DEAD ISLAND
I love zombies. I really do. I don’t know why. Cos I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t survive the apocalypse. I’ve got no upper body strength. So I enjoy living vicariously through video games, i.e Dead Island. I really enjoyed Dead Island to begin with. It was scary, has a great range of weapons and I liked the freedom and enjoyed the missions. Then after encountering so many bugs, and doing the same thing over and over again, I got bored.
There’s four different areas in Dead Island to explore; the beach, the town, the jungle and the prison. Then within each of these areas are smaller areas like the police station or the resort. And then you get a number of side quests and story quests dotted about the world to complete in order to progress. These drag on. There’s only so many times I can be asked to find you canned food or alcohol. If you’re so desperate to find food, go out and find some yourselves!! I have an island to escape! An infected island! I’m sure there were some good side/story quests, I just can’t remember them for all boring, foraging quests I had to do! None of these I completed in co-op either. I turned that off as soon as I realised people could jump straight into your game and steal your kills and money! I’m sure the co-op is really good! Twitter seems to say some nice things. But I like to be warned in advance when someone joins my game! I’m planning a quick, second play-through for achievement sweeping.. maybe I’ll allow people to join my game then? Maybe.
LEEDS EUROGAMER EXPO 2009
Who’d have thought sitting all day playing games would be so exhausting? I sure didn’t. And I don’t mean a normal gamerwhore session. I’m talking about the Eurogamer Expo 2009!! Nine hours of playing pre-release and new-release games and chatting up developers and reps. It was alot of fun. Let me explain..
It was the second day of the Leeds expo. We’d queued for maybe only half an hour. And we were let loose into a room full of Xbox and Wii pods and giant TVs with that other console attached to. We played games such as Avatar, AvP, Rabbids go Home, MAG and Blue Toad Murder Files. We also went to a Splash Damage talk on their new game Brink and made friends with some guys who work at Ubisoft over paninis. Unfortunately I had a full-on geek attack in front of them, but they seemed to like us anyway. Being a games programmer wannabe too, I talked to some guys from Ubisoft Reflections on getting placements in the industry and they were wonderful and lovely and helpful! It was a lovely and exciting experience!
Chantelle’s Top 5 Eurogamer Expo Games
1) Assassin’s Creed 2
Apparently the demo we were playing was a few months old, so our new Ubisoft friends didn’t think it was as awesome as what the final build is (yeah they’ve already been playing it). But after waiting for ages to play it I totally loved it! The free-running was very similar to AC1, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with that! The fighting followed the same principle, but the new weapons and disarming ideas were fantastic! I saw Ezio disarm a guard with an axe and then planted it straight in his balls. Awesome. Then I managed to break it. Ezio fell through a patio and kept falling, and falling.. and falling. Whoops. But I got to have a second play through because of it!
I also got shouted at for taking a picture of it. Tee-hee.
LEFT 4 DEAD: “CRASH COURSE” DLC x 2
Well as it happens, I seem to be getting a lot of hits with people trying to research Left 4 Dead: Crash Course. So I thought I’d try and answer some of the questions. My source of intel are various bits and pieces I’ve read all over the internet and heard through the distant chatter of Xbox Live.
1) Initially I was told Crash Course was coming out the beginning of September by the Valve twitter. No such luck. According to multiple sources AND Valve twitter.. it’s the 29th September. Fingers crossed it doesn’t fall through! I don’t know if it’s official.. but word must have come from somewhere!
2) Yes. I do believe there will be achievements coming with it as well. Unfortunately I only know what one of them (possibly) is; attain a gold medal on survival mode. That means last 10 minutes against waves and waves of zombies. Yes.. I’ve had to tackle two Tanks, Hunters, Smokers and millions of common infected all at once in survival mode. I screamed and was thrown into a wall. Bad times. It’s not easy. I don’t think I’ve even made it to silver before. That beast better be worth some hardcore G.
3) And in other zombie-related news.. come October 27th Valve are releasing a Left 4 Dead 2 demo!! I’m really excited about this as it’s going to be demonstrating the new melee system! I may have squealed when I heard about it!!
And there we go. Three small bits of information I hope keep you going for the next week. Mmm.. zombie killing.
LEFT 4 DEAD: “CRASH COURSE” DLC
I love you Valve. Everyone had their doubts.. but I had faith. That’s right, Valve have announced the first REAL DLC for Left 4 Dead (by real I mean hard-cash-paid-for-new-content-REAL)!! I am extremely excited. As much as I can’t wait for Left 4 Dead 2, I am not ready to give up on the original characters just yet. I have bonded after many hours of gameplay with Zoey, Francis, Louis and Bill.
So a little background; the new DLC is called “Crash Course” and is meant to bridge the gap between the campaigns ‘No Mercy’ and ‘Death Toll’. The main purpose is to give players an awesome Versus experience (which is a good game mode.. but not what I play for), and is also playable on Survival and Campaign mode (YAY)! Valve say it’s meant to be a straight up 30 minutes game play and the AI director has been tinkered with. Well it’s available in September and it’s going to cost 560 MSP, or £4.76 in human currency.
GAMERCARD
CHANTELLE PORRITT 