deadjesterx

Good review and I'd say spot on with most of your assessments.

Would have to disagree with the weapons, though. The weapons they have in the game are well-balanced and provide enough variety. Why is having more weapons better? In most shooters I've played, especially the ones with a dozen or more weapons, everyone always goes for the same damn two weapons every time 'cause they're better. You pick up a game of Gears 2 and everyone goes for the sniper rifle or the boomshot. Better to have fewer weapons are are well balanced than a whole shit load of weapons where only a couple are worth using.

The lack of levels is an issue, but it's rather typical of Valve (my only real complaint about their games). For PC users, the good news is that they'll keep releasing them once they are ready and there will be plenty of user-created maps once the Left4Dead SKU is released. TF2 started with, what, five or six maps? Now there's about three times that many maps. I've personally never made a map before but I've been messing around with the Source SKU because I'm determined to create something for this game.

If you're a 360 user, though, the picture might not be so rosey. Due to the 360 certification process and Valve's distaste for having the player pay for content things aren't going to go as smoothly for the console. Take TF2 for example. Since each update was rather small (one or two new levels, a couple extra weapons) it would have been a pain to go through the cert process each time and would have sucked for the player to pay a little bit each time. This is why Valve held off until they had a good chunk of content before releasing it on the 360, though the downside is the 360 TF2 community ain't what it was. Hopfully they are quicker this time around, though I bet MS will still make they force you to pay for the extra content.

Woa...you need basic grammar lessons.

Stay in school kids, otherwise you may end up like ExMcCloud here.

Sounds like they're going down the route of Knights of the Nine/Shivering Isle, which is a good thing. Not sure how you're going to magically end up in Pittsburg though.

You have Left4Dead in my GTA!

Sounds like it could be fun...could be. With the lock-on system, I'm a little skeptical. Part of the allure of zombie shooters is the tension that's created while a swarm closes in on your position as you try to shoot'm in the head.

I'm not turned-off by a less-realistic/mature approach to the DLC. I mean the whole point of it is to add some extra fun. The original game has more than enough gritty crime-drama.

Took them long enough. Now they can do modern warfare and run that concept into the ground.

I'd be interesting if they tried out something like Vietnam or the Balkins region, though that last one is a little close to modern warfare I suppose.

I'm a big fan of what they're doing with the potions. Potion-spamming in the previous games was kind of annoying. You're clicking/holding the mouse button with one hand and bashing away at the 1-4 keys with the other to stay alive (anyone who has fought the Minions of Destruction on Hell difficulty knows what I'm talking about). It also ended up breaking the action too much. You go, clear out a section of the level, return to town to buy more potions, rinse and repeat. I'm not aganist visiting the town in-between quests but it sometimes became a major headache.

Or just simply have a button that allows you to reassign your stats. I never understood why that was such a problem. If the skill system is balanced enough it shouldn't break the game.

So does Eurogamer like...anything? I know a 70 isn't "bad", but they seem to pride themselves in giving games lower scores than anyone else and focusing only on the negatives.

Ugh, that's one ugly law. Like Large Marge from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" ugly.

Given the financial crisis that's happening right now I bet this law has very low priority. At the same time because of the slumping economy I could easily see some companies abusing the hell out of this law to "make up for lost profits due to pirating".

One can only hope that this law gets challenged and struck down.

I don't buy from GameStop anymore. For one their employees are annoying as fuck pushing preorders and trade-ins. I understand that their pressured to do this but they aren't improving customer relations with their constant badgering. What really killed it for me is the last time I walked in, asked for a new game, and they grabbed a disc that was no longer in the packaging. I'm sorry but when I ask for a brand-new game I expect it to be in the factory-sealed case. Was the game the employee got new and untouched? Maybe, maybe not but since I couldn't confrim if this was the case I'm not about to take any chances. Since that day Best Buy gets my money for console sales.

With that said I don't think developers really have a case to get a cut of the profits off of used game sales. If they are so pissed about GameStop's used game business method they should simply stop sending games to GameStop. It's that simple. I know some would argue that GameStop is a known brand and has lots of stores but do you think it would really be that hard to find another place to buy games at? Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Amazon...these are just the first few places I can think of where you can also buy games at...without the constant stream of "Do you want to preorder something today?" "Trading in any games today?"

For those of you that like to trade-in, if you're also one of those gamers that dislikes digital distribution, then I suggest you stop selling games to GameStop. I think comments by Bungie here and similar ones that have been cropping up is a sign that the console industry is taking a much more serious look at DD as their primary way of selling games. If they feel they are getting screwed out of money by GameStop then their going to find an alternate method that cuts the brick-and-mortar store out of the equation. The PC has proven that DD can function quite well in this regard and if this resentment towards trade-ins grow publishers and devs are going to start demanding console manufactures to create a digital distribution system (the PS3 has already started testing the waters). By as early as the next console cycle I wouldn't be surprised if the consoles start doing what the PC does and offer games at both retail and as DD. From there DD can easily start to become the standard, especially if they see that the profits from DD are comparable to that of retail.