Left 4 Dead - Fizzles out!

Overall Score - 7/10
Gaming Experience - 5/10; Video - 9/10; Audio 7/10;

A promisingly attractive looking game - comes from Valve's Source engine. I bought it with high hopes. But the pleasure lasted for just a few minutes. What looked like a great game quickly fizzled out.

As the name would explain 4 people are left stranded in a city full of infected people who have turned into zombies. With the graphics engine of Valve one can be assured of a smooth seamless gameplay and I would incline to believe that the only major task the game makers would have had is to build up an intuitive and impulsive storyline. 

That is exactly where they terribly disappoint you. There are totally 4 types of weapons you can play with. That is all they have got to offer in the weapons section. Oh of course there is the option melee.

The zombies themselves are of 5 kinds:

1. The Hunter - the guy who crawls and pounces at you and grabs a few pounds of meat from your torso

2. Boomer - the burping overweight zombie who bursts when shot at showering with toxic yuck. Shoot at him from a safe distance to avoid some disgusting screen distortions.

3. The Smoker - the zombie who has the Mr.Fantastic tongue, I think, but whatever it is he uses that to grab you from a distance. He turns into some poisonous smoke when shot at, hence the name.

4. The Tank - The Behemoth but surprisingly fast and even more surprising can be killed pretty much easily by 4 the people put together.

5. The Witch - the weeping witch - just avoid her or else she scratches you and leaves incapacitated on most occassions.

Besides these guys, there are normal zombies to fill the time who rush at you when they see you but can be killed quite easily. The most freaking and initially interesting aspect of the game is the way a horde of zombies attack you.

The sounds are made real creepy and adds up to the aura, but the game as such gets TOO predictable and repetitive. So much so that you exactly know there is a hunter or a smoker to be expected next. There is no improvisation as the game progresses and no great challenges except killing ravenous zombies running up to you.

You cannot miss to see the resemblance of the Half Life environment, but then that is good. Only bad thing is it is not as much fun as Half Life was.

Left 4 Dead - starts well, after a while it is just dead.

Update 1:

After I got totally bored with this game, I decided to show it the exit and get rid of it from my PC - that is when I encountered with this problem - The uninstaller messed up the default Windows XP fonts and totally messed up everything. After a few irritating minutes, i got it resolved by fixing up my registry. If you encountered this issue, try the solution provided here.

That adds up one more reason for me to dislike this game and shows the sloppy work of the game developers.

Quantum of Solace – PC Review

One word – Fantastic! This is probably one among the really few movie based games that actually does justice to passionate game fans. Before I bought this game, I read somewhere that it uses the Call of Duty 4 engine and I said to myself - that was good. And it was too. The scenarios are so colorful and lively and the weapons are perfect and the style and charisma of a bond movie is so well depicted in the game.

In recent times, the only few games that I really enjoyed playing was CoD4, GRAW2, Conflict Denied Ops, COD5 and to a small extent Left 4 Dead. And certainly COD4 and 5 were the best and QoS matches CoD in pretty much everything. I already know that this is going to be one of those games which I will surely play again just to use different weapons and probably try out a stealthier approach.

The graphic engine is flawless, excellent cut scenes, bond style and fast, movie style pacing of the game is a real pleasure. I felt like this was a mix of Max Payne put on Hitman put on CoD with a few elements of Indigo Prophecy (not sure how many of you have heard of this game, but that was one cool game). There are small interactive stunt sequences where you have to click on the right spot for the character to perform the right moves; hack an access code by hitting the right combination of keys as displayed and so on.

Videos are cool, made as stylish as the movie. Audio is great and game play is seamlessly smooth. If you have played Kane and Lynch, you would have got used to the cover switch where players can hide or crouch behind walls or crates or any object. QoS does that too and that is nice, once you get used to that style of combating. You can right click to aim and nail your enemies mostly while you are covering up behind a wall.

The AI is good – smart and clever. They take alternative routes to reach you wherever possible and they cover and duck too and blind shoot at you – making it a real time experience.

Great work – Great Game, I have not completed it yet – want to savor every second of its game play, but could not wait to write about it till I complete.

Audio – 9/10
Video – 9/10
Gaming Experience – 9/10

Overall Score – 9/10

Update 1
Completed the game yesterday - a total gameplay of less than 12 hours. This is one such game where I will surely re-play certain specific missions. Great work by Activision and Treyarch!