It's the Holidays this week and so my normal gaming troupe won't be
around much. I'm sad about that since we just got into Left 4 Dead 2
and still have lots to do in both Borderlands and Champions Online.
However, I shall use this time to get caught up on single player video
games. I'm 30 hours into Dragon Age: Origins and moving towards the
final conflict. I'm on chapter 18 (of I don't know how many) in
Uncharted 2. I'm not very far into Brutal Legend. I still have the
Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii that I need to dig into (I finished the
prologue). And then I also have Assassin's Creed 2 which should be
delivered today. So, I have a lot to keep me busy when I'm free top lay
video games. I'm also planning on starting to re-watch Lost in
preparation of the sixth and final season. As I said on Twitter, this
is a series so rich in subtext and intertextuality that I could watch it
over and over again. I'm sure that watching it again will be an
eye-opening experience since I'm going back in with more knowledge of
where the story is heading. And if the ending of the show is as epic
and transformative as they are saying it will be, I might be re-watching
it again sometime next year when the final season is out on Blu-Ray.
Last night, we played the Scavenge mode of Left 4 Dead 2. We played it
three on three (the human group would kill the computer-controlled
character...poor Rochelle) and went through a few games. I lost track
of time. This mode is such a fun pick-up-and-play play style that I
think I will spend more time on this than any other mode. It's
basically a capture the flag mode, L4D-style. In the center of the map,
there's a generator and the survivors must hoof it around the map to
locate gas cans to fill up the generator. The way it works is that
there's a timer that starts at a minute and a half and starts counting
down. Each gas canister adds 15 seconds to the timer. Meanwhile, the
Infected team is trying to stop them from succeeding. The game is
played out best of a certain number (which you can change) and it's not
about how many gas cans you collect, but that your team collects more
than the other. So if you get 7 and the other team gets 3, your team
wins the round and that's it. It's not a running tally or anything.
Playing this mode created some awesome scenarios. In one level, there's
a gas station with a billboard directly behind it. The survivors
climbed up the billboard, each one grabbing a gas can, and then hopped
off the billboard onto the roof of the gas station. I spawned as a
Smoker behind them and when the last one was about to jump off the roof,
I grabbed him with my tongue. He died before anyone could do anything,
because they were all on the ground and running to the generator. Then,
my other teammates pounced. One of the cool features of this map is
that if you drop a gas can, it becomes combustible to Spitter goo. So,
luckily one of my teammates was a Spitter and launched some goo at
people (one of whom was downed by a Hunter and therefore dropped the gas
can). The goo not only hurt the Survivors in it, but it also ignited
the gas can and caused a huge fire. So while I was strangling the poor
sap on the roof, the others were burning on the ground. It was an
awesome moment and showcased some of the exciting gameplay
possibilities.
On the flip side, one game was so evenly tied (1 to 1, with one more
match to go) and in the last match, it was four gas cans to three gas
cans. We just needed one more gas can, but the time was almost gone.
shimdic was racing toward the generator, gas can in hand while
the rest of us were trying to provide help but were also being caught
and pulled back. The match literally came down to the gas can and the
Spitter. The Spitter, unfortunately, won.
Left 4 Dead 2 is such a fantastic game. I don't know if I could ever go
back to the first one again after playing it.