When I first got into Left 4 Dead, I knew there would be moments of high-octane action, but I was hoping that would be in addition to tension. I was looking for build-up, for suspense. For long, slow, quiet dread. I wanted to take it slow, let the threat of being in a town inhabited entirely by monsters in the night become almost unbearable. Basically, I was hoping to be at least a little scared. Is that too much to ask in a zombie game based around survival?

Unfortunately, this is a rising trend in video games of this ilk. Resident Evil has even changed things up to be more about intensity than fear. What was once Survival/Horror is now just… Survival. I must beg the question: Why did this happen? How does removing the fear aspect from a Horror game somehow make it better? Why do game developers these days think you can’t have both?

Because they want the Halo dollars. They know the kids will pick up any dumbass game where you charge through everything without any creeping threat of repercussion. No anticipation. No strategy. No tension. No journey. Just nonstop, self-deflating climax. Games are too easy these days, so to hide this, developers will just make the enemies hit harder, instead of smarter. All this does is make an occasionally manageable game into a frustrating pit of anguish. Why sneak around when running into enemy fire blindly shooting without regard for accuracy has been rendered the wisest plan of attack?

Video games are being made to eradicate our attention spans. They’re recruiting a twitch-kiddy fanboytallion to rely on buying up every shitty new Call of Duty time and again. We are being trained to become ADD-riddled Pavlovion dogs. Half-Life 2 allowed for scenes of rest, of uneasiness, of quiet. In a zombie game, you’d think Valve would allow more of this, in accordance with the fact that zombies are supposed to be scary. Instead, Left 4 Dead’s AI Director reprimands the player for not racing through every stage in record time, by dropping a swarm of zombies on your ass. Any experienced player will tell you the best thing to do is to just rush through every single part of the campaign if you want to avoid dying. Why even bother crafting these lush and detailed stages if nobody at Valve wants us to stop and appreciate them? Why not just make the levels a bunch of featureless cubes in an underground bunker? Like the days of the N64. At least then you wouldn’t be confused by where you’re supposed to go, and it would certainly save time and resources.

Left 4 Dead is trying to be a sugar-fueled Smash Bros. of zombie games. It’s trying to be a “party” game. My theory is they did this to gain a wider audience, instead of a better one. This explains its addictive qualities, but also its shortcomings. The problem I have is similar to what Tycho recently went through with Bookworm Adventures 2. I hate the game they tried to make it, but love the game it sometimes becomes, either through accident or rebelliousness of its original design. And even the game they tried to make wasn’t all that great by its own standards. What they could have had, though, shines through once in a blue moon and you realize just how under-utilized and undervalued this property is to them.

There is no reason why Valve can’t have a fast-paced shoot-’em-up, AND a sometimes smart, sometimes terrifying slow crawl through the muck. You can have that cake and eat it too. It’s all about trickery, knowing when to make the player think something awful is in the woods, and knowing when to bring that nightmare into better focus. It is not about constantly throwing in wave after wave of annoying monsters because someone dared to enjoy their product. Expert mode might be a cause for outrage, but it’s the only mode that comes with the possibility of losing. That’s the closest to fear you’re gonna get out of this game.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

So there is a game in early development called “Epic Mickey”. It is apparently about Disney characters, but I don’t recall Mickey Mouse being a crazy robot spider from hell. Judging from the concept art, it is a fusion of your fondest childhood memories + your deepest, darkest, soul-sundering nightmares.

My response.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Seeing as my life is a squalid tragedy, I spend much of my (infinite) free time thinking about things no one, anywhere, could ever possibly care about. Then I have the audacity to expand and explore these thoughts, and actually present them for others to see. Under the sick pretense that someone else might not only read through all of it, but somehow in the process give two shits about what I have to say. There are entire wards in lunatic asylums devoted to people like me. The only reason I think anyone puts up with it is because I’ve spared the world shitty youtube videos of myself “reviewing” new Transformers toys in all of my nasally-voiced grainy-cam splendor.

You’re welcome.

Anyway, today’s subject of ridiculous blather is the new “Special Infected”. In Left 4 Dead, in addition to plain old vanilla flesh-eating zombies(hey, come on, try and stay awake here), there are boss and mini-boss monsters that have unique abilities. Abilities that can be a serious pain in the ass if not taken care of quickly. Fat, bile-spewing, exploding infected. Feral infected that leap great distances and slice people into ribbons. And tall, lanky infected with tongues long enough to snatch you away from one end of a street to the other.

Then there are the “Boss Infected”, who are not merely annoying but can wreck your shit in a matter of seconds. These come in two varieties:

-The Witch(who can be avoided, but WILL kill one of your team-mates or you if you disturb her), and:
-The Tank(who is a hulking, mandatory opponent and can wipe out an entire team of healthy Survivors).

If the zombie hordes are the meal, these guys are the spices of Left 4 Dead. Just before it can ever get boring, you’ll hear one of these Special Infected’s trademark audio cues, and then it gets interesting. They can attack from anywhere, no matter where you are. Rooftops, houses, sewers, forests. You’ll need your wits, some team-work and a good trigger-finger to get by.

Left 4 Dead 2 is introducing 3 new Special Infected. Two have been revealed as of this writing, and they’re both of the “annoying” variety. Alone, they can’t cause too much trouble. It’s when you get them in addition to waves of regular zombies and other Specials that they can make things go down the toilet very fast. This presents the players with an important decision: do dozens of swarming zombies take priority, or the single specimen of these assholes?

"I am tired of these jokes about my giant hand! The first such incident occured in 1956, when-"

“The Charger“. Created as a means of discouraging tightly-grouped camping players, this mini-Tank rams into the survivors at incredible speeds, then grabs one with his Uber-Hand, and continually smashes their head into the ground. I believe in Germany, that’s referred to as “foreplay”.

He’s not nearly as strong as a Tank, but he can potentially ruin even the best-laid plans if he’s not taken care of, and fast. Which is what an annoying infected is supposed to do. Take note of the hillbilly overalls. This is a recurring theme, which you’ll see in the 2nd Special Infected revealed so far:

It was nice of Paris Hilton to let them use her likeness.

“The Spitter” (tee-hee). She spews an acidy substance that not only injures the survivors, but also sticks to the ground beneath them. Any time a survivor steps on this substance, they take damage, thus limiting where the survivors can go. In close-quarters, during a swarm of zombies, or during a Finale, this will force the players to think on their toes and possibly re-shape their strategies on the fly.

They were recently the subject of a new VGCats comic(which for some odd reason Scott removed the first panel of, so now it starts off halfway through the set-up. There wasn’t anything offensive or terrible about the first panel, and the drawings were fine. Strange…).

The Charger was revealed in the E3 announcement trailer. The Spitter was revealed at Comic-con. The game is going to be at PAX’09. It would not be unwise to speculate that they’ll unveil the third new Special Infected then.

What do we know about them so far? Well, the two revealed so far are not Boss Infected, who rarely appear more than once per stage. These guys are going to be commonplace. With one left to unveil, it might very well be a new Boss like the Tank or Witch, the kind that represent a much greater and more immediate risk than the other Special Infected. The kind that can result in a very fast Game-Over without the right strategy, and some luck. Fighting the Tank can still be a harrowing, nail-biting experience, but it’d be nice to have some variety now and then. You face a Tank an average of 5 times in any given campaign. I’m betting my chips on Valve giving us a new team-devouring monstrosity to shake things up.

We also know that the recurring theme seems to be “hillbilly”. The Charger’s overalls. The Spitter’s white-trash look and Daisy-Duke pig-tails. You’re in New Orleans in this game, in the swamps sometimes. I’m talking the Deep-South. So what other hick imagery does Valve have to draw upon for their last Special Infected? What else do we associate with Appalachian, “Deliverance” style marshlands?

ALLIGATORS, THAT’S WHAT.

Technically a crocodile, but you get the idea. (I guess that makes Louis "Alfred", or something?)

I don’t even know if there’s a whole lot they could do to make him wildly different from the Tank. Maybe he can crawl on the ceilings and slam into the players below. Maybe he can swipe them with his giant tail and chow down on the one left standing, or drag them into a swamp. Part of me just wants them to put in the Lizard from Spider-Man, which I would not object to in any way. Whenever giant lizard-people wear people-clothes, shit be going down.

If not that, how about a boss infected based on Larry the Cable Guy, for no other reason than to give us the sweet satisfaction of murdering Larry the Cable Guy? (But then, wouldn’t a Boomer in a trucker hat suffice?)

If neither of those suggestions work, I have one last suggestion.

END OF NERD-FLOW

~A.H.

After 54,000 zombies killed(the game keeps track up until you reach 53,935), I think it’s safe to call it: My favourite character here is Louis.

Not pictured: Peelz

How did that happen? I used to think of this guy as the bottom rung on a stepping stool. I even made an entire comic/rant describing him as not only lacking redeeming features but also being a stereotype of a stereotype. He’s something of a laughingstock on the internet, and for good reason. I have written many an article(some I will not post) that suggest he is the most “cartoonish” of the cast. Maybe that’s why I like ‘im so much. Francis, Zoey and Bill are all certainly likeable(and Bill is the best visual design of the group), but none of them are given the chance to be memorable. They’re not explored, save for a few humorous smart-aleck quips. They’re barely even started, and then cue credits. So perhaps choosing my favourite 2-dimensional character isn’t a fantastic way to spend my time, especially in the shadow of more pressing responsibilities.

I didn’t think much of Louis for a long time. There is a sense of weakness to him. I expected him to be the Coward, the Fuck-Up, the Comic Relief. The opening cinematic paints him in this light. It is also, sadly, my own unfortunate expectations of black characters in modern fiction. That’s about all we get, so it’s only natural that we assume that’s what we’ll get every time. This is a lousy trend which really oughta be looked at one of these days(at least, by more than just N’Gai Croal). Much of this is my own undoing. My opinion of him changed drastically after a few small revelations.

• Upon being incapacitated, a weakened Louis not only helped me back on my feet, he has healed me on many occasion where there was only one med-kit left and he was seriously injured too. It’s hard not to be humbled by that, or be anything but determined to try and keep him alive(or find more pills) to return the favour.
• On a particularly foul Dead Air campaign, Bill was killed by a Hunter and Francis by the horde, moments before the final Tank battle. Louis and myself(as Zoey) thus had to take down a Tank by ourselves, with two less people than is recommended. He bravely distracted the lumbering beast and died for it. I know this is all just coding and subroutines and AI and priority on the only human player, but this character was willing -to die- to ensure I would get out of the zombie apocalypse alive. I appreciated that. I suddenly forgot why I cared how much of a dork he is.
• In one of the ads, he has an interesting line: “Guys at the office used to laugh at me when I hit the rifle range at lunch. Ain’t so damn funny now, is it?!” That paints a picture. It tells me this is a man who has never been appreciated, who had to abandon quite a bit of himself to fit into a stale, meaningless existence. Maybe I can’t relate to that, but it made me respect him a lot more. It got me to read between the lines. It made me see him not as a “Mad TV skit”, but as a guy who just needed anyone to give him a break.

These things, among others, made me glad that he survived the initial outbreak. Strangely enough though, I don’t often play as him, Bill or Francis. I like being able to see, hear and interact with them too much to inhabit or become them. I make too many mistakes to do them justice, and I appreciate their company(not that Zoey isn’t a fine ally either).

I can only hope that Goofy-impersonating jackass “Ellis” inspires a similar metamorphosis when Left 4 Dead 2 comes out. I’ve been hard on the cast to these games, and admittedly I haven’t seen much of the first sequel(and there will be others). But Ellis is the only one so far that I’ve seriously considered shooting at the start of every match.

Kotaku says his spot was planned for a Firefighter character, and I really have to wonder what they were thinking by not following through with that. Firefighters are by nature bad-ass enough to earn the title of HE WHO DOES NOT TAKE SHIT FROM FIRE. Replacing that with a shittier, horse-loving hick version of the Scout doesn’t seem like a great trade. I don’t know. Time will determine that.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

by Alex Hill

How often is the biggest blockbuster of the week also an incredible, unflinching look into real social and political crises, seen through the inventive lens of science fiction? When was the last #1 movie at the box-office also a film of truth, un-manufactured, warts-and-all? Based on a short film, District 9 looks at first contact in a way few if any other examples of fiction dared to entertain. The extra-terrestrials are advanced, but starving, desperate refugees that need us a lot more than we need them. They are fearsome, and feared, and amazingly both sides are to blame for this. It is not a movie with easy-answers or a dime-store ending. It is not about solutions, but of our passive treatment for what we don’t understand, and a struggle through the muck we often provide.

This is not a movie with a black and white philosophy, which might at first seem ironic given its subtext. Even the characters we root for have their ugly sides. “Wikus van der Merwe” (Sharlto Copley) is in charge of evicting these bipedal crustaceans out of one intolerable hellhole and into another. Things don’t go as planned. Bodies pile up on his watch. Sometimes his armed accompaniment are at fault, sometimes the residents of the slum are uncooperative. It is not a pretty film, but scattered in the filth are rare moments of forlorn beauty.

Wikus is at times friendly and level-headed, sometimes naive and sometimes a doofus. And sometimes he is as heartless and beurocratic as this film’s monstrous antagonists(and I’m not referring to the “Prawns”). Just ten minutes in he has ordered and overseen atrocities not merely with a straight face, but with a grin and a chuckle and a sick sense of fascinated excitement. He learns his lesson, but oh, he learns it the hard way. It takes brutal episodes of inhumanity for him to see that the life given to these new residents on Earth is not justified. Yes, the aliens are often reduced to scavenging beasts in the wastelands. What else do you expect? Look at their living conditions. You cannot consistently, mercilessly treat a living, thinking being like an animal and then expect it to act civilized. Nor can you expect a cornered animal not to bare its fangs.

When Wikus and everyone else starts to notice he’s got more in common with the aliens than when he started, he is stripped of his humanity. Now the shoe is on the other prong. He then must rely on an alien with a bizarrely un-alien name: “Christopher Johnson”. He and his little insectoid son become Wikus’ only allies, and make a pact: Wikus will get him fuel for his space-ship if Chris can reverse the biological metamorphosis taking hold of him. Because we are given time with these characters, because this film has patience, and because we see them in a personal light, the scenes where these three strangelings are thrust into danger are given weight. The stakes are always higher when I give a damn about who’s in the crossfire, and I tell you I gave a good god damn about Chris and his son. And even Wikus.

Does this film compromise itself with the action-heavy last act? I don’t think so. In a movie like this, violence is unavoidable. A lot of characters get what’s coming to them. The loathsome circumstances are given all of the attention they deserve, more than lesser filmmakers would have allowed. This is a shocking, sometimes gruesome, sometimes heart-wrenching movie. I wouldn’t call the scenes of bloodshed glorified. There are honest and deadly repercussions here. This is not a toy-commercial.

Nor is it a recreation of the events of District Six, a very-real place and situation involving many people bulldozed out of their homes in South Africa. How could it be? What it does is echo the shattering instances like that, where greed and fear of the unknown work in tandem to cloud our ability for human compassion. The Prawns don’t represent any one specific race, but any group of people forced to live without even the luxury of squalor. It is handled intelligently, and looks at its events through many different angles of observation, many of them not without merit. District 9 is about the sad outrage that comes from only realizing everything you really have when you no longer have it. And when you realize that many people never have it.

Roger Ebert wrote a fine review for it, but believes it does not belong to the high annals of science fiction. I think the best fiction resonates and reflects so much of what’s regrettably, agonizingly real. Here is a movie not content to bludgeon the point or the action into its audience. Its makers are incapable of making forgettable popcorn entertainment. They aimed higher. In spite of a misstep here and there, they hit their target. This is what a real fucking movie is about.

If it weren’t for Fox, Universal and Microsoft, I would be saying all of this about Halo. If any series needed Neill Blomkamp and Peter Jackson to give it some dignity, there you go. But as far as consolation prizes go, District 9 is one of the best.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Hey, good job, Sony! Alienate anyone and everyone who owns your most successful video game console, or anything in its library of titles. Please force us to buy those same games in the future in case we want to sell or get rid of the last generation of consoles to maybe afford your overpriced doorstop. Even though patents suggest it is actually possible for the Playstation 3 to be backwards-compatible. Thank you, Kaz, for eliminating that incentive to part from $300 during a recession.

If this does not seem like an important thing to consider, look at the Wii and Xbox 360. The Wii doesn’t just play Wii games. If you fit a Gamecube disc and controller and memory card in there, you’re good to go. You can eBay the last generation and save room in your “entertainment centre”. The Xbox 360 isn’t entirely backward compatible, but most of the noteworthy titles of the original Box o’ X can be played on that machine as well. If for some reason you are tempted to go back to “Teh Haloz” Volume 1, you can. Sony is the only member of the big three right now whose product doesn’t let you play those immediate back-catalogues of games. Notice how it’s also no longer leading in sales above its competitors, like it was just a few years ago?

There’s a reason for that. Unless it’s a Super Nes, people don’t like holding onto these big, clunky systems when they can just play the same games on this new, shinier, fancier machine. After a Wii, you no longer -need- a Gamecube. With a Playstation 3, you still need the Playstation 2. The best you get now is the option to pay for PSX games you probably already own.

Wait, so its advanced enough to emulate games from the 90’s, but not from 5 years ago? And only then if you’re willing to pay them more money, after already selling your first-born child last week just to pay for gas?

While you’re at it Sony, make it a fucking ordeal for anyone to actually contribute software that you can find on the 360 anyway. And when you somehow accidentally manage to get someone to make product for the PS3, make sure it turns out significantly worse on your system(just ask anyone who bought the Orange Box). Really stick it to anyone stupid enough to support your company in any way.

John Koller, director of Sony’s hardware marketing division, put the backwards compatibility issue into perspective:

“It’s not as big as a purchase intent driver as you may be hearing,” he claimed. “We’ve got such a substantial lineup of titles on the PS3; most people are buying the PS3 for PS3 games. They’ve buying it for PS3 games and Blu-ray movies.”

The perspective being that of a magical fantasy land, of course. Blu-ray is understandable, but, and I’m aware that the following comments might upset some people:

What games?

No, really. When was the last time you thought about “Killzone”? Or “Uncharted”? Anyone? Is there anyone so self-loathing that they still play that marketing executive wet-nightmare “Home”? Is Metal Gear Solid 4 really worth not being able to play Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 without needing to hook up a different fucking machine(something I don’t have to do if I want to play Mario Sunshine or Star Wars Battlefront)?

Watching Sony go from the PS2 to the PS3 is like watching Michael Phelps chop off his arms and legs and attempt to break swimming records using only his neck and penis. They got arrogant. They got greedy. They assumed the ceiling was not made of glass. They tried to break the goose to get all of the golden eggs at once.

Yes, people are buying the PS3. They’re not doing it because it’s a quality product. I think it was David Wong who compared it to baseball player salaries. Baseball players get paid millions. It’s not because they’re expected to perform better the next year, it’s for being on the team and filling the stadium seats the previous year.

It’s the same thing here. People bought the PS3 because the Playstation 2 offered an absurd amount of fun times unique to itself. I think the only two characters that didn’t appear on that system were Mario and the Master Chief. While Nintendo and Microsoft tried using exclusivity to stay afloat, Sony wisely adopted an inclusive approach, and raked in a greater profit. This is why I’m not afraid to suggest the Playstation 2 might be the best video game console I’ve ever owned. The ratio of entertainment to cash-in stinkers was favourable even compared to the Super Nintendo. It was not unwise of the public to expect this same pedigree from Sony for their next console. What was once the obligated gathering ground for every title of even passing interest, is now a place many dare not tread. I certainly would’ve considered making the jump if I didn’t have to bring the old system with me. Final Fantasy XIII isn’t enough. This is like moving, but not being allowed to take anything you own with you into the new apartment. Even your family.

I am not against the idea of Sony finding success, let make that clear. I’m no hater. I’m sure all of the major consoles have their perks. But I am a realist, and if they want access to my respect, or my wallet, they’re going to have to get their heads back in the game. With backward-compatibility all but eliminated, they don’t have a lot to convince me to invest in their product(and that was a short list to begin with). All things considered, I don’t think I’ll be buying a PS3 Slim any time soon.

…I guess I could have spared a few hundred words if I’d just said that last sentence.

(Like many topics, Shamus examines it with a keener eye and sharper tongue than I.)

END OF LINE

~A.H.