Now Playing: Left 4 Dead

The other day I was digging through my collection of games. I keep a list of of my games on my HD, and I was particularly interested in playing through some of the titles I hadn’t finished – or even installed.

Why I did this initially was because I kept reading about a website online called Backloggery, where you can list all the games you have, how many you’ve finished, and how many you haven’t. The only thing is that the site isn’t accepting any new registrations for now.

So I was forced to make one of my own. So I’m going through all of these titles, and I came across a few gems which I was surprised I hadn’t even played. One of these was Left 4 Dead. It was released in 2008. I bought it nearly two years ago, and I decided I would play it to see what all the fuss had been about for nearly the past two years.

               The messages on the wall are a nice touch. Reminds me of Digg.

It’s really designed to be a multiplayer game, but it’s fun enough playing on your own with a bunch of bots, despite the AI being a bit suspect most of the time. It’s not a bad game. Kind of hard even on the easier difficulty levels, but I’m getting the hang on it. The last standoff levels are insane. Having to last minutes which seem like hours fighting off endless hordes.

UPDATE: Finished most of the levels, apart from the last one on the first campaign, No Mercy. where you need to be rescued by a helicopter on a rooftop. Throw in waves of zombies, and more Tanks than you can handle and it’s anything but a picnic while admiring the view. Keep getting killed by the last Tank, trying to board the chopper.

Now Playing: Left 4 Dead

Weapon Carrying Limit to be in Duke Nukem Forever

Just the other day there was an interview over on Duke4.net that was carried out by one of the community members. He interviewed Randy Pitchford, the CEO of Gearbox Software.

One of the questions posed to Randy was whether or not there would be any weapon carrying restrictions in Duke Nukem Forever:

“Well we are making this game with the vision of Allen Blum and George Broussard.  Their vision was that you could only have 2 weapons. This choice has been made because most players choose their favorite weapons and use only those weapons the most.  And if you need a particular weapon to defeat a boss, that weapon will be available in that area.”

So this is quite a change from previous Duke Nukem titles such as Duke Nukem Manhattan Project and Duke Nukem 3D before it. You no longer have the entire arsenal at your fingertips. Gone are the days of the old school 90’s shooters where you could somehow manage to slug all that heavy equipment around with you. In a sense, DNF is going for more realism – which sounds a little ironic I must admit.

        The ripper will likely be one of the “favourite” weapons that people wish to carry.

In fact it’s going to more like Duke Nukem II in a way. In that game you could only carry one weapon type at a time, until the ammo ran out, and you reverted to your standard weapon. Except the limitations in DNF won’t be that strict, thank goodness.

So basically you’ll have a primary weapon and secondary weapon, much like most first person shooters out there today. From the screens and trailers I’ve seen of the game, much of the weaponry from the first game will make it back. There’s a pistol, a shotgun, the ripper machinegun, the devastator double rocket launchers. You’ll just have to pick which ones you like best and use those.

I don’t yet know whether they’ll let you have ANY 2 weapons that you want, or if one of them has to be a pistol – because that would suck. If you can carry an RPG and a Devastator, then that sounds fair good.

At one stage, DNF used a weapons selection system similar to Max Payne and Half-Life.

It also hasn’t been mentioned whether this applies to the pipe bomb as well. I reckon that just like other standard FPS games these days, Duke will have his two guns of choice, and then carry pipebombs as well, instead of the more standard grenade. I’m sure all the other equipment like NV goggles and steroids will remain unchanged, and you can carry one of each, likely – just like DN3D.

In the end, I think it might actually be a better idea to give players a choice. They either have the full arsenal, or say on a harder difficulty or if an option is checked, they will then be limited, like Randy says.

Weapon Carrying Limit to be in Duke Nukem Forever