Whether more Official Dedicated Servers are needed, or the current ones are malfunctioning (infected, perhaps?), it blows this journalist’s mind that a game so focused on online multiplayer could launch in this state. With the Xbox 360 version of the game costing $20 CAD more than the Steam version, fans have good reason to be upset.

We’ll keep on this story and report on any response we receive from Valve.

For those who are familiar with the franchise, Left 4 Dead 2 is everything you’ve come to know and love.  We’ve already talked about the improved Director 2.0 in a news item, and it does indeed seem to be improved. The experience was even more nerve-wracking and punishing than in the first game, bringing back memories of when I first played the game. We did not find upgraded weapons until very late into the campaign and we had to resort to melee weapons to save on bullets on more than a few occasions.

Which was fine with us, of course. L4D2 sports a variety of new weapons, including a very efficient machete, a frying pan, a sturdy baseball bat, and a honky-tonk guitar. In no time, Richard and I developed an efficient way to deal with hordes of zombies using a combination of melee weapons and guns.

The new zombie that we caught a glimpse of was actually fairly hard to pinpoint in the midst of a horde, which made it very dangerous. It adds a new “get out of the fire” problem to those groups who like to hole up in corners by spewing acid that gathers in a large pool. From personal experience, I can tell you that acid hurts. Don’t stand in it. It’s very bad.

The campaign also showed off its new climatic “gauntlet” mechanic. Instead of the old “last stand” mechanic, where mobs of zombies, including a tank, would come at the group of survivors at the end of a chapter, players now have to run to a destination in order to complete the campaign. Imagine sprinting to the helicopter at the end of No Mercy, except you have to do that for minutes instead of seconds. It’s that intense. The gauntlet mechanic is actually a lot more hectic but less strategic as you can’t set up in a building. You just need to make a mad dash towards the objective without leaving anyone behind. In the campaign we played, we had to climb several stories of a construction rig to deactivate an alarm.

For those not familiar with the franchise, you can check out our review of the original offering here.

We did not get to try Versus mode, but it was still a fun experience nonetheless. L4D2 looks to offer some intense gameplay when it releases on November 17th, so get your shotgun and get ready to survive another zombie apocalypse.

Set for release in September, Crash Course is meant to fill the void between the No Mercy and Death Toll campaigns, depicting what befell our beloved survivors after boarding that fateful helicopter atop Mercy Hospital. While Crash Course will offer both a Survival Mode map and a co-operative campaign, its primary focus is to deliver a complete Versus Mode experience in just thirty minutes. A recharge timer for infected teammates is said to have been added, and the item spawn behaviour has been changed to provide more balanced gameplay.

“Since the release of Left 4 Dead last November, the design team has been excited about creating new experiences for this world and allowing players to do the same, by releasing much of our internal toolset, like the Survival Pack and Authoring Tools,” said Gabe Newell. “We’re working with the fans toward the ongoing entertainment value of the product.”

Left 4 Dead: Crash Course is targeted for release in September and will be available free of charge on the PC and for 550 Microsoft Points on the Xbox 360.

Now is it just me or is offering a demo as a pre-order reward a little redundant? When someone pre-orders a game it’s usually because they’re confident that they’ll want to play it and want to do so the moment the game is released. Futhermore, while it may let impatient people play the game sooner, if the game isn’t good (which we here at GameNorth HQ doubt), or not enough of a departure from the original, couldn’t this pre-order reward actually result in the cancellation of said pre-order?

As is customary for the debut of new game catalogues on Steam, the aforementioned Bethesda titles are currently on sale for 20% off. With this deal, fans that missed out on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion can pick up the Game of the Year Edition Deluxe, which includes all previously released downloadable add-on content, for only $19.99 USD. That’s only $22.63 CAD at the time of writing!

Additionally, the Steam release of Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is noteworthy. The game, originally released for the Xbox in 2005 and later for Windows platforms in 2006, saw a rather quiet release and soon fell into obscurity. Based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a dark and dramatic take on the first-person adventure genre. Fans of H.P. Lovecraft’s work or the survival horror genre may find a great deal to enjoy in this often overlooked classic.

Source: Steam

The events in Left 4 Dead 2 are said to take place at the same time as those seen in the original game. However, instead of taking place in an anonymous northern American city, Left 4 Dead 2 will take place in the Southern United States. With the new location comes a new group of survivors: Nick, Ellis, Rochelle, and The Coach. Each survivor will have their own back story which will be revealed through character conversations.

The game will unfold over five all-new campaigns, with a new emphasis placed on making each campaign connect more coherently to the next. All five campaigns will be available for single player, co-operative, versus, and survival modes right from the start, so there will be no waiting for a patch in order to play your favourite campaign in versus mode this time around.

Just as Bill says in the opening cinematic of the original Left 4 Dead, the zombies are changing. Left 4 Dead 2 will feature an all new type of infected – known as the Charger – that is said to be a cross between a Tank and a common infected. Sporting one massive arm, the Charger will run toward the survivors and attempt to knock them down, capable of sending all four to the pavement at once. It won’t incapacitate you, but if it manages to isolate a lone survivor, it’ll do its best to pummel them mercilessly.

Thankfully, the survivors will have more weapons at their disposal. With a new type of shotgun, a silenced sub-machine gun, and the all-new sniping rifle, the survivors will be better equipped to deal with the horrors that await them. And if they run out of ammo, Valve has provided a variety of melee weapons that can be used as a last resort. Revealed melee weapons include a baseball bat, a frying pan, an axe, and a chainsaw.

The Director AI, the driving force behind Left 4 Dead’s dynamic gameplay, has seen an upgrade. Director 2.0 will possess the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the zombie population. Some sections of each campaign will feature entirely random routes, designed on a whim by the malicious Director.

Set for release on November 17th, Left 4 Dead 2 reinvents the gameplay that reinvented cooperative gameplay. With more boss zombies, more weapons, more campaigns, and an improved Director AI, the wait is sure to be a long one.

And Francis hates waiting.

L4D2 is slated for release in November for the PC and Xbox 360. Until then, try to survive by watching this trailer with some friends:

Click here to watch the video

Unreal Tournament 3 became Unreal Tournament 3 Black with the introduction of the free downloadable Titan Pack add-on. The Titan Pack added loads of new content and enhancements to the game, including new levels, weapons, vehicles, characters, and the titular Titan Mutator.

With the upcoming release of patch 2.1, Unreal Tournament 3 Black will see further enhancements, such as gameplay tweaks, mod support enhancements, bug fixes, user interface improvements, and achievement progress for custom maps.

Pre-loading for the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3 Black free Steam weekend begins now.

The graphics are the ones you’ve seen a few times before already in Half Life 2 and its spawn. The animations are rewarding when you disintegrate the head of a zombie with a shotgun or vomit on someone as a Boomer, a special zombie that blinds and attracts a horde of zombies with its green bile. Even at max settings, the graphics are not overly impressive by today’s standard. However, everything looks appropriately atmospheric but not too creepy.

The creepiness factor is delivered mostly by the sound. Every zombie has an audio cue to indicate its presence nearby, and in a surround sound environment this can get truly unnerving. This applies especially to the Witch, a zombie with a frail frame that just sobs its baiting cries until someone startles it with a flashlight or a gunshot. Then the pitiful cries turn to angry screams, and then all that can be heard are the screams of the player who startled it.

In addition to the high quality of the zombie noises, each of the four protagonists have an impressive reservoir of sound bytes. The PC version of the game has a great option to turn on subtitles so that you catch all of the quotes. These phrases range from functional to whimsical, but most of the characters aren’t terribly interesting.

Another interesting feature of the sound engineering is the dynamically generated music that is unique to the character being viewed. For example, you get your own music score while playing as a human, but you will also get to hear the music of the person you’re watching after you’re dead.

The game is really simple and has hardly any learning curve. Anyone who has played any kind of first-person shooter in their lifetime can pick this game up and play. The focus of the game is banding with three other teammates to try to complete the objective. If you’re the humans, this means getting to a safe point on the other side of the map. If you’re the zombies, it means killing the humans. The individual humans aren’t different, so there’s no complexity there to worry about. There are only six different weapons in the game and two of the weapons are just upgraded versions of other weapons, so there’s nothing to learn there either. The mechanics of the four zombie types can be explained in less than five minutes, making it easy for new players to jump right in and start mangling.

This lack of variety and depth is compensated by randomly generated and spawned zombies and items so that you have a different experience every time you play. The core mode of the game is a Versus mode, in which a team of up to four players control the zombies and up to four other players control the humans. This creates fun and memorable experiences as your team executes (or falls victim to) the perfect ambush or running frantically through a fire to get to the safe room.

The ingenious part of the gameplay revolves around the design of survival. The chances of a group of three humans surviving a scenario as opposed to a group of four are fantastically lower. As a group of two there is pretty much no hope, as two special zombies attacking at once can end the game. It makes leaving any member of the group behind to gain some ground a losing strategy, and it forms a fast bond amoung the team as they realize that their success depends upon the contribution of every member. This also leads to some deflating moments if a teammate disconnects, as it is impossible to co-ordinate with the computer controlled bot. Other barriers to the humans’ success include spots on the map where they are forced to wake up the neighbourhood, and as we all know noise attracts zombies. A cornucopia of ravenous zombies, which makes for some frantic and exciting moments.

In addition, the game introduces an intelligent pacing mechanism known as The Director. The Director will throw more zombies into the mix if it thinks the players’ stress levels are too low, or spawn items as needed. This AI is why I always have one random zombie chewing on me when I’m just leaving a “safe” area.

Even though it is mainly a multiplayer game, the game disappoints with its poor matchmaking system. To start a game, pick the map and mode and then wait for players to join. To join a game, pick the map and mode you want to play and it throws you into a server matching your criteria. It doesn’t let you see how far into the match the players have progressed, nor does it give you the option to pick multiple maps. Joining as a group is also missing from the list of features on the PC version. Sitting and waiting for players is a frequent cause of frustration because of the limited matchmaking choices on both platforms.

The single player campaign seems insignificant as the artificial intelligence is unspectacular (even in the PC version, where you can issue commands to them), but I haven’t tried it. The co-op campaign is fun the first few times, but most of the enjoyment comes from the Versus mode. Even the Survival mode, which pits a group of humans against an unending swarm of zombies, falls short of the lasting appeal of Versus.

Your enjoyment of this game will come from who you play with. Despite a shallow combat system, Left 4 Dead is still a fun game focused on the fresh experiences generated by randomly located opponents and items. It is not netting Valve any lifetime achievement awards, but it’s a fast-paced, zombie-or-human-exploding good time.

“Dad! You killed zombie Flanders!!” – Bart
“He was a zombie?” – Homer

Portal is available on its own or as part of the larger collection of Half Life 2 related games known as the Orange Box. It is available through the regular retail channels and Steam, and just to show you how much they like the game, Valve made the game a part of their flagship Half Life 2 universe. But, back to GLaDOS.

GLaDOS will creep you out a little as well as make you laugh. She’s that type of girl. By the time you are finished with the game, you will remember her lines and her voice more than any of the 19 levels you played through to get to the ending. And believe me, you will remember the ending.

Don’t get me wrong, all the other elements of the game are put together very well in order to create an immersive environment for GLaDOS to work her charm. The innovation of the game is admirable, as the portal gun makes you think with a different set of rules. Moreover, despite being essentially a puzzle game, the First-Person view actually allows for some intense action moments, such as desperately trying to find a solution before your platform runs into a wall that will knock you into a pool of acid. This blend of puzzle-action is fresh and actually makes the game quite accessible. The short levels will allow even casual gamers to step in and do a few levels at a time.

The puzzles in the game are also not that challenging, which should lend a hand in attracting a wider audience. However, this aspect was a little bit disappointing as I never really felt triumphant at any moment in the game, which should be the reward of story-based puzzle games. It did help the pace of the game and gets you to the ending faster though, so it’s more of a lose-win situation.

The graphics are very clean and really does the job of making it look like a somewhat dilapidated futuristic training centre. As you go deeper into the Enrichment Centre you will notice broken things or dirty things and soon you get the eerie feeling you’re not in Kansas anymore. There really isn’t much to say about the graphics except to say that they are good but I’ve seen better.

The sound and music in the game are perfect. The voice acting is funny, touching, emotive and yet robotic and distant. I gave it an imperfect score only out of some sense that there is probably some technical element to the sound that I can’t perceive but can be improved. Also, providing subtitles for the audio dialogue is a fantastic option. I can’t express how much I love subtitles.

The only major flaw from a “I have to pay money for this” perspective is the length of the game. If you are not interested in the achievements nor the bonus maps, you may be able to blow through this game in 3 hours. Yet, I still believe the experience is worth the full CDN$20.

Queen said it best: Play the game.