single player game. I remember the bots in Quake and they were disturbing; they kept repeating the same phrases and they ran and gunned like T1000s on crack.

The graffiti on the walls, like Portal from the previous year, lets the story drip out in a more organic way. I like the little comments the four characters let drop sometimes; I wish they used it more often. I also like how its told from the perspective of common people, who have no idea what's going on with the military, or other cities, let alone the world. Its the right amount of story to hold things together and not interfere with the non-stop action.

I like the zombies a lot. They are just human enough to creep you out, and inhuman enough that you don't feel bad wiping them out. Its unfortunate they are all the same gray color, but at least they have varied forms of dress and voice. Unlike old fashioned shuffling zombies, these engage in humanistic behaviors, which makes it so much more disturbing when you open fire on them.

I also like how they use the modern secular interpretation of zombies, in that they are infected, not undead. Things are a bit more ambiguous with the witch, but I'm guessing the supernatural music is mostly to cue the player, not an explanation of origin. The specialist undead are mostly silly, but without them it wouldn't be much of a game.

Some things that take you out of the game are the waves of grunts who appear like clockwork every couple of minutes. I like the idea that certain sounds attract them, like car alarms and the beeper on pipe bombs, but your constant gunshots don't.

As much as I would like to meet a few more civilians, I guess it would detract from the 'us four against the world' vibe.

After I finish single player on normal, maybe I'll try a higher difficulty, now or later. I think this game may be in my rotation for a while as something easy to pick up and put down on when I want this kind of play.

Left 4 Dead : initial impression

This game takes me out of my comfort zone, and I suppose that's a good thing. I like a game with a deep story; it's too early to say since I just started playing, but apparently L4D is just a string of cliches. I'm OK with that, for a straight action game. Smash TV didn't have any story deeper than The Running Man, and that was good. The zombie genre still hasn't gotten old.

I like to be able to save my game whenever, so I can never lose. I might have to go back, I might have to even go back so I can choose another fork of the road, but at least I don't have to start over from scratch. In Left 4 Dead, there doesn't seem to be any continuity between sessions, only how many safe rooms you can get to in any one instance of the game. Because there is no save, there is no sense of me in the game.

The game actively punishes too much thinking or planning. You've got to keep moving, or you'll run out of resources and die. You can't stalk the enemy and pick them off from afar (much), stealth is of little use, most traps and problems can't be avoided; full steam ahead.

When I got to the weapons stash, I instinctively reached for the sniper rifle, but before I picked it up I knew it would be mostly useless here. I took the AR-15. Normally I would prefer to pick off enemies at range, to soften up a position before assault, but this game, in Grand Theft Auto style, every time you look away from a spot new zombies spawn. Again, staying in place is discouraged.

I appreciate being out of my usual zone, because it shows me exactly where my zone is. I like long slow thinking planning story games; this is what the opposite feels like. And I'm glad I only had to pay $5 to find out.

game list

Where to now? What am I doing? I found value in writing a to-do list recently, so I'll make a master to-do list, and make it a fixed page here. I don't really want to have to go through a list like its some sort of chore to play all these games, but it can help guide me, and make sure I'm not missing anything.

While assembling the list, I went to MobyGames and listed Windows games by MobyRank, only to find Cave Story beating out all the Half-Life games, all the Grand Theft Auto games, everything. I read about the game, supposedly an indy side-scroller that's special, so I tried it. Maybe its special, but nothing about its physics or culture seems like something I can relate to. In any case, its a twitch game, and not something I can really play. I read the wiki page, and its surprisingly complex.

I also read this game inspired Braid, which I tried briefly, and found visually and musically impressive. Unfortunately I saw some spoilers, but that story seems really compelling. If I have to try and play a twitch game, I'd rather try that.

I want something to play now. Something with loud action, easy to get into, and known good. Left 4 Dead is on sale for $4.99, that should work. Having some trouble setting up graphics, kind of spoiled by auto-config. Everything feels slow and chunky, hopefully I get used to it. Finally figured out how to get 1920x1200, screen is blank.