Left 4 Dead, Revision List
James Reynolds | November 24, 2008In light of my awesome night of three reviews (banged out 3 in 3 hours last night, Sorry it took so long Ross) I think i’ll share some of my feedback on Left 4 Dead, don’t get me wrong I did love it but there are some things I’d like to see done:
Best. Zombie Game. Ever.
- Survivor ammo needs to be scarcer
Tbh when you’ve got 4 guys with M16s defending the elevator who have unlimited ammo, it’s going to take something special to dislodge them. And even then, they’ll probably all survive just fine. - Needs more weapons!
2 sets of 3 weapons + pistols and grenades. That’s great the first 5-10 times you play but after that it feels repetitive. How about a melee weapon? More importantly … WHERES THE CHAINSAW?! - Tank needs a charge
As it stands, the tank can be kite-spanked by a group who knows anything. Needs a way to close the distance when it matters most. - Smoker needs to pull better
The smoker is the moderate damage dealer, but it’s most important tool is the ability to pull the survivors. The only problem is they get stuck on terrain, you still do damage but you gain less pull. I want to be able to drag a survivor up to the roof and when they break him free – Watch him fall to his death. - Hunter needs a knockback
Sure, the hunter can cover distances in a leap and is the primary damage dealer but I would like to see a little bit of knock back. At the moment when a Hunter lands on you you will just fall to the ground while he shreds you, 5-10 yard fall back could make the difference between being in the helicopter and falling to your death. - Boomer needs moar damage!
At the moment the boomer is barely useful, his puke ability has a huge cool down and doesn’t do direct damage. Neither does his explosion and his melee attack is pathetic (somewhere in the range of 10 damage). Tagging on a nice bit of damage over time onto his vomit and an AoE on the explosion would be enough. Not a lot … but something. - Boomer puke cooldown needs reduction
See above. - More VS. campaigns
Considering vs. mode is the primary seller i’m shocked that only half of the 4 levels are available to play. Desperately needs more.
Got any feedback? Lets share it!
Regards,
JamesR.
Got 3 reviews going live today/tomorrow, they haven’t been proofread so far as I can tell so apologies for the horrible typos that’ll be everywhere.
i think the hunter should be able to knock people over with a glancing hit, just because i hit half the body doesn’t mean then should get away scott free.
the thing about the VS campaign is true thought i guess for the PC version that wont be a problem for long. i mean people are allready using CS levels.
would be nice to have the smoker still be able to move when dragging even if it’s a very slow pace, your all to easy to kill.
and the respawn time they do need a lowering.
also installing the games to your 360 hard drive is a complete waste of time.
How do you come to the conclusion installing it to your HDD is a waste of time?
the disk still needs to be in there thats why, i care not for the slight increase of load times.
Because he installed Halo 3 without reading Kotaku, obviously.
And I’m not dead, just avoiding you all.
actually i saw that i, never intended to install halo 3 anyway.
You HAVE to have the disc otherwise it would effectively be a green light to piracy … No company is going to be retarded enough to let you do that.
What you do get from installing it is a quicker load time and a silent 360.
Seriously … enough is enough with that god damned sound.
hey PC lets me run a game without a disk
also i dont notice the sound, i dont live in a place where i have to have the sound down
And piracy on PC is rampant, console companies are smart enough not to make the same mistake.
It has nothing to do with the volume you play at, I can play mine at whatever volume I want, but a silent moment in a game is still silent.
At volume I’m comfortable with, which is a little louder than most, I can still hear the 360 spinning over solid music! It’s frankly unnacceptable.
Piracy is rampant in the console as well.
what did you think all those XBL account holders were whining about when they were caught playing games that wern’t released yet?
Sure, there are a lot of pirates on the consoles but not even nearly as many … Something stupid like 50% of PC gamers have pirated a game and console gamers is probably closers to 1%
But also, the reason those people were complaining is because THEY BOUGHT THE GAME not because they pirated it. Stores sell games early and the customers are punished. The same goes for reviewers, they get their accounts suspended to.
no these were people who were torrenting games and using modded 360’s to play them
and i think it’s a lot bigger then 1%
http://kotaku.com/5060952/fallout-3-360-compromised-by-pre+apocalyptic-pirates
just one example of many
i got my copy of gears and COD5 early thats different.
Well done, you linked to a story about a torrent that will be downloaded by a handful of people?
Now go look at how many people are downloading the PC version on a daily basis.
Console piracy is practically non-existent due to the fact you need to mess with your console hardware for it to play pirated games. It’ll always be far, far smaller for that reason.
By the way, James. My Xbox can now turn itself on too. Cool huh? Apparently a common cause is corrosion on the motherboard. The reason there’s no real console piracy is because people (myself included) are too scared to do shit like this:
http://forums.llamma.com/viewtopic.php?t=12329
I can’t look at that forum at work, i’ll do it when I get home
Anyway, another reason (asides Mark’s all correct assertions) people don’t pirate on consoles is because there’s direct traceability.
If you install a pirate game on your PC and deactivate the web side of things who’s ever going to know?
Your consoles require Hardware modifications which change their digital profiles making them easy to track and knock out of commission. Tbh, I think companies like Microsoft SHOULD knock those consoles out of commission rather than just banning their live accounts.
Even the most sophisticated deactivatable modsets require you to stay offline while they run, otherwise you’re just going to lose your access.
Tbh i’m beginning to think 1:100 Ration of Console vs PC pirates is way off, it’s probably more in the region of 1:1000
That’s true. Online consoles have hobbled console piracy even further, though many pirate chipsets allow you to disable them so the appropriate company will not know.
On the subject of L4D, I liked what I had of the demo before my 360 went kaput, but the AI special zombies felt rather weak. I don’t know how they stack up with real people.
I’d just like to add that I don’t think people being dragged by smokers should be able to fire their weapons.
You can only fire for the first … half a second to a second that the smoker has you, to give you a chance to survive their attack, but after that you lose all control.
The special zombies get pretty nasty on the higher settings to, but you’ll notice most of my gripes are aimed at making zombies better
The Boomer is definitely rubbish.
I had a rather amusing experience where one fell off a roof and promptly exploded from the fall damage. I have never felt less scared of a zombie.
The boomer’s only real use is to blind people, as it was said on 1UP Yours if you’ve got smokers dragging away your party members and you’re surrounded by the horde … Being blind is a serious fucking problem.
BUT…. 30+ Second (60?) cooldown and it only lasts a few seconds … Needs desperate improving.
Explosion knockback perhaps?
Or a stun or daze?
Hmmm … I think if the blind lasted longer and a 15 yard knockback happened, keeping in mind Boomers are designed to be used primary in conjunction with hordes of NPC zombies it could be pretty useful.
The easiest way to look at it is:
Smokers detach members from the party
Hunters incap and do heavy damage
Boomers.
Tanks designed to do heavy damage and take heavy damage (In reality is a great distraction, who’s going to worry about smokers when there’s a tank?)
Do you actually get boomer puke on you when they explode? Because you should…
(I think this is the most comments you’ve ever had on an post!)
Yeah you do, but the radius is a bit poor <10 Yards I think.
I presume L4D is on your Xmas list? I look forward to some sick 4-Man campaigns
I think an ET related post holds that honor … I’ll just check
http://nobodyreadsthis.co.uk/2007/12/21/hello-et/
42 Comments
http://nobodyreadsthis.co.uk/2007/12/22/open-address/
43 Comments
Afraid it isn’t on the list… I’m afraid a £50 Xbox repair saw to that.
What did you get it for? PC?
360, will probably get PC version at a later date.
I’m shocked to hear that, what 360 games ARE on the list?
Um… GoW2 and Mirror’s Edge.
Forgive me, but you know I wasn’t that excited about L4D, I just plan on getting it because you’re getting it.