This past week, the fall’s most anticipated Zombie Apocalypse title, Left 4 Dead 2, unleashed its demo to mass audiences. With the actual title coming to knock its rotting fingers on door steps in less than two weeks, the short demo should have people salivating and blood thirsty for the full game’s November 17th release date.

The Left 4 Dead franchise for those of you that have barricaded themselves away from the gaming world as if an actually apocalypse was going down, is a four person FPS that allows four live player to take on the role of survivors trying to shoot, burn, denote and beat their way through hordes of zombies and specially mutated infected. The title also has varied modes that allow live players to assume the role of special infected trying to take down the survivors.

Left 4 Dead 2 focuses on the infection of the deep south, Savannah and New Orleans, where four new survivors: a high school football coach, a young woman, a good old boy, and a con-artist that looks way too much like John Cusack, fight their way through hordes of their former southerners with a new arsenal of weaponry and power-ups.

While the new weaponry is visually stimulating everything about it tends to be a cheap firework display. Despite the fact that’s its amusing to hit a zombie with a frying pan, a machete, or a police baton each melee weapon feels exactly the same and at the end of the day is just a re-skinned rifle butt swing, which was what was available in the original. Most importantly you have to give up your side arm to use them. I’ll keep my 9mm with infinite ammo instead of trying to beat a charging witch to death with an acoustic guitar. How about we leave the beating of zombies with instruments to the Dead Rising folks at Capcom?

Another half-assed power up is the boomer puke vials. Remember the pipe bombs that attracted all the zombies to one area then unpacked a bone storm explosion? Well the boomer puke only delivers the first half of that equation. Thanks, for adding another step to my zombie exterminating process. On the other hand, there is a new adrenalin shot that speeds up your perception of the world around you. It’s pretty cool during horde attack. Give it a shot.

The bestiary grew to include a rotting woman that spit pools of acids, zombies of slain cops in bulletproof riot gear, little midget zombies that ride the survivors into bad situations, and overgrown freaks that grab you and pound you until you stop moving. While the first two are kind of clever and vary the game play, the second two are more just like hybrids of existing infected. The riding zombie, “Jockey” combines the dangers of the smoker and the hunter while the big guy, “the charger”, is just an altered “Tank.” Valve didn’t really lose much sleep staying up designing these guys did they?

Overall, the game play does have a more varied feel than the original. Most special scenarios in Left 4 Dead involved hitting a switch, getting some bombs together, dousing the place in gasoline, and digging in somewhere that you could blast and burn back the tide of hungry faces. Left 4 Dead 2 turns that scenario upside down by making the survivors hit a button in point A and then have to run through a maze of post-apocalyptical barricades, which the infected are flooding over at every turn, to get hit another switch at point B. Much more intense to have to think on your feet then getting to crouch behind a bar and mow down the infected from the comfort of your preplanned barricade

At the end of the day. I still feel this game relies too heavily on multi-player features to sell it. The single player experience of having three AI bots march along with you falls miles short of actually playing through with buddies or strangers, and even dialing up a quick match with random people puts the player at risking of having to deal with a party of three immature players that just want to yell through their headsets and shoot at each other. With this type of title the replay value only holds up if other people and the right type of people are playing it, but what will ten years bring? Gamers still play the original Resident Evil, but will people return to a gaming experience that put all its eggs in a multi-player basket?

While the demo proves that November 17th will bring out some amusing zombie blasting and burning, Left 4 Dead still uses its AI and atmosphere in a manner that’s too in your face, never building tension and never being creepy. (Well maybe in the case of the witch that can walk around in L4D2) Intense gameplay is a good thing, but when it’s overdone and no other mood rises to break up the tension the gameplay becomes two dimensional.

Fans of the Zombie Genre have waited for a good atmospheric living dead single player FPS since Doom, but I don’t think L4D2 will do the job. It’s a step in the right direction, but falls a couple fingers short.

Left 4 Dead 2 will be available for XBOX 360 and PC on November 17th.
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“You mean you have to use your hands. That’s like a baby’s toy.” Marty McFly is told this in. 2015 by two kids after showing them how to play an 80’s light gun game. Back To the Future 2 may not be far off with their projection of technology or the attitudes of modern gamers. Microsoft already has filled YouTube with celebs playing with “Natal,” their newest baby, ready to stick it to the Wii.

What makes me curious is why the common Anti-Wii Loser is ready to embrace Natal like it’s the second Coming of Luke Skywalker ready to put the evil empire in its place. Let’s analyze why AWLs (we’ll call them) don’t like Wii in the first place. AWLs proclaim they hate the gimmicky nature of the Wii. It attracts causal gamers, and women—boo, can’t have that! they scare them!—to gaming.

Why exactly do you suppose Natal is being launched. You don’t suppose it because “Wii Sports” and “Wii Fit” sold like a Zillion units, and now Microsoft wants a piece of that action. So all those gimmicky games and casual gamers are just going to be coming to your hood. Better start loading up the welcome wagon, hard core gamers. They’ll be crowding up the air waves on those professional headsets y’all wear real soon.

Yes, Yes—The Wii has sub-standard graphics. If we’re not using every bit of the newest pixel shading technology a game can’t be fun, Of course. However, the games that haven’t been criticized as much, your “Mario Galaxies” and your “Twilight Princesses”, are known franchises that were easily fashioned to the Wii. I think it’s going to be awhile before Natal gives us an 30+ hour, in-depth, and graphically intense game that operates completely on air.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Innovation in video games is always exciting, but I think Natal is risky business. Actress, Felica Day said it best after her test run, “I can’t wait to throw a fireball like this.” Neither can I. Give me an awe survive horror game where I’m wrestling a zombie of my throat and snapping its neck with my bare hands and I’m there. However, It has more potential to spawn a billion “Block party 5” and “Cooking” games than it does to instantly take gaming to the next level. Gamers love to hate the industry that feeds them, and the Wii has been judge an unworthy whipping boy by the elite for a while now. AWLs want that big knock blow to make the Wii obsolete, but—call me a doubter, it may be wonderful and shut my mouth— but, I’m not holding my breath.

Okay, so the big bad Alien Add-on has finally invaded. Mother Ship Zeta went on Sale this morning, and I played the first couple hours to get a feel. So far, the game has its hosts of pros and cons, but a handful of my fears are already confirmed.

First of all, It’s pretty much a victim of the “L” word, linear. Were there any doubts? While the mother ship does open up to allow some human decision on the map, it offers no more freedom then which end of a “T” would you like to explore, and which NPC would you like to take with you. There won’t be the type of freedom of discover offered by Point Lookout I’m afraid; in fact there isn’t even a world map available. It looks like another spider web mission at its best, you’re stuck here until your done.

The game also has a pretty weak bestiary. You have aliens, aliens, and more aliens that are assisted by typical turrets and some boring robots. The ship is also full of cryo-tube that contain people the aliens have collected over the years, and occasional you’ll crack open one to unleash a ghoul or raider on yourself. Ghouls in space, why not? Jason Voorhees, Leprechaun, and Pinhead all got there.

If you like new energy weapons, then this game does have provide. The funny thing is that none of them seem out power the Alien Blaster most gamers plucked out off the crashed ship months ago. The other two weapons are similar but weaker. Then there’s another sloppy heavy weapon that looks like Bioshock Big Daddy Drill but launches energy in the shape of a bouncing ball, which is nearly impossible to aim and causes a lot less damage then it looks like it’s going to.

Mothership Zeta’s most interesting moment, thus far was a standoff, ala Half Life 2, where your character and a Cowboy—you thaw after being frozen for a couple hundred years—have to fend off a horde of aliens using shock pulses from anti gravity towers, and then manual shoot the ones that make it through. While this was new and amusing it proves my statement from last month that the designers are trying to reinvent the wheel. Don’t mess with near perfection, just give us the freedom we’ve always enjoyed in the Fallout Universe, more map to explore.

While Fallout has never taken itself all that serious, the tone of this DLC is mostly a comedy. The alien’s voices are funny. The NPCs are silly figures misplaced in time, including a Samurai that speaks only Japanese. The enemies themselves are almost comic looking with their bobble head like physiques, and the ship is loaded with recording the aliens forced each of their captives to make. Most of these are quite Monty Pythonish.

So what’s the verdict. Well, it’s probably falls right in the middle. It’s easily more captivating than Operation Anchorage or The Pitt. However, it can’t compare with Broken Steel or Point Lookout. While, I probably have a ways to go still, my first impression is far from amazement.

Keep in my mind that I’m judging this more harshly because this is it folks, the last of Fallout until 2010 sometime. It’s enjoyable, but lacks the freedom that always made the Fallout games great. I just hope it will all end some sort of final bang, so I can leave it feeling satisfied. Cause after this, it’s back to either hanging around Megaton and watching Moria pick soot out of her scalp or off to Big Town to listen to Bittercup rant. Oh BOY, It's going to be a long cold winter until New Vegas launches

On August 3, Fallout 3 will take its final breath when new DLC, Mothership Zeta, is released. The alien invasion had better bring with it, a host of new terrain, and some terrific elements of both battle and RPG. Wasn’t that what has attracted everyone to Fallout in the first place.

Point Lookout understood this. This was the one DLC that really took what made Fallout 3 an enjoyable experience and flaunted it in a little world, a child of the original concept. Fallout 3’s greatness stems from wandering across a great expanse with a destination and being distracted from that quest several times during the course of that journey, because of little side quests that pop up along the way.

The original game had you coming across town full of cannibals, collecting soda for a dizzy blonde, and following distress signals that only lead to shelters full of skeletons. Fallout 3 like Point Lookout was a world with distractions, just like life. You’re off flirting with Bittercup in Bigtown when you should be helping your father save the world.

The Pitt and Operation Anchorage both had their moments but failed the golden rule by making Fallout something it has never been since Fallout 1—or even Wasteland—linear. While The Pitt had minor deviations, here and there, Operation Anchorage made the game into a simple war shooter, and did a half-assed job of it. Even Half-life 2’s system of commanding a squad for a tiny portion of the game offered more tactical combat options than just selecting what type of over aggressive NPC you’d like to see run into a launched missile. Not too much strategy in giving the gamer troops he can’t give orders to.

Broken Steel—aside from its host of bugs—was a nice continuation, and the level cap raised helped. However, at the end of the day, it was more “the part of the game we should have programmed to begin with,” and not really additional concepts.

Mothership Zeta concerns me because its already presenting itself with the same trappings as Operation Anchorage and The Pitt, trying to make the game something it’s not by putting 101 into a situation where he can’t escape until he’s done. Reinventing the wheel is not what I want from the final bit of Fallout that were are going to get for awhile.

Point Lookout allowed itself to become part of the original world, not a spider web for the player to escape from. It also had great atmosphere, moral choice, and the ability to follow whims and little quirky shoreline across the map. Going north to the Detention camp to find the body of a Chinese Spy out of curious only to yourself waylaid by a band of ghouls charging out of the mist and past the barbed wire fences is a moment that will stick with me. Being forced to fight in The Pitt’s arena, whether I liked it or not, which presents three adversaries—each round simpler than the next (Yes I had difficulty jacked up to the hardest setting)—not so much.

Point being, I have low expectations and many concerns for what is being called the last DLC for Fallout 3. Open up New Jersey or New York. Let gamers fight Supermutants inside the statue of Liberty. Do just about anything to expand the freedom of the Fallout experience, but why trap the player on a tin can hurling through space. We have Dead Space and Mass Effect for that, games that have done it well. Don’t reinvent the wheel, give us more freedom, not another DLC doing a bad job of trying to make Fallout multi-genre.

Capcom decided it was going to host a Survival Horror Charity Basketball game. To help raise money for the DDZF (Diverse Definition of Zombies Fund),and prove that they owned the Survival horror Genre. So they assembled their Dream Team: Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Jill Valentine, Albert Wesker and Frank West, photo Journalist with their coach Megaman.

For awhile no one would go up against them, Finally, Isaac Clark, came back to earth from Dead Space and decided he would take them all on by himself.

The day of the game came and Capcom’s team couldn’t stop laughing when he took the court, but, at half-time, Capcom was down 60 to Nothing. Once Megaman had them in the locker room he started screaming at them. “What the hell is wrong with you guys. You have more experience and that kid runs like a snail in those boots, and he’s running all over you guys.”

Everyone had their heads downs, except Chris who stood up and said, “Don’t you know coach.”

“Know What!?”

“We’ve been at this for longer than almost anyone, that is true. But…”

“BUT. What??”

“No one ever taught us how to Run and Shoot.”

HA HA HA HA
….Sorry for that one….

With Funcom still toying around with how to continue their saga, I take a long sigh once more. Longest Journey was one of those games that everyone talked about as being the best of best of a dying industry. In 1999 with the adventure genre dying out, Longest Journey was the proof—in the worlds of the immortal Kurgan—“Its better burn out than to fade away.”

Then 2006 came around, and FunCom gave us Dreamfall…

The aspect that made this title unqie was forcing you to fight on both sides of a conflicts by changing your POV character, making this title different and exciting, but it was still unsatisfying. Ironically, I had played this one first, and had to seek out the original.

TLJ lived up to every bit of its hype. Excellent characters, perfect environments, and a captivating storyline all
came together to provide an experience that manifests all of the best things about the adventure game genre.
So, what the hell happened to Dreamfall. Well, the game had its moments. It served as a virtual family reunion for those who loved the original—nice to see a 28 year old April snapping Azadi necks—and the interesting storyline made the game playable . Some amusing mini-games also occur when you need to hack locks and such, ala Bioshock but not as cool. 3D environments added a new fresh layer to the game, and a snow covered Marcuia never looked so good. However most of the soul was gone. The game itself does what may modern sequels and titles have the tendency to do these days and sells its soul to try and fit into a current popular genre.

I understand gamer interests change, but Funcom’s answer was a rushed combat system and poorly done stealth missions.The brilliant battle system is like fighting a guy holding a cardboard shield with a shotgun. If you keep attacking something good is bound to happen soon. The few incorporated stealth based missions have about as much substance as the combat system. I know Solid Snake is watching these dippy chicks from the shadows, shaking his head.

I can some up the worst part of the developers choices to progress their saga into a new age of gaming with one word, Zoe. She is about the most unlikable main character since Harry Potter. While I assume the audience is supposed to accept this a girl as a new April Ryan, it’s hard to swallow. April was a struggling, artsy college student, that lived in a crappy apartment, and worked in food service. Yeah, been there. Somehow, I find a girl living in an exotic city in a beautiful apartment with her own private balcony and no job that mooches off her father who lets her throw parties in the house when she’s not busy bitching about how much her life sucks, a little harder to relate to. Not to mention her plot plays out like one of those teen drama—the kind that air on second rate network stations—complete with trendy music, and awkward kisses new boy love interests. Who were they trying to market this to? Maybe, fourteen year old girls that cry when they watch Dawson’s creek reruns would have been a good target audience.

But I digress, and I do understand that complex puzzles are out these days and I know TLJ received some criticism about the Puzzles being too complex in that MacGyver sort of way, but Dreamfall swung way to far the other way. The game practically spoon fed solutions to the player. Adventures games are about combining a balloon, a paperclip, a stuffed owl, and putting them all in a microwave until—poof—they turn into something that allows you to get an ID out of that space behind the counter it fell down.

With all kinds of rumors(everything from episodic DLC to MMORPG) floating around about the format of the next chapter, I honestly don’t know what the future of a very promising saga holds. Talk about the balancing being upset, Jeez. The important thing is to improve on where Dreamfall went astray instead of just throwing together half assessed combat, half assed stealth missions, half assed storylines. Dreamfall had more cliffhangers than 1940s cinema. That alone makes Dreamfall feel more like a marketing pitch for the next game than a standalone game itself.

Funcom had an original vision going, an exciting and captivating universe with likable and unique characters.
Writer and Director, Ragnar Tørnquist, needs to give us more talking birds with inappropriate sexual humor, jerky legless-half insane computer hacker and less whining girls with horrid accents.

TLJ3 or Dreamfall Chapters or The Longest Journey MMORPG needs to be a complete experience. Give us the rich 3D environments of Dreamfall, with the soul of TLJ. This is a beautiful universe and I think most fans of the series need more, but I also want a complete experience if that’s not too much to ask for these days.