Left 4 Dead

[Psymonkee]

Damn sister

[Daz]

Do you not need this Jen?

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/ga...0-000045410830

(gold's ran out so I cant D/L it myself yet).

[Haly]

Looks like it! Earlier when I orginally posted that, all the news stories suggested it would update automatically.

[Admiral Huddy]

Got round to downloading L4D last week.. I have to say it's a bit dissapointing or am I missing the plot? Ressembles an arcade game you find lurking in the dark corner of a bowling ally.

[Davey_Pitch]

If you're not playing it with mates Huddy then I think it loses a lot of its appeal. It really is awesome with a good team all talking and helping each other.

[iCraig]

DLC for PC landed last night for the UK, had a good play till about 3am.

It's really good and poor at the same time to be honest. It's free, so it's always in the back of your mind that you can't whinge too much, but it just doesn't feel as polished and complete as the main game did. There's really obvious bugs that should have been spotted and resolved before now.

A bug that should have been spotted is after 14 minutes, sometimes the Tanks simply stop. They're supposed to be pouring out at this stage but many players have noted that they recieved none after that point. Anybody who's played the finales will know every special apart from the tank can be shot down by the group very quickly, whereas the Tank can split you up and basically trash your defensive position. So after the Tanks give up for good it's very easy to survive for ages (record on the L4D Forums is just over an hour) You just hunker down in the room with the ammo pile and constantly reel off bullets at the doorways.

Another large bug is people watching the demos of other people during Survivor mode inherit their score if they watch it start to finish. I suspect Valve will fix that but the point is something like that shouldn't have slipped through the net, even on a free update surely? No wonder some players have said they'd rather have not had the update if they knew their personal scores were so easily lost. You don't want a "fake" score constantly above your own, in the case of the 1 hour demo you're own scores will always fall short and you'll have no real idea how you're doing and what your *own* record is. There's a couple more bugs such as Hunters getting stuck on the Terminal map really easily and little things like the dialogue being inconsistent with what's actually happening. Such as igniting the fire cans to burn down a barricade on Dead Air. This triggers a horde and in campaign mode they exclaim the danger is over after a certain time. In Survivor mode the escape backfires or fails and the survivors are left to fight to the death, but the dialogue ignores that fact. "The path is clear" and "Let's go!" is shouted around even though the barricade is totally blocked still and you're in the middle of a horde.

Boomers seem to explode randomly even more now. There's always been some poor spawns by the director where the Boomer instantly falls off a roof as he spawns and just explodes at the bottom but in Survivor mode it's even more common. Almost every time we triggered the start of the Lighthouse mode you'd see and hear the Boomers exploding in the distance. Did Valve not notice this and not pick better spots to spawn them? They're only minor things but it just looks untidy, like Valve have hacked the code together to get this mode working, rather than build it up properly. I'd rather of them spent a bit more time getting it to the same standard as the rest of the game and releasing it in a few months with the SDK rather than seemingly rushing it to their "deadline" They didn't promise it for the 21st, that was just the expected date, and it is free after all, so Valve didn't really need to answer to anybody, despite the number of nerds of the Steam forums going crazy because it was well into the 21st in their timezone and they hadn't recieved it yet.

Hopefully they'll iron it out, but despite those problems it's still a hell of a lot of fun. It stays true to the rest of the game where teamwork is essential and tactical use of firecans and cannisters are heavily recommended if you want to see through more than 5 minutes. Multiple smokers and hunters mean you're constantly vunerable and this drives home the aspect of defending each other in order to stay on your feet and fight them off. Letting a team mates fall to save your own items and health means within moments you'll be picked off and won't have anybody else to help you out. As with the rest of the game the teamwork aspect makes for some rewarding battles.