Left 4 Dead 2 – Deathcraft II
Deathcraft II is a rather impressive mod and campaign for Left 4 Dead 2.. turning it into something that looks just like Minecraft!
Fear 3 Completed!
I picked up F.E.A.R. 3 during the recent Steam sales.. and before I could get round to playing by myself, a friend invited me along to co-op..
The host of the game plays as Point Man, so I played as his brother Fettel.. back from the dead and ghostly, with some very interesting psychic abilities! Without a body, I could still do damage from afar with a psychic blast, or up-close with a melee attack.. I could also levitate my enemies, pinning them in place for my friend to shoot.. a rather useful tactic at times, or shield him from damage.
My favourite by far was Fettel’s ability to take over and possess the various opposition forces we met! All I needed was a clear line of sight to first suspend them, and then get into their head.. with Fettel’s evil laugh echoing in my ears!
Quantic Dream’s Kara and Other Videos
Quantic Dream have created an amazing demo video, featuring an android called Kara. The video shows off new development tech and some fantastic writing too..
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtbDDqU3dVI] (more…)
Nioki Adventure
Nioki Adventure is a co-operative 2D sandbox game planned for released on PC and Xbox 360, and the first game for French indie studio, Bidogames.
The website for the game has launched today: check it out here.
Indie Royale’s The Alpha Collection Impressions
Indie Royale’s latest bundle, The Alpha Collection is now available, featuring three currently-in-development games: Towns by SMP, 3079 by Phr00t and Wyv and Keep: The Temple of the Lost Idol by a jolly corpse.
Towns is a city building and management game where you organise your villagers to gather resources, build a town, craft weapons.. and then try to withstand the forces that come up from the depths, because your town is built on top of a dungeon!
Indie Royale – The Alpha Collection
The next indie bundle from the Indie Royale is out: The Alpha Collection! This bundle features three games which are currently in alpha: Towns by SMP, 3079 by Phr00t and Wyv and Keep by a jolly corpse.
Renegade Ops
Renegade Ops, by Avalanche Studios and published by Sega, arrived in my Steam game collection over Christmas thanks to a friend. Although Tim had already picked this up on the 360, the game has four player co-op, so having it on the PC as well was no bad thing!
While the Great Gift Pile objective list was up over Christmas, we had a quick go at it, with the aim of killing Santa and collecting one of his presents.. and although we discovered that the present only drops for one player, we had a lot of fun destroying things!
If your vehicle gets turned over, the game resets your position without taking up one of your lives. This was just as well, because we crashed into each other a lot while slipping on the ice or even just trying to overtake each other.
We decided we should play the game properly.. though, that said.. we ended up playing the Coldstrike DLC before the original storyline.
The game has a choice of characters to play as: I played as Steam-exclusive Gordon Freeman, with the ability to summon a pack of Antlions. During the chase for the objective, I had unlocked some upgrades which meant their deaths would spawn a health pack, or repair kit, depending on how you look at it 😉
As well as Antlion-related upgrades, I had the two other skill trees common to all characters: a defensive tree with upgrades to add extra lives, auto-repair and so on, and an offensive tree, with upgrades focused on improving weaponry. I took a balance between the two trees as with friends, the game isn’t too hard and we were there to have fun!
For my secondary weapon, I found the Rocket Launcher and Flamer the easiest to use, with the Rail Gun less easy as you had to keep aiming at the target while charging, and I didn’t want to sit still. I also continued the theme of crashing into everything as we went along, with plenty of smaller enemies and buildings being destroyed this way!
I really loved the sections of the game where we were given helicopters to control..
There was a little niggle in that we weren’t able to fly up and over certain obstacles, and had to go round.. but otherwise these were easy to fly, which meant I was able to focus on the destruction 🙂
The game is easy to play, though that coupled with playing in co-op meant more silliness and therefore more deaths. Definitely a fun game, though!
Merry Christmas 2011!
Finally finished with work.. and the Christmas shopping.. time for games!
Well, time for finishing off a Christmas and pony related drawing for a friend, and attempting some of the Great Gift Pile objectives on Steam! A fairly straightforward objective was to find an Xmas present in any multiplayer level of PAYDAY: The Heist. In the First World Bank, the presents were waiting in the vault with the money 🙂
We also noticed new “beef” masks had been added to the game.. so here’s a friendly Tyrannosaurus with a gun! 😀
More games..
A friend bought us Renegade Ops, an action game by Avalanche Studios, featuring top-down driving destruction.. there’s 4-player co-op, so I can crash into my friends while I destroy things 😉
I took up an offer a while back for a different Christmas bundle; the Intermediaware Christmas bundle which also came with copies for friends too. This pack contained eight games from Intermediaware.. shooters: Absolute Blue, Impact and Defense of Yano, puzzle games.. Captain Backwater, Temple of Tangram, Psychoballs and Atom Antics, and turn-based board game Kabama, for one or two players. This bundle arrived by email as promised, on Christmas Eve!
I also won another game.. 11 Bit Studios‘ action-strategy Anomaly: Warzone Earth, from Day 5 of Splitkick.com’s Holiday Giveaway!
This was a triumph..
Peer Review, the new DLC for Valve’s Portal 2, came out almost two months back, and somehow, we didn’t get around to playing it till very recently.
The new co-op campaign, Art Therapy, takes place after the events of Portal 2, with a slightly crazier than normal GLaDOS telling us that everything is fine.. the humans are all fine.. 😉
The first level had us separated to start with, with turrets, lasers and refraction cubes.. after the initial worry that I’d forgotten how to do it all, we destroyed the turrets, helped each other fly across acid pits, collecting the new ball along the way and escape! It’s great to be back in the test chamber 🙂
The second level took a while as we missed the small room high up the wall with the hard light bridge.. otherwise we didn’t really struggle with the levels for long. I enjoyed our solution to the puzzle in room number 5.. once the white goop was close enough, I made portals underneath the turrets guarding the exit, so I could grab them and throw them down into the depths 😀
I was glad to see more use of the goop, and I found the balls a great new addition, even if they had a tendency to bounce away and into danger. In the final chamber, it took us a while to figure out how to get hold of the cube.. and once we did get it, it bounced away into the emancipation grid as soon as we’d put it down!
The appearance of the bird, and GLaDOS’ fearful reaction to it was really funny.. and I rather liked the idea of the avian killing machines.. though I can’t imagine a sequel using them 😮
On the official site for Portal 2, there’s a sneak peek of the Puzzle Creator.. which will allow all players to create and upload their own levels. It could be worth a look! 🙂
Robbing Banks with PAYDAY: The Heist!
When I first spotted PAYDAY: The Heist, a first-person shooter with up to four co-op players, I thought this could be the next big game for our group of friends..
The game puts the players in the role of career criminals with different heists to complete, starting with a bank job. I thought this game would be rather like Left 4 Dead with bank robbers instead of survivors.. so I was very pleased to find it was so much more than this!
Thanks to being busy with other games, I ended up missing this game at launch, last month. However, a friend spotted the game in the Steam sale and gave me a reminder.. one four-pack later, our group had some downloading to do 🙂
The first mission is a heist on the First World Bank..
We didn’t get far in our first attempts, as we didn’t realise quite how much preparation was needed.. the next, slightly more successful attempts had us select nice starting positions so we could capture a few hostages and pick off the security guards before they dealt us too much damage.
Like in Left 4 Dead, taking too much damage results in incapacitation, but instead of bleeding out, players are eventually taken into custody. You can be rescued by a team-mate.. but once in custody, you have to wait until you can be traded for a hostage.. any civilian you’ve previously tied up. The length of time you have to wait increases for every civilian you’ve killed.. so despite your role of hardened career criminal, you should avoid killing the innocent!
You can also force cops to cuff themselves.. bonus hostages! We possibly enjoyed this a bit too much 😀
I really liked the changing objectives in the mission which meant we had to stay on our toes.. watching the drill in case it jammed, heading off to wipe security footage, and waiting out waves of cops, before moving on to set thermite to burn through to the vault. I also liked the fact the UI tells me my location as well as that of the team.. on a new map it can be difficult to explain where you are, especially when time is short! Communication is essential in this game, and yet again I was glad of playing with friends who do talk 🙂
The game felt a lot harder too.. and with this additional challenge, it was much more satisfying when we did get through the level. Later missions are more difficult, with no normal mode, never mind easy.. but as you play, the characters level up and gain access to better gear, so by the time you get to the hardest levels you should be ready for them!
The second mission, Heat Street, involved running through the streets chasing after your doublecrossing ex-accomplice.. a definite increase in difficulty from the previous mission as the map was so much more open. Catching up with the traitor led to a surprisingly horrible section, as you have to smoke the guy out of the back of the van while he screams and curses at you the whole time!
After he eventually gives up and comes out of the van, you have to force him to come along for the rest of the map, as he’s chained himself to your briefcase of money!
We tried a few rounds with just two human players and AI filling in.. while the AI are decent shots and make great bodyguards, that was all they could do. They also tend to run straight in to rescue any downed player, which means they tend to go down as well. I’m still glad of them though, because otherwise we’d always have to find four people to play!
The third map was Panic Room, a drug-den where a large safe was our target. I loved this map, although it was easy to get confused between floors and the number of routes through rooms.. seeing the safe carted away by chopper was great too!
The chopper made another appearance to take away our rescued Chinese prisoner in the first part of Green Bridge.. I couldn’t help but think of Lawnchair Larry here 🙂