Left 4 Dead 2 Catch All

Hehe sorry for making fun of your skills in that game Tamren, but it was funny to see you run up to every boomer right after I knocked it back to make sure you got some on you when it popped.

Actually, that game was kind of hilarious all around. It was two teams of stooges.

It's not often I share like this, but I had such a wonderful game last night, I'd like to gloat.

The evening was progressing normally...friends would pop in and out of the party, we would lobby hop until we find three or four people who look like they know each other, the game starts, we wipe the floor with them, some of them quit, random other pubs come in and eventually it's time to find another lobby. Just like any other night.

But late, around 3am, we start a game on Hard Rain against a group of four who actually killed on Hard Rain 1. They missed all attempts at the dock instakill, so we were moving through without problem, until I got jockeyed into the alarm car. My teammates freed me, but a world-ending Charge spread us badly with too much horde and we didn't have a pipe on anyone not secured, so the incaps came sporadically but inexorably.

They proved to be good survivors, too. We killed one near the first two-story building only by getting some wonderfully timed two-and-three secures, and then me up on top there spitting down onto the incapped body. They defibbed him, but we took a toll on them, and they didn't quite survive map 1.

Hard Rain 2 was spectacular. They were just entering the first courtyard when I became a tank. Ah, there's a car in there with them! I rushed in and slammed it against two of them, then we chased down the remaining sprinters and ended the map. On our survivor team, I explained exactly what we need to do: if the tank spawns early, stay inside and clear the horde and SIs. Otherwise, clear the first courtyard from within the building, kill an SI or two, then sprint across the first courtyard no matter where the tank spawns, rush through the little building and out into the second courtyard, where we will fight the tank. Fortunately for us, the other team was not very smart. They wasted their first attack, including vomiting on us, as soon as we opened the safe room door, bringing most of the courtyard commons directly to us. Once that was calmed, we sprinted across, the tank music queued, and I tossed my pipe bomb forward as we entered the second courtyard. The tank was pretty inept, so the map was ours.

Map 3: both teams got screwed at the top of the elevator. We got spit on perfectly in there, they had their charger ready, and only two of us survived. When we reached the narrow ledge, their tank spawned. Map end. Somehow, we did an even better elevator attack. Our spitter got a beautifully placed and timed pool, our charger got a kill, and I pinned one guy in the spit and pushed the other two back into it. After their stun, another one got ledge-hanged by a jockey, who promptly climbed up and did the same to his buddy. Their fourth guy chose to ignore his teammates, smart since our charger was waiting on the climb pad for him to try, and just ran downstairs toward our tank instead. Map over.

Map 4: crap map, no tank and it's so short.

Map 5 survivors: we had a small lead of about 300 coming in, so things should be fine. Their first attacks were inept, so I took the opportunity to grab a melee weapon from the boat dock, then we all got on top and dealt with the horde. They had a smoker and charger that kept trying to bring us back into instakill-land but there's not much they can do if we stay away from the back edge. We didn't have any trouble until the tank spawned, at which point, one of us got jocked off the back, so we all went down there made the exciting fight of taking on a tank right near the dock. Thankfully our boomer-radar was on, so aside from some smokers and hunters, we didn't get massively screwed or instakilled. Still, there's not a lot of room back there, and no place to heal with a tank keeping us from returning to safer parts of the map, so he slowly whittled away our life enough to make things dangerous: two incaps including myself, when the jockey and smoker grabbed the other two as the tank died. The jocked teammate got downed, so three of us were pistoling the tongue, and freed him with just a bit of life remaining. BUT he had run out of ammo and tried to make an ammo run quickly before running for us. There wasn't horde again yet, but there was a charger in there that clubbed him down. 1/2 way through the finale, not bad.

Map 5 infected. We got an outstanding first attack: the charger pushed the first one out of the door toward the far left, and I grabbed number two back around the right corner. The third guy came to clear me, and the fourth ran to kill the charger. Remarkably, our hunter was on overwatch and leapt to help out the charger. So we had me cleared and two survivors around the right corner while the charger and hunter were chomping away on the other two all the way to the left. Nice incap earned. They defended up top only adequately, with our chargers and jockeys continually finding tiny slivers of spawnable ground up there and taking them off, which gave me more chances to spit for the win. They were so disorganized by the time our tank spawned that he just had to play car tag with them a bit before whacking one and using him as bait. With two doing a good job protecting their down friend and the fourth guy luring our tank out, I jockeyed one of the two together and dragged him away, giving our tank the opportunity to get the car in atop his buddy who had been chasing me and my ride. With him down, I reversed course and dragged him straight to the car, which was on its end leaning against a pole, which meant I could drag the guy underneath it, giving the tank a very easy and fun incap. The last guy after that couldn't survive long at all, so we got our nice win.

- - - - - - -

That's why I love L4D so much and have been playing it more than any other game all these years. When you get those close games between evenly matched teams, and one tem just plays a bit smarter, the satisfaction beats the joy for me of any other game.

Good game last night. It started off kind of rough for the other group last night, but by the last 2 maps they were pulling it back together and timing most of their hits really well.

I'm always up for coop. I don't play vs. and have only finished a couple of the maps. Feel free to invite me for coop anytime!

Man, I'll be off all week this week through friday so if I'm on and you need a player late, pm me -- I'll hopefully be around. I've finally got it reinstalled and running again.

I'm up for coop! Almost anytime since it's sunday today.

I'm quickly rediscovering my love for this game. I played the sh*t out of L4D1. It was almost a standing evening thing. Me, McChuck, Bill_Lewis, and whatever goodjer we could wrangle. Usually Switchbreak was on. It just never clicked for L4D2. But I had a great couple of Coop games this weekend. So if anyone needs another for Coop or Vs, just pm me and I'll usually join.

Grenn wrote:

I'm quickly rediscovering my love for this game. I played the sh*t out of L4D1. It was almost a standing evening thing. Me, McChuck, Bill_Lewis, and whatever goodjer we could wrangle. Usually Switchbreak was on. It just never clicked for L4D2. But I had a great couple of Coop games this weekend. So if anyone needs another for Coop or Vs, just pm me and I'll usually join.

When they added the L4D1 maps into L4D2, it made the game complete for me. The new infected fixed a lot of issues the first game had though the L4D1 maps were far better.

Done.

Pretty sure I have all of saturday free. Expert sounds like fun! It's still the best way to learn how to play properly because of how much it punishes mistakes.

My wife is visiting her sister Saturday. I would love to give this a crack. Expert is rough at times (tougher than L4D1 for sure, in particular due to melee fatigue) but completing a level is just so satisfying. If we're not friended already, send me an invite (link in my sig).

I was super late to this game as well, played an awful lot of L4D1 on PC but the delayed release tied with the removal of bodies and blood here in Australia didn't sound so good, and the idea of melee sounded silly to me. That tied with some bad reviews ended in me giving it a miss.

End of last year however we picked up two cheap copied on the Xbox and had a local co-op at my house, and I cant believe I missed this, nor believe people gave this game a bad wrap. So good, so infuriating. One of my friends was moments from breaking my plasma, in a good way... I think.
Going to do some more local co-op soon. I just wish these guys would get with the program and do online co-op. But they don't seem as down...

Ok, I haven't successfully completed any L4D2 campaign on expert yet. Anybody want to try this weekend? Hit me up. I'll be on.

Also, I'm not in the L4D2 goodjer group on steam. Can someone send me an invite?

edit* Thanks.

imbiginjapan wrote:

My wife is visiting her sister Saturday. I would love to give this a crack. Expert is rough at times (tougher than L4D1 for sure, in particular due to melee fatigue) but completing a level is just so satisfying. If we're not friended already, send me an invite (link in my sig).

Both games have melee fatigue--for standard melee shoves, not when you use the melee weapons that are in L4D2. They patched in melee fatigue into L4D1 during the first year because teams were just me meleeing their way through maps quickly rather than killing stuff. Of course, maybe it wasn't patched into coop? No one I ever play with has played coop in years.

Keithustus wrote:
imbiginjapan wrote:

My wife is visiting her sister Saturday. I would love to give this a crack. Expert is rough at times (tougher than L4D1 for sure, in particular due to melee fatigue) but completing a level is just so satisfying. If we're not friended already, send me an invite (link in my sig).

Both games have melee fatigue--for standard melee shoves, not when you use the melee weapons that are in L4D2. They patched in melee fatigue into L4D1 during the first year because teams were just me meleeing their way through maps quickly rather than killing stuff. Of course, maybe it wasn't patched into coop? No one I ever play with has played coop in years.

I don't believe L4D1 ever had that in co-op, even after it was added into versus.

Grenn wrote:

Ok, I haven't successfully completed any L4D2 campaign on expert yet. Anybody want to try this weekend? Hit me up. I'll be on.

Also, I'm not in the L4D2 goodjer group on steam. Can someone send me an invite?

edit* Thanks.

I'm up for a game on Saturday, got the fiance out of town, so I'm free all day.

troubleshot wrote:

I was super late to this game as well, played an awful lot of L4D1 on PC but the delayed release tied with the removal of bodies and blood here in Australia didn't sound so good, and the idea of melee sounded silly to me. That tied with some bad reviews ended in me giving it a miss.

End of last year however we picked up two cheap copied on the Xbox and had a local co-op at my house, and I cant believe I missed this, nor believe people gave this game a bad wrap. So good, so infuriating. One of my friends was moments from breaking my plasma, in a good way... I think.
Going to do some more local co-op soon. I just wish these guys would get with the program and do online co-op. But they don't seem as down...

Weird, I never saw one bad review for this game.

We forget because of our L4DLove that the folks reviewing it as just another shooter were not impressed. Coop and versus required...friends.

Well, I wouldn't call an 89 on Metacritic unimpressive. Not that it's a particularly exclusive club, I'm just saying it isn't indicative of "bad reviews".

Nekroman wrote:
troubleshot wrote:

I was super late to this game as well, played an awful lot of L4D1 on PC but the delayed release tied with the removal of bodies and blood here in Australia didn't sound so good, and the idea of melee sounded silly to me. That tied with some bad reviews ended in me giving it a miss.

End of last year however we picked up two cheap copied on the Xbox and had a local co-op at my house, and I cant believe I missed this, nor believe people gave this game a bad wrap. So good, so infuriating. One of my friends was moments from breaking my plasma, in a good way... I think.
Going to do some more local co-op soon. I just wish these guys would get with the program and do online co-op. But they don't seem as down...

Weird, I never saw one bad review for this game.

As I said, it was the localisation here that put off some gamers and lead to a bit of a backlash.

I seem to recall that copies gifted by out-of-region folks had the stock visuals. That whole thing was very odd. (Australia is very odd. Giant flaming poisonous spider-eating babies? Yes. Zombie bodies? No.)

There was also a lot of drama around L4D2 being released the year after L4D1, at least until the game was released and people saw how much work had gone into it.

I'm still part of the boycott.

complexmath wrote:

There was also a lot of drama around L4D2 being released the year after L4D1, at least until the game was released and people saw how much work had gone into it.

It was said that the campaigns in L4D1 were supposed to follow an order and that didn't happen. But they made good on that promise with 2. That, and melee weapons.

ragin_redneck wrote:

I'm still part of the boycott. :)

Liar!

It turns out my wife is going out of town this weekend, so I'll be available by about 8:30 PST.

I've got today off so if anybody want to play just let me know. Unfortunately I cant seem to message anyone on steam who isn't on my friends list so whoever starts the game might have to send me an friend request. I'm available all of today and Saturday, though I'm a little out of practice so maybe jumping into an expert game with you guys isn't the best idea.

!youwonttakemealive

GG, was fun!

Good game, and a thank you to Switchbreak, having a GWJer L4D server with snarespeak and a good ping for most players is really nice.

This was the first time I've played L4D versus in... I dunno, years I guess. Super fun, and the snarespeak is great as always. I had to bail at the end of the game when a kid woke up, but we were a shoe-in for victory anyway, right?