Half-Masked

David Wong recently wrote a Cracked.com article called “5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying To Get You Addicted“. It is a worrying read. All through it, I thought back to Left 4 Dead 2. Here is the worst kind of game, a needlessly awful, “hair-pulling frustratathon”, that for some reason makes you think the next time it won’t be so bad. The jackpot is always seemingly around the corner, and then you’ve lost several hours of your life just trying to get to the end of a campaign on freaking Normal mode.

Addictive gameplay can be a positive thing in certain video games. Not here. And to those of you who think I can’t make an opinion because I haven’t tried it on Xbox Live, you may proceed directly to kiss my ass, because I endured two separate, equally hellish month-long free trials to see if that theory holds weight. I don’t think this game has the capacity to ruin my life as much as Everquest and World of Warcraft have(and continue to do) for many people, but I won’t allow it the chance to try. I’m trading that shit in, and if they won’t accept it, I will set fire to it.

I’m not kidding. It is the first game since E.T. for the Atari that warrants having every remaining copy rounded up and destroyed, to spare future generations of its wrath.

Like I said earlier, I went on Xbox Live to dissuade the argument that “Nah, brah, you can’t judge until you’ve played it until the heat-death of the universe, then it gets awesome“. Here are a couple of things I learned from the experience:

1. The British are coo-coo-bananas for Left 4 Dead. You will not play a single match online and NOT have a member of the United Kingdom participating. At any hour of the day, in any game mode, in even the loneliest of servers, you will hear a British accent mocking your testicles as his Hunter avatar tears into you. British women too. I don’t know what it is, specifically, about THIS game, but the Red Coats just can’t get enough of it. It just reaches them, in some way, more than any other demographic you can find on Xbox Live.
2. Not having a microphone is apparently a capital punishment. I don’t know the statistics, but at least half of the games you try to join will automatically kick any player who doesn’t have a headset mic. Regardless of your skill level or reputation. This is prejudice. It is also incredibly backwards, because the worst teams I have played with and against were those who openly used their mics at every opportunity. It does not, in fact, make you better at the game. And strategy? Doesn’t exist in this game. It can’t. By the time you tell your team-mates to “stand by the corner to hold them off while I toss a pipe-bomb”, everyone is dead from a HUNTER/SMOKER/CHARGER/SPITTER/TANK/HORDE combo.
3. You are all idiots and sore-losers. Hey, so am I. Left 4 Dead 2 encourages it. I don’t blame anyone who rage-quits after three solid poundings by a ridiculously unfair matchup of 2 vs. 4. But to quite in the first 30 seconds? Just because you’re not WINNING BY A RIDICULOUS MARGIN? Nine-year olds shouldn’t be allowed to play online games. And returning to the Mic-discussion again, I once went through an entire round of Halo 3 where my team-mate wouldn’t stop telling the other team to(and I quote) “Lick (his) chicken-asshole!”. Another person in Left 4 Dead spent an ENTIRE GAME singing a lewd version of “Buffalo Joe!”. And the strategies they offered were just as impotent, detailing such such vital game-plans as: “BRB, GOTTA GO PEE”, and “PHFT! PFHFTFHPHFTTHPFHPTPHPFHFPHFPHTHFPHTHFT” (which is literally the most intelligible thing I’ve heard over Xbox Live. It is a human making the sound, this I am sure, yet they never stopped to breathe. No rhythm, no melody, no purpose. Just spitting into a microphone forever).
4. I am actually pretty good at Left 4 Dead 2. This is the saddest point of all. I have beaten 4-person teams by myself in Versus. I have brought what looked to be 1,000 point-difference defeats into narrow victories. I am not saying I am “GREAT!” at this game, I have made gargantuan screw-ups like the rest of us. But my average of survival/death is unusually more favourable in this game than others. But that’s nothing to be proud of. Of all of the games for me to have even passing talent for, why is it the Worst Game Ever? Even being good at Halo would be better than this. I don’t expect anyone to believe me, especially not on the internet. But the people who are so insecure about my opinions that they choose to think I simply hate any game I’m not good at are a sad lot. A good game is one that’s fun even in defeat. This game isn’t fun even in victory.

In all of the time I spent trying to salvage some entertainment value from this service, I encountered a whopping Three(3) players who were courteous, calm, in it for the fun, and graceful in defeat. RuneWolf, geeking, XlorelleX, thank you for being the three sane pillars in a storm of homophobic retards. May your journeys into the Howling Stupid be fruitful.

Myself? I’m done with online games. And maybe Left 4 Dead. I’ll see how the third one turns out(fuck you, it’ll happen. Valve will do anything to avoid Half-Life.)

END OF LINE

~A.H.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 3:51 am 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.