Xbox 360 Fancast 144 -- Color Me Sadd

sweet! time to listen while i play some amazing AC2. and yes, L4D2 is kinda disappointing. played with some friends last night on normal and just got reamed repeatedly. just wish normal difficulty was a little more normal, or at least the AI Director could be tweaked to not be quite as brutal. but thanks for making Mondays so much more enjoyable!

You guys think it might be time to add Dave to the artwork, eh?

Easily one of the best fancasts yet the Color Me Badd part was probably the funniest thing I've listened to on a podcast.

mmm.. fancast..

(i wonder how many times ive said that.. )

You spelt colour wrong in your headline :p

@Dave Hinkle - Your brother's called Butter?

Nice section on kids/young people playing games not rated for them.

I kinda have mixed feelings on it, my predominant thought is that it's generally not suited for them and so they shouldn't really be playing them, however I remember playing Fallout which was rated 15+ (in UK) in 1997 when I was 12, which was lots of fun and never caused me any problems, strangely I had more anger issues with racing games, they tend to really frustrate me.

Maybe there should be an option in the complaints system for "too young", I'm sure that'd be popular :D

I thought L4D2 was ridiculous hard at first also....but what really turned it around for me and my friends was the melee weapons. If you focus on using the melee against the regular zombies and save the ranged weapons for special. Its still very hard..but it is do-able.

yes actually. yes they were. drunken ones.

so does that mean Hinkle's a regular?

@Dave Hinkle I honestly beleive L4D2 is fine. A bit more challenging? Sure. There are lots of strategies one can take to overcome the special and common infected. Having a melee weapon for a crowd of infected is like a hot knife through butter. You can easily melee a special infected off the survivor (unless if it's a charger) which then stuns them and gives you a good 3 seconds to unload on them.

I'm not trying to say anyone isn't good at L4D2, but you do need to know what you're doing. But, the finale for Dark Carnival can be overwhelming. There are multiple directions of hordes coming at you while special infected are into play.I played with some people on easy and had trouble beating the finale. Then with a different group we managed to beat that same finale on advanced.

It's all in the hips.

@Hinkle and his L4D2 thoughts pretty muchPS: Sorry Richard, I can't access email right now, so this is going into the comments. :(I respect your opinions that L4D2 is overly difficult and unfun, but I disagree.First before I rant, I'll state that im a huge gamer, my GT is my name here, and I am a seasonal worker, so being that its nearly winter I don't work and all I do is play video games. I have been playing L4D since launch competitively and since playing this game (L4D2) for a week I can already tell just how much better this game is than the original. Ive beaten the game every chapter on expert except parish, and done dark carnival on realism expert. Also spent half a week playing versus/scavenge. So I have a ton of field exp with this game already.Ok here goes... The original game was definately not balanced, whatever thoughts you had of it being balanced, are wrong. Im sorry. Anytime the survivors camped a corner, camped a corridor with two exits, or simply melee spammed their friends over and over, the infected couldn't get a break. The game was way too simple as survivors and way too difficult as the infected.You have to understand why they introduced the new infected and how it balances the game in the end. The spitter is to combat the strategy of "corner camping", now you cant just have everyone sit in a corner and wait out the horde, if that spilled goo goes on you, you'll all be damaged. The Charger is to combat close knit groups in tight corridors, where before, they were perfectly safe from a boomer, smoker or hunter. The Jockey, obviously is a mobile version of a smoker, hardly does any damage, but simply gets the survivors seperated.At first, I too thought this game was more difficult, but it was because of how different an animal this game is than the first one, and that we havent experienced and gotten used to it yet. Richard conjectured that this might be the case, and indeed he is correct. Once you get a handle on how the new infected work, and you really pay attention to your teammates and audio cues (incoming infected music), it will be just as easy as the previous game. A few things Hinkle also stated were incorrect. Boomers do not have more health. Spitters do not do instant damage on their goo bomb. It actually only does damage after the ball hits the ground and even then, you are allowed to walk in the goo for a full second before damage sets in. Thus enough time is given for you to actually escape unscathed. In versus mode, you will notice just how little damage spitters actually deal. Its true purpose is to seperate people or disallow survivors from doing actions: revive, hit switch, go thru doorway, camp.I also think the new A.I director is much better than the old. Yes it is harder on you, because now it isn't just sending infected from the doorway to your front or behind. It will now send infected through both, or sometimes alternate. The first game was way WAY too easy, you would hear incoming infected music cues and know exactly where to shoot or hold up for a second or two. And in the original where hitting an alarm or switch that alerted the horde merely sent TWO waves of zombies at you, now you must contend with double. There is actual challenge to the game. I don't know about anyone else, but I cannot stand playing the game on anything less than advanced, because without some sense of fear or caution, its just a mindless walk through zombie shoot em up, and that sucks. Normal mode is perfectly fine in the area of difficulty it delivers.In my opinion it seems like yourself and Chris Grant who "reviewed" L4D2, are simply passing way too much early judgement on this game's difficulty and calling it unbalanced because of ignorance. Not to mention, the two of you aren't even mentioning things like scavenge or versus, instead choosing to focus all on an instance where you found it too difficult and got mad.And Richard, im glad you are considering Halo Wars for GOTY nom. Funny how there is a certain category the VGA's missed. (Best Strategy Game)

I'm a BELIEVER!!!

I loved the old school games section, more!