Left 4 Dead 2

And in only just over a year, Valve are back with the sequel to the multiplayer masterpiece Left 4 Dead, and inevitably, the game is bigger and better in just about every way, with four new characters, twice as many guns, brutal melee weapons to hack away with, more Zombies and a distinctly improved set of campaigns. Might as well throw away your old Left 4 Dead, because this has all you need, and more.

Fans of the first Left 4 Dead will surely have good memories of the four campaigns. They were great, it's safe to say, and it was one of *the* multiplayer greats. But while this was a lot of fun provided you had some buddies to play with, there was always room for more. You started with an SMG or a Shotgun, and later you could upgrade to an M-16, an auto shottie, or a hunting rifle. Course this will do, and it gets you through the mission, but it's not spectacular. There's no real variation, and you'll find on average two of the survivors blasting away with the shotgun and the other two mowing down with an automatic rifle. Storyline is also completely absent, each of the campaigns is entirely standalone and requires no prologue or epilogue which is fine as the focus is on the survival, but wouldn't it be good to show some continous journey, and maybe some character development? These are all things Valve saw, picked up on, and did something about and the result is visibly what Left 4 Dead not only should have been, but was meant to have been.

For a start, Valve HAVE decided to make a skeletal storyline this time around. It's not Metal Gear Solid, but it at least connects the campaigns together into one big escape plan across Southern USA to a military safe zone and, since the start where all the characters give brief introductions of themselves to each other in an elevator between gasps for breath, they noticeably begin to know each other a lot more and communication becomes slick and natural through the course of the story (though I must add, like Half-Life 2, it is worth putting subs on as some voices come out fairly quietly). The environments in each campaign are not just different from each other but this time are very original in their own right; Dark Carnival particularly in mind. It has to be one of the most hilarious and downright trippy campaigns/missions I've played since the hallucinations in Fallout 3: Point Lookout. For any fans of Zombieland there are a few clear references in the game and the zombie clowns in Dark Carnival are undoubtedly one of them.

The formula of the campaigns are also mixed up nicely. Each section doesn't have your standard witch/tank/alert horde but instead will differ entirely based on where you are. This is helped along its way by an improved selection of Special Infected, which now includes Spitters, Jockeys and Chargers, and the finale of each campaign always being not just different but usually very tongue-in-cheek and ridiculous.

Of course, because of the way the multiplayer is so well wrapped together with the single player, the experienced is improved online (or split screen, but it's not nearly as good) drastically too. Versus as the Infected became often dull on the previous game as there was only a selection of three creatures, all with irritating flaws and a painful respawn time, but now with double that number, a decent balance of strengths and weaknesses and a slightly shortened respawn time Versus is as fun as it should be. The classic 4-player co-op is a heck of a lot of fun still, obviously made better by the improved campaigns, and while I was let down by Survival having barely changed, Scavenge is what stood out to me. It is based on the finale of the first campaign in which you have to collect gas cans and load as much of the petrol into an escape vehicle before the time is up. You take turns as the survivors and Infected and this can get incredibly tense and there is plenty of room for some very amusing Left 4 Dead moments, and gleeful satisfaction as the Infected, pulling off a successful ambush on the survivors and foiling their plans. 

For whatever you're playing, on top of that you're given a selection of weapons that puts Rambo to shame. The original weapons are still featured but now there's also a SPAS-12, a SCAR-H, an AK-47, a G3, a Desert Eagle and more. Not enough? Good. Because there is a horde of melee weapons at your disposal which aren't just effective, they're incredibly satisfying. Ranging from crowbars to chainsaws, you'll find yourself using these time and again, and there's nothing in Left 4 Dead 2 that feels as good as taking a Zombie head off with the heavy end of a guitar. Yes, a guitar.

Left 4 Dead 2 could have brushed up on Survival and maybe a couple of other minor details, but everything else is nothing short of outstanding. You don't have to be a fan of Left 4 Dead 1, or even of zombie games/movies; this is a groundbreaking survival shooter and probably the greatest FPS of 2009. 9/10.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

PRE-REVIEW NOTE: If there are any random wanderers of the internet that have stumbled across this, there's a 99% chance that they can't fathom the idea of Modern Warfare 2 being bad and will think this review is biased. For the record, I have played to the point of having 100% completion of campaign, that means all intel and Veteran completion, have got over half the stars on Special Ops, and reached level 30 on multiplayer, which for me is about 7 hours of gameplay on competitive multiplayer. Happy? Probably not, whiny bellends.

After I rated Call of Duty 4 a less-than-generous 2/10 and have cursed the Call of Duty franchise on multiple times on my Rantings blog, one might wonder why I have so much as touched this game. Indeed I now wonder the same thing, but being me it is because I cannot stand to criticise something I have not fully experienced myself. So, I gave this game a rent, and it basically confirmed to me that the whole gaming world has lost its mind.

I shall begin with the... unflattering campaign. Unflattering in that it feels the need to treat the player as a child, strangely enough I think that is the best way to describe it. The storyline begins as follows, 'Call of Duty 4 has ended, the Russians are defeated... but now they're not, because of some guy called Makarov.' During the course it will throw at you your staple fighting-with-your-teammates-against-loads-of-enemies-missions, along with a huge variety of special operations missions in which you will clamber up ice-clad mountains, scramble through Brazilian slums and free hostages on a Russian oil rig. Variety? Isn't that a good thing? Absolutely. But despite Modern Warfare 2 placing you in countless different environments, some with very convincing environment-specific dynamics like blizzards reducing enemy soldiers' ability to see you, it always shamelessly returns to the same boring formula: loads of enemies, and you being able to effortlessly despatch them as if you were born with a gun in your hand. I'm not suggesting you should resemble a helpless baby as you do in Flashpoint, but for a game that prides itself so much in making the 'best modern warfare gaming experience', it tries to make you God far too much. It has you now using vehicles such as snowmobiles and speedboats in first person, and firing with one hand, but this also brings you straight out the action as not only do you move at roughly 200mph and making the whole thing look, as I have said many a time, like something like Time Crisis, but the ability to aim perfectly whilst doing so makes it seem like a really, REALLY stupid movie. 

Infinity Ward HAVE upped the ante with some more advanced technology which CoD4 lacked; things such as thermal sights, heartbeat sensors and manually-guided Predator missiles. These are nice little additions, and I can't fault them much but what I can say is that it simply isn't enough. They're fun for a minute or two but they don't change the game from being just another mindless, and I mean mindless, FPS. The storyline is also nothing short of a joke. In the brutal, but stupid attempt at breaking moral boundaries, mission that is No Russian you are an American agent undercover with Makarov, and are forced to kill as many civilians as you can in an airport in an act of terrorism. Finding your body after Makarov betrays you, the Russians think Americans committed the act. So the Russians decide to invade America, which apparently takes about 5 minutes as before you know it you're fighting off hordes of Russian soldiers in Virginian suburbia, and in ruined Washington D.C in a mission resembling Fallout 3. The group of cliche gruff-voiced SAS tough guys are back and they take on many different stealth missions, which tend to not exceed mediocrity, where you are collecting information about Makarov. Various double-crossings and more attempts at moral messages follow until finish, and I don't want to ruin for anyone the glorious stupidity of the ending. 

Of course, there's still the multiplayer to be judged. Usually I would be convinced that 'maybe there's some good in it' when everyone drools over it as the 'greatest multiplayer game of all time', but after CoD4 I went in with a cynical mind. To my surprise, I was genuinely impressed for the first few hours. In the lower levels you are rewarded in exactly the right intervals for the right amount of accomplishments, and I found myself thinking it may beat CoD WaW (the only CoD game I reserve today to have good multiplayer). However, it simply doesn't develop from there. A majority of the maps are incredibly poorly designed, in particular Sub Base and the lazily-made Wasteland, and after enough matches you realise the exact same things happen every time around, and without any strategy necessary due to instant respawns and a lot of overpowered weapons it becomes an endless fest of run/shoot/die/run/shoot/die in helpless monotony. Additional killstreak rewards, and ways to customise which ones you want and when to have them is an advantage, but you will find that because of this you can hardly set foot outside without a celestial AC-130 drilling bullets into your skull from the heavens, or a Predator missile coming out of nowhere, or there to constantly be a Harrier Jet hanging around in the sky killing whatever sees the light of day. Irritating in-your-face action which tries so hard to be fun that it's just chaotic.

I think it's safe to say that Infinity Ward made every possible mistake... all over again, and all in a bid to win the hearts of every moron out there, which they safely did. There are some mild improvements from the previous game but it's simply another game made for another buck or billion. 3/10.

Portal (Xbox 360 Version)

Ironically, Valve don't usually make very different games these days. They all run on the Source engine and anyone could notice the huge similarities between, say, Half-Life 2 and Counter Strike: Source. Despite this, even though they all run with a lot of similarities, they're all GOOD. Valve just do what they do really well, and it's enough because the products are always damn enjoyable games. Yet Valve have outdone themselves again, as with Portal they have shown an ability to not only have another good game on the Source engine, but also something completely different.

Portal is a puzzle game. It's not a shooter, it doesn't have multiplayer, there are no zombies and there are no counter terrorists. It IS in first person, but it wouldn't be the same if it wasn't. You begin the game waking up in a holding cell, as an unknown character (well, a Mexican woman with yellow eyes) and are set along a path to begin a chain of puzzles which, ultimately, will all revolve around opening the next door to the next area and to the end of the test where you will apparently be served cake and given 'grief counselling'. To do this, as the name suggests, you use portals. The main tool of the game is the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, and when you have the fully upgraded version given to you about a 1/10 of the way through the game it is able to shoot two different types of portals onto any flat, white surface: one blue and one orange. Go through one portal, and you'll come out the other. While this is a simple concept, this evolves into a huge number of different uses, the most difficult of which being the 'momentum' technique. This involves jumping off a ledge into a portal on the floor, which will gain enough speed to launch you through another portal and onto a ledge you couldn't otherwise reach. Of course this done using Valve's standard modified version of the Havok engine.

But with all this, Portal is just a puzzle game with a new mechanic, albeit with something that's hardly been touched before. What sets it apart is the environment. Sure, on the surface it is just a set of white-walled rooms, filled with buttons and doors and 'Emancipation Grills', but the way the AI character GLaDOS starts off guiding you through the areas but slowly becoming more sentient-sounding and eventually all-out sinister, and the chilling markings on the wall from previous test subjects writing things such as the iconic line 'The Cake Is A Lie', and the reality of the Enrichment Centre when you leave the test area; all these things make it not just a small side-project of a game but a full game in its own right. It's memorable, and even though you learn just about nothing of who your character is, or who made the Enrichment Centre that your tests are in, the mystery of these things is what sticks with you enough to have a real impact on the player.

While Portal has the features of a high-budget and well written game, it is still a short experience of about two hours. However, seeing as this is amongst the giants that Valve have released such as Half-Life 2, this is a gem, and probably one of the best puzzle games ever released. 9/10.

Brutal Legend

It's been a while since I've been able to write a negative review, I guess I've been buying too many good games. But then, Brutal Legend came into my life. Why, oh why.

Irritatingly, this is one of the most different games to come out this year. Tim Schafer, the writer of the game, is known for awesome games like Monkey Island 2 and Psychonauts, and his good writing ability. Which makes it more ironic that this game is badly written in both structure and storyline. It is set in... wait where is it again? Supposedly in the 'land of metal', but then it also sometimes suggests that the protagonist Eddie Riggs has time-travelled to some other time, he is destined to free them from the oppressors of metal posers and glam rockers. This would be great as it sounds out-there, funny and something that most metalheads could relate to, but it tends to shift from jokey to taking itself seriously so often that you wonder if the developers genuinely thought this was going on. You meet characters of the resistance, build an army with them and eventually take back the land in a story of love, honour and betrayal in the name of metal and 'real music'. Unfortunately this is plagued by terrible characterisation, particularly on the part of the agonizingly cringey Jack Black taking the role of Eddie Riggs shouting 'metal' things like 'ROCK ON' which sound plain embarrassing on the part of metal, and the uneventful cutscenes which always seem to be plentiful in awkward silences and generally not a lot happening. In fact, there are a lot of famous people doing their part in voice acting for Brutal Legend: Tim Curry does a good job being the ultimate evil boss, but metal legends such as Lemmy from Motorhead and Rob Halford from Judas Priest play big parts but fail to make any impression; I reckon they should have been themselves more in their roles instead of entirely their characters. 

The art style of the game is a high point, the cartoony-ness of the land is great, with random creatures of metal wandering around and giant mountains of amplifiers standing tall in a humorously exaggerated way. However the area to explore is actually quite small, and in terms of things to explore for the game lacks too; the side missions are about as bad as Just Cause's.

Gameplay also doesn't elevate above endless whacking with the X button and Y to guitar solo (which, actually doesn't make any noise), or a combo of the two. You can purchase more moves and combos and general upgrades at the shop - the shopkeeper is Ozzy Osbourne, and he actually did a good job in voice acting - but not only are these particularly good but they don't tend to help against the absolutely huge amount of enemies in the game, most of which are pretty overpowered. While the range of unique environments you encounter in the map is impressive, especially considering the small size of the realm, it will still revert to running along certain roads and whacking stuff. Some sections incorporate elements of Real Time Strategy; you are given the temporary ability to fly to give you the birds-eye point of view, and you can spawn friendlies using the currency of dead metal fans' souls  with a number of different classes. Each class has strengths and weaknesses but, once again, these sections are often too hard and they all seem to die, leading you to always resort to the tactic of 'just make as many as you can and rush'. 

The game DOES have a multiplayer mode, but I didn't have the time or patience to play it. While aesthetically a good game with nice animations, character models and environments, it fails in just about every other area it attempts to excel in, humour, strategy and, most of all, metalness. Jack Black couldn't have been a worse choice in lead voice actor (I would say Bruce Dickinson should have done it, but then I wouldn't want him in such a bad game) and it seems that Tim Schafer not only has lost his ability to write great games but also knows nothing about metal. 3/10.

Guest Review from EnglishCarBomb - Team Fortress 2 (Xbox 360 version)

As a special treat we have a guest review from resident angryman/Valve minion EnglishCarBomb who also writes in the Brain Remnants and Music Reviews blogs. 

I’m a huge Valve fan if I’m to be honest, Counter Strike, Day Of Defeat, Portal, the Half-Life 2 series, you name it, I’ve played it to death and beyond. And so obviously, like every good Valve fan, I need to play Team Fortress 2. I played it for aeons on the pc and thought it was one of the most valve-licious games ever (yes that’s a word). The constant updates on the gameplay kept it going, made the game never get boring, which to be honest, the raw version of the game is. 

For those who live under what I like to call ‘the Great Rock of Infinity Ward’, Team Fortress 2 is a First-Person Shooter (no, it doesn’t have direct relations to CoD), in which you go on one of two teams. The red team, and the blue team, in the true old-school FPS spirit. Within that team, you get to pick a certain character, one of 9, the Scout, the Pyro (my personal favourite), the Soldier, the Demoman, the Heavy, the Engineer, the Sniper, the Spy, and the Medic. Each character has their own unique weapons, abilities, and even characteristics. For example, the Heavy is a huge Russian man with an eccentric love for his gun, Natasha, has a shit load of health, and his weapons are a fucking huge minigun, a shotgun, and his fists, while the Demoman is ‘a black Scottish Cyclops’ (he has an eye patch, so you could equally say he’s a black Scottish pirate) who is…well…Scottish…and black. An interesting combination. His weapons are a grenade launcher, a sticky grenade launcher (it shoots sticky grenades, the gun itself isn’t sticky) and a whisky/scotch bottle.  Back to the teams. They must compete in a few different game modes, but really they can just boil down to point capturing, and trying to shove a cart into the enemy base (sounds a lot less amusing than it is). So yes, it’s a relatively simple game, but unbelievably fun at the same time.

Anyway, in later months, I bought the Orange Box. The Half-Life 2 series, Team Fortress 2 and Portal all for 20 quid on the 360? HELL YEAH. By the time I got round to playing Team Fortress 2 on it, roughly 5 months later, it actually became, somehow, the one thing that made me feel a mild tinge of regret towards buying it. Valve seem to have some humungous loathing for people who use the Xbox 360, and wish them all a miserable, slow, painful death. In a way I agree with them, but that’s no excuse for not releasing ONE SINGLE UPDATE. You can’t gain new weapons, you can’t even upgrade the dispensers or teleporters (they’re things the engineer can make, which on the PC version can be upgraded twice to make them more efficient). There’s about 6 maps, a collection of the worst excluding 2fort and Granary, and around 5 players online at any given time. And the glitching. WHY ALL THE GLITCHING. You finally find a server on 2fort and BAM, everyone getting critical hits, and killing everyone on their own team. Everyone’s flying around in the sky and all you can do is curl into a fetal position in the darkest corner of the map.

So as you can tell, the Xbox 360 version isn’t quite as glorious as the PC version, so my recommendation is, buy the PC version, and buy the Orange Box anyway, because the rest of the games on there, are nothing short from valve-licious. 4/10.

Half-Life 2 (Xbox 360 version)

I'm probably the last human on earth to play Half-Life 2 so I feel pretty guilty for doing this review, but I'm working my way through the Orange Box and this is the first.

There's something about a game which was 'amazing for its time' and is still just as good that strikes me as awesome. I really don't know how Half-Life 2 does it, but something which revolutionised graphics, physics and NPC interaction would be expected to be somewhat dated now with these kind of things used in everyday games as standard, but the formula of the game and the way these things are used still manages to raise it above these things and bring it to be one of the best, if not the best, FPS of all time.

A gripping storyline isn't the focus of the Half-Life games, it's really based on the personal adventure of Gordon Freeman - the one Free Man - in the context and his mission to save humanity from the alien Combine invasion which is suggested to have happened 20 years prior to the game's beginning. You begin on a train to City 17, now a place completely overrun by the Combine to meet with Barney and your former colleagues, now part of the human resistance. A majority of your objectives are based on 'meet me at [location], to get [weapon] and/or meet [character]', but it's the environments you travel through to get to your destination, the enemies you face and the way everything seems so alive around you that makes the game stand out so much. Even though the shooting is nothing original, it still retains a feeling of complete uniqueness. 

The game will take you a good 10 hours to complete and during this time there are no cutscenes, no third person: everything is shown to you as Gordon Freeman and the gameplay is continuous. You will go from sector to sector in real-time so you will get a loading screen from time to time as the next environment is loaded and it's incredible how Valve have created this. It's not a series of maps, it's basically one huge road which, at the end, you find yourself at the beginning of as the human resistance rises up enough to take City 17 and the Combine fortress The Citadel down. 

Sure, a lot of games can be big and have a lot of different environments and enemies. But Half-Life 2 is complimented with unmatched physics, enemy AI causing them to group together, take cover and fall back when overwhelmed, and graphics which might not be as photorealistic as modern games but still do a fantastic job at painting a picture of a war-torn fractured human society. You will have to take full advantage of the heavily advanced Havoc physics engine to solve puzzles to get to the next area, proving Valve's ingenuity and adeptness with environment interaction. The epitome of this is the gravity gun - allowing you to pick up objects - some very large ones too - and hurl them at your enemies, sending them flying off with it. I've still yet to see a weapon in a game which so effortlessly describes the game in itself.

I see that I'm not going very far with this review, and it's because it's so hard to describe what makes HL2 so incredible and above just about every other FPS out there. Without a doubt it has to be rated a 10/10, this is simply one of the games you have to play in your life. Defining gaming as it is today, sincerely from the gods at Valve.