Left 4 Dead Review
Left 4 Dead Too often, a game will boast that it has online content and multiplayer options and then only wind up giving you some sort of vs. skirmish mode with no story at all a handful of maps, some sort of matching system all having next to nothing to do with the single player campaign. Left 4 Dead is a true cooperative experience for 2-4 players. There will always be four Survivors against the environment, and the AI for the remaining Survivors is adequate enough where you could play 2 players and have fun. It is a first person shooter so there isn’t a lot of material to work with, but the guns, the strategy and the knowledge that if you loose even one of your fellow Survivors at key moments in the game, you are toast makes it a challenging games. I played the game for free for hours using Steam’s promo so I wasn’t able to finish the game but here are some highlights.
Pros
Multiplayer: up to four in true cooperative mode
Four sets of maps which changing mob location: the maps were stagnant but the couple of times we played the map, some of the more difficult opponents were not in the same location
Drop in and out, one of our friends lost connection during the game: she was able to come right back in with no trouble at all. We waited for her but we could have continued easily.
Varying difficulty levels that actually seem to vary: often times a game is too difficult on its normal mode, or too easy, the range here is great for a group to find whatever challenge they enjoy most
A few game modes - we didn’t play the vs. mode or the survival mode but the option there is great.
Graphics: the game looked really good and didn’t seem bogged down like some of the other games get when there is so much happen on the screen, very smooth playing on a variety of gaming machines including one that was a fairly dated backup machine used while my friend worked on his more current system
Cons
Only four sets of maps, they take around 2 hours to complete at a moderate pace, and I would have no qualms playing them again, but more is always better.
Not many weapons, the weapons each have a different play style to them and you can change them at several times during the game, but I just kept wishing there would be a few more hidden somewhere
Gore: for some this is not a con, for me, I wish I had a setting to drop it down a little. The game play was too fun not to play but other games have blood levels so why not this one? I know this is a dark genre within the fps genre, so no worries, I didn’t knock off a star for this reason alone.
No Tutorial: I have enough experience with games to be able to pick them and just go most of the time, but other than a few directional hints on the map, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of an introduction to someone new to gaming or the genre in general
Last tidbit: I am hoping this kind of cooperative game play is only the beginning and that we will see several more like it and see better cooperative options in other genres as well.
Buy Left 4 Dead
Fallout 3 PC Review
Fallout 3 represents Bethesda Softworks’ first take of the legendary game franchise since they purchased the rights from the failing Interplay in 2004. So, how did Bethesda do? In essence, Fallout 3 is Oblivion (Bethesda’s most well-known game) with a sci-fi/post-apocalyptic skin on it. The Good, Bad, and Ugly on this game includes…
Good:
- Spectacular Graphics (I’d have said beautiful, but we ARE talking about a post-apocalyptic world here). From blown-up highway overpasses to angry super mutants, players will be completely visually immersed in the game.
- Massive World. Fallout 3 3 is not a “first ten hours and you’re done” game. The developers have said that F3 contains over 100 hours of game play if all of the side quests are done and, having played a good portion of them, I can say that this seems to be correct.
- Interesting World. There’s a lot to see and do in post-war D.C.! Visit the Washington Monument, try and find historical documents, join a cult, stop slavers, or become one yourself! There are plenty of new (and different) things to do in Fallout 3.
Bad:
- No Turn-Based Combat. Fallouts 1&2 featured turn-based strategic combat; Fallout 3 is primarily First-Person Shooter style. The V.A.T.S. system of location-specific targeting has been added to sort of simulate turn-based combat for those interested, but it is poorly done (EX: what appear to be high-percentage VATS shots with a clear view from first-person end up being completely blocked by the target’s slight movements; VATS will not stop the shooting even though precious ammo is wasted). Gameplay is primarily first-person, though a buggy “shoulder camera view” can also be used. If you love FPS games, this will not be an issue.
- Lacks Original’s Dark Humor. Forced jokes do not make a Fallout game - the creators simply were not able to capture this aspect of the original.
- Linear Solutions. Initially, it seemed that there would be a lot of choices in how Fallout 3’s quests were to be solved (EX: Lie to solve a quest or do the actual legwork? Blow up a city or disarm the bomb?); the problem is, these options tend to disappear shortly after the game starts - especially in the main story line. Most of the time, players can choose between the “Good” option and the “Evil” one - and that’s it. Small choices like hacking a gun turret to clean out a room of Super Mutants or tossing in a few grenades to clean them out (two different skills) still exist, but the results tend to be the same. Fallout 3 tends to offer players the illusion of choice rather than actual choices, and that’s not in the spirit of the Fallout series.
- Poor Music. The background music is both repetitive and boring; The “radio” songs are too few/not fitting to the zones.
Ugly:
- Quest Bugs. Many of the side quests have bugs in them that, while they can be worked around, still detract from the game. The Big Town quests have many examples of this.
- Crash Bugs. I didn’t have any problems installing the game on my Vista system (many people report such install problems, however). I played the game for many hours without any crashes. A few days after installing the game, however, it crashed on loading a saved game and then refused to load up at all. Allowing my game to connect to the internet/Live seems to have cleared the problem up, but it is still very strange.
- SecuROM. Parts of your system will be scanned and various aspects checked to see if installation will be allowed. This is a very serious issue for some consumers (especially those that get installation errors), but not a big deal for others.
Fallout 3 is an excellent First-Person Post-Apocalyptic Action Game. Older fans may be extremely disappointed with the changes that have occurred to the series since Fallout 2, and may want to avoid this game if they are looking for a direct update. New players, however, will greatly enjoy the game if they liked Bethesda’s previous game, Oblivion, or if they had fun with 2K Game’s Bioshock. In my view, Fallout 3 is definitely worth playing - it just isn’t the Fallout fans of the franchise might be expecting.
12/18/2007 Update: For those interested, Bethesda Softworks - the creators of Fallout 3 - have released an official worldbuilder/editor for the PC version of the game. It is called the G.E.C.K. (like the item in the game), and can be downloaded from the official Bethsoft website.
Buy Fallout 3