Games

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Today was a good change: back to work!!! Like being thankful the holidays are over and it’s back to business.

Out of the holiday torture, I broke out $5 (steam sale, hehe) for a copy of Tomb Raider: Anniversary, which is essentially a remake of the original and legendary Tomb Raider. I haven’t really played the games since ’96, and didn’t care much for II and III. The first game was really, the only one I ever liked—because it was more about the tomb raiding than the gun fights. Years later it ain’t all that different, except Lara Croft looks more like a woman than a collection of square panels.

Some things are different, like working with the grappling hook (I don’t ever remember that) and some puzzles but it is close enough to the original, that I could probably dig up an old TR1 strategy guide and figure it out lol. For the most part though, I prefer solving and exploring on  my own.

It’s been my way to de-stress.

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Tonight while playing Left 4 Dead 2, I noticed something a bit odd. The games textures for its “Desert Rifle”  has markings for a MK 17 Mod 3 written on it along with an indicator of it being the 5.56x45mm variant.

That obvious error aside, what makes this odd to me. Just going on instinct from using the weapon in game rather than close look at the models, I would usually call it out as a SCAR or SCAR-H in game. The MK17 is the “Heavy” version firing 7.62x51mm. Someone later pointed out to me, that the magazines are obviously closer to the SCAR-L; the “Light” version of course, being the MK16 using the same 5.56x45mm you’ll find on an M16 ;). The games stuff for the SCAR mags to me, look like a curved version of the SCAR-H mag.

Most of Left 4 Deads weapons have double their realistic ammunition capacity or close to it, adjusted for stopping power. Personally, I think that’s a flaw but hey, bullets go even faster against zombies! The games SCAR hits more like a MK17 might be expected to, yet the games model appears to have an extended  30-round magazine; L4D does however exagerate the ballistics quite a lot for all the weapons. In game, you get 60 rounds in a SCAR firing on 3-round burst; the old school AR being a 50-round based M16 and the lovely AKM, offering 40 rounds.

3 times the real weapons ammo, can’t beat that for shooting through waves of infected! The real odd thing I guess, is how I know just by looking at it, that the gun isn’t accurate to real life :-/.

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Somehow seeing a [SAS] header on a video being marked as NTF training, makes me remember that someone in [SAS] hosted a F&M exercise in GR1, and filmed it. I remember it being posted in the forums back in ’09. Now if I could just remember whether it was Valroe or Sniper who filmed it, lol.

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Between Left 4 Dead versis and COD6: Modern Warfare 2 Team Tactical, I’m almost tempted to concentrate on competitve tactics again :-/.

Jimmy Gibs, you’re a zombie!?

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Finally saw the zombie Jimmy Gibbs at the shopping mall tonight. After whacking it across the head with a crow bar outside the Dead Center stage 5 safe room, I couldn’t help but think how much it reminded me of Bill Murray in Zombieland!

I’ve read about the zombie of Jimmy Gibbs haunting the last part of Dead Center, assumably hanging around near his stock car before the survivors have to gas it up and punch through a zombie horde with it. But I never expected to see it, let along hiding in the back corner, coming out of the safe room lol. Unlike the common infected (zombies) that repeatedly spawn on the map, he just wears his white racing suit.

Guess he shouldn’t have been busy signing autographs when the zombie apocalypse started, or something like that lol.

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Hmm, the big question is whether I should write my l4d series survival guide straight in the blogger interface, using Google Docs and publish as a separate web page (Blogger integration was killed off in the ‘new’ gdocs), or just vim it together in markdown or docbook+xsl, and c/p it here.

Hmm.

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Somehow it figures, that after getting through *almost* 5 out of 5 levels on advanced, barely taking any scratches, and shooting zombie A through on to the finale! Instead of high tailing it to the rescue boat, I take care of a lazzo’ed teammate and end up mobbed in zombies he limps clear.

Of course all 3 of my teammates have to leave me for dead, when they could just through a pipe bomb to distract the zombies and someone pick me up lol. Nooblets 8=)

So many zombies later

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I’m thinking about writing a short/moderate length survival guide for Left 4 Dead 2. Haven’t been playing much of anything lately, but after like 60 hours into the game, I’ve become extremely competent at it. When I do play, I’m still a lethally proficent team member.

Unlike some people, I also have a rather strong aversion to leaving fallen teammates behind, except for bots, hehe. That means I can drop more than my fair share of zombies in a hurry!

Tactical Zombie Hunting

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There is just something so cool about employing fire and manoeuvre techniques against a horde of zombies, and on the fly to boot.

How do you survive? Team up, nut up, and shoot’em up!

This is some funky weather!

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Just got out of a Hard Rain campaign in L4D2 with some excellent teamwork going on. Once we hit the end game however, our luck resoured.

First the tank smashes one of the teammates into the roof, incapacitating him while two of us leap off the side and the fourth man dives down the hole in the roof; who summary gets tackled by a charger moments before rescues due to arrive.

I’m one of the two dreebs who leap off the roof, because it hurts less than being hit by a tank lol. We kill the tank and pull a quick split: he goes to save the charged guy while I go zap the teammate on the roof back into action with my defib. kit; not exactly something I would want to do during a real thunderstorm. That goes out the window when my fellow pigeon gets himself whacked by a charger from behind, and I have to save his bacon instead.

Another tank suddenly comes stomping through the middle of the building as the charged teammate finally dies – we get our butts bounced out onto the lawn by the tank. Now this is where it gets silly.

Taking an adrenaline shot (speed booster) and making ready to fight the tank 2 on 1, while hacking my way to the roof: I ended up slipping off the peer and getting water logged — as the rescue boat runs me over and the tank flings my sole surviving teammate into it, killing him instantly.

Then the hard rain campaign plays it’s end video clip, as the boat floats away. Miraculously Spidey01 who almost got drowned before being run over by the boat, was the only player to survive the campaign!

There is just something so wrong with that, lol.