For those of you haven't hit the retail centers yet, here's some incentive:
For next week's clan night, we'll be playing Swamp Fever first. This gives you some time over the holiday to play and learn the maps.
As posted yesterday, clan night tonight will start with Versus on the Dead Center campaign.
For those of you wondering how to invest your time practicing, we'll be starting Versus on Dead Center in L4D2 for clan night this week. This is your 36 hour notification. Go learn the map.
If you've looked in your Xbox Live inbox lately, you may have noticed that I have finished the Road to Recon and unlocked the coveted Halo 3 Recon Armor. Far and away the hardest achievement in this quest is Vidmaster: Endure which requires completion of the Firefight 4th set on Heroic difficulty with four players. The recommended map for this achievement is Alpha Site due to its strategic geometry, but it's still really hard and takes over 2 hours to complete. The 4th set activates the Mythic and Famine skulls, in addition to almost every other skull available. That means enemies are extra hard to kill, they all have shields, and ammo is extremely scarce. Completing this requires precision team work and smart kills using ALL the tips outlined in previously in this blog. You must use the correct weaponry on each specific enemy, or you will waste ammo, run out, and be left defenseless. In my opinion, one of the leading indicators of how effective a player is in Firefight is their points per kill stat. This stat is higher for players who are streakier (Killing Spree), get harder kills (Brute Chieftain), get better kills (headshots), get kills on higher difficulties (Heroic) and with more skulls activated (Mythic). Here's some key stats for the active players in the clan. Useful for picking Firefight team mates and looking for ways to improve your own game. Leave a comment here if you're looking for folks to play with. OmniscientDeath and myself are up for gaming most nights of the week after 10pm.
Since most people will be jumping in cold for clan night tonight, here's a few tips from my midnight play testing to help you get started.
Pistols: L4D2 has the familiar single and dual pistols from the first game, but also introduces the single-wield only Magnum (pictured). Though the Magnum deals 120% more damage per round than the regular pistol and has longer range, my recommendation for pistol users is to still go with dual-wielded regular pistols. The overall damage per second of dual pistols is 54% higher than a single Magnum.
SMGs: There are tier-1 SMGs available in the game, the regular Uzi and the silenced MAC-10. They are very similar, but the silenced SMG is slightly superior. It can be spotted by the large silencer barrel on the front.
Assault Rifles: There are three ARs available in the game, the standard rifle (based on the M16), the "desert rifle" (based on the SCAR) and the AK-47. The M16 has the highest continuous rate of fire, the desert rifle fires in continuous 3-shot bursts, and the AK-47 deals out the most damage and damage per second. All three weapons are very effective, but the AK-47 is probably the best of the three in this game. It can be identified on the ground by its distinctive banana clip. Players should be careful when grabbing ARs, especially the M16, because the the HK41 sniper rifle looks very similar.
Shotguns: There are actually two tier 1 shotguns and two tier 2 shotguns in the game. The tier 1 shotguns come in standard pump action and "chrome" variants, both are nearly identical and just like the ones from L4D1. Tier 2 offers the familiar "auto shotgun" and a new "combat shotgun" based on the SPAS12. These can be identified by their pistol grip configurations, the combat shotgun found with no shoulder stock. Both tier 2 shotguns function nearly identically and both are good choices for shotgun users. They deal massive and fast damage but trade-off longish reload times. Easily the weapon of choice for Tanks.
Sniper guns: There are two sniper rifles available in L4D2, both function very similarly with the new "sniper rifle" holding more ammo. That's almost irrelevant though, because ammo is rarely a concern for snipers. Players should be careful when grabbing ARs, especially the M16, because the the HK41 sniper rifle looks very similar.
Melee weapons: There are several new melee weapons in L4D2, including the baseball bat, cricket bat, nightstick, crowbar, electric guitar, fireaxe, frying pan, katana, machete and tonfa. They function fairly similarly, with the guitar, fireaxe, frying pan and katana dealing the most damage per blow. Surprisingly, the frying pan deals the most damage over time since it has the fastest animation and re-fire speed. It can most often be found in kitchens. Note that a melee weapon replaces your pistol, so is not a great choice for pistol users, but is good for those who often run out of ammo because they prefer not to use the infinite ammo pistol.
Special weapons: There are at least two special weapons available in the chainsaw and the grenade launcher. Neither are reloadable, but both are *extremely* satisfying to use. I recommend enjoying the carnage that they can deal out. Achievements are available for both special weapons.
Items: L4D2 brings back pipe bombs, molotovs, health packs, and pain pills. It also adds Boomer Bile (which attracts the horde to the space or object hit), adrenaline (which makes you do run and perform actions faster) and defib units (which allow you to revive dead players). Team coordination and item choice becomes even more important now. Boomer Bile is a "thrown item" and goes in the same space as pipe bombs or molotovs. Adrenaline shares a space with pain pills, and defib units share a space with health packs. You can only care only item in each space.
Weapon upgrades: Finally, there are three weapon upgrades available to the survivors - Incendiary ammunition, explosive ammunition, and laser sight. They pretty much do what they say they do. I've only seen the laser sight in practice, which attaches to the gun you put it on - does not transfer between weapons if you pick up a new gun. They appear on the level in weapon crates like the image pictured on the left.
Standard clan time. New clan game. Expect 4v4 Versus on The Parish. That's the campaign that has been available in the demo for a few weeks now, so those that did their homework will have an advantage on day 1. Braaaaaains.
As usual with L4D clan games, first 8 folks in get to play. If you join late, I will try to message or chat with you to give you some idea of when availability might open up. But if I ignore you, it is because we are totally full and unlikely to be adding anybody soon.
The highly anticipated sequel the brain munching fun of last year's game drops at midnight tonight. My local Gamestop will be doing a midnight release, but according to Valve, some stores may be releasing it as early as 9pm PT. Check with your local dealer for details. I'll most likely be on for a bit playing around in the game to check it out if you'd like to join in.
Explains why his headsets never seem to work. Click for huge. Reposted from Hawty McBloggy.
A bunch of people are out, and I have the flu. L4D2 drops in 7 days, leave a comment here if you have an opinion on what we should play next week.
If you had any doubts about whether or not to get L4D2, a demo was just released so you can try it out ahead of time. I've already pre-ordered my copy.
Click her to download to your Xbox directly.
Sorry for the delayed start time the past couple of weeks. I have a new (slow) customer in China and we have calls from 7-8pm PT. As they get smarter, I should be able to bring clan night back to 8pm. If you're going to participate in clan night, please try to be on-time. These are the kind of game types we can play with the number of people on-line:
There will be an update coming out to the Xbox Live dashboard later this week. It includes support for Facebook, Twitter, Zune, as well as Halo Waypoint. I've been playing with these features for about a week now in the Beta test program and they're pretty cool. The Facebook app has a really slick photos interface that is actually cleaner than the native photo interface on the Facebook website. Halo Waypoint is a cool new destination for all things Halo and includes a bunch of "Waypoint Achievements." While these aren't new achievements for your gamerscore, they are based on the in-game achievements from Halo 3, Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST. Unlocking Waypoint Achievements leads to Avatar awards. You can check out my avatar on Xbox Live to see what's available. As you can see from the in-set graphic, I've already maxed out my Waypoint career, but presumably, most of you will have things you can still unlock when Waypoint goes live for the world.
Posts
All Comments
