11-07-2008, 08:20 AM
I dont know how many of you preordered it (I saw Jess did) but I did and played the demo today.
Gameplay- great potential, killing zombies is really satisfying, it seems a little easy on any difficulty other than expert, but the co-op and versus gameplay looks to be really addicting. The demo is a little short and is the early part of the first campaign, which is an urban one. Its hard to say if the outdoor maps will be less linear, but in the 2 maps (2 of 5 for 1 of 4 campaigns) only have a few alternate paths. The director REALLY does change around what happens, and you could get swarmed at any time each play through. Zombies seem to take too much to aggro, when they arent in big swarms its easy to pick em off without attracting much attention.
Tech- looks like Episode 2 really, but with tons more models on screen. None of the slow down from the swarms that I expected, and the updated ragdoll system has created enemies that react to bullets more realistically (or atleast convincingly) than any game Ive played before.
But the killing blow is that instead of the classic steam server list they implemented this garbage console style matchmaking service that is really restricting, confusing, and buggy. But the steam community is up in arms over at steamforums so Im thinking this will be fixed before release.
I can see myself suggesting L4D to everyone, since Valve has already released patches for the early demo Im thinking that the classic server list will return atleast as an option. And Im hoping more maps and weapons and such will be released by Valve like they are doing with TF2, which started with an underwhelming number of maps.
Gameplay- great potential, killing zombies is really satisfying, it seems a little easy on any difficulty other than expert, but the co-op and versus gameplay looks to be really addicting. The demo is a little short and is the early part of the first campaign, which is an urban one. Its hard to say if the outdoor maps will be less linear, but in the 2 maps (2 of 5 for 1 of 4 campaigns) only have a few alternate paths. The director REALLY does change around what happens, and you could get swarmed at any time each play through. Zombies seem to take too much to aggro, when they arent in big swarms its easy to pick em off without attracting much attention.
Tech- looks like Episode 2 really, but with tons more models on screen. None of the slow down from the swarms that I expected, and the updated ragdoll system has created enemies that react to bullets more realistically (or atleast convincingly) than any game Ive played before.
But the killing blow is that instead of the classic steam server list they implemented this garbage console style matchmaking service that is really restricting, confusing, and buggy. But the steam community is up in arms over at steamforums so Im thinking this will be fixed before release.
I can see myself suggesting L4D to everyone, since Valve has already released patches for the early demo Im thinking that the classic server list will return atleast as an option. And Im hoping more maps and weapons and such will be released by Valve like they are doing with TF2, which started with an underwhelming number of maps.