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.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 8:32 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.