Day Four: Another Essay.

Seriously? Another bunch of paragraphs about shit we don't care about? Awesome.


I hate Valve. They've always managed to piss me off, first it was the original Half Life not running on my PC past the intro of the game. Then it was the fact that the man who introduced me to Half Life died only a year before Half Life 2 was released. More recently I've been quite annoyed at how shafted us Half Life fans have been recently. The Orange Box was nice, especially for Portal & HL2 Episodes 1 & 2. Since then Valve developed a new game. They had this splendid idea to make a team-based multiplayer zombie survival shooter & by god they sure as hell did it. Left 4 Dead was released & suddenly Valve had one of the hottest sellers of the Xbox 360.

On PC you can play Valve games online with Steam for free, on 360 you've got to be an Xbox Live GOLD member. Not a big deal, until you realize just how much extra online content is left out. With a computer you can change the zombies voices to the voice of Pee Wee Herman yelling or laughing. You can turn the Tank into Johnny Bravo or change the Witch music to that of the Breakfast Machine in Pee Wees Big Adventure.

Okay so that's not much right, mostly modifications that don't really effect gameplay, right? Wrong. All L4D updates get put on Steam before L4D. All Downloadable Content is free on Steam whereas through Live you'll be spending anywhere from $10-20 for a new campaign. Oh, & you don't like that glitch? Well, it's fixed on PC, but the update for 360 is coming out in a month. So aside from shafting people that don't play the games on PC, what else is bad about this franchise?


I'm going to try & be as un-biased as possible here because I'm the type of person to turn coat really quickly on a subject. I really loved the first Left 4 Dead & Left 4 Dead 2 was indeed great, but it seems like any other Valve project (aside from an alternate ending to Portal that is only available on Steam) was immediately put on an indefinite hold. Now I understand that making money is the name of the game, but seriously? Is this shit going to turn out like the Madden games? Every year they'll release a new one with slightly better whatever? Count me the fuck out, Mr Newell. I mean really, I don't mind all that much that those of us who choose console over PC get a complete shaft when it comes to games from Valve but I mean, shit. At least give us the same freedoms as those on PC. If Valve says that Steam is free for all users, why not make their games compatible on Live with a free Silver Account? It's practically the same & a lot easier than another slightly feasible idea of porting Steam servers onto XBL. Though in reality that'd turn into something like Steam 360 & would only cater to those of us playing on Live & when you start to consider how little that is it's just not worth it.

But why not the other reason? I guess it's because Microsoft wants to make money & everything, but I mean shit. Nintendo Wii has a disc that they mailed out (for free) to Wii owners for free streaming Netflix capabilities. PS3 also has a free Netflix service, however on 360 you must be paying for a Gold Account in order to use Netflix.

But this isn't about 360 or Micro$oft or any of that crap. This is about why I'm not a huge fan of these games. For starters, people with %0.01 mental capacity for Half Life or Half Life 2 play L4D & act like jackasses. Many of my friends included are just not very good & if in real life there was a Zombie Apocalypse they'd be fucking dead.

Next up we've got getting incapped or pulled by a smoker. 9/10 people will immediately start bashing the controller like they're playing a 2-D fighter & have just been stunned. I'm sorry guys but that doesn't work in this game. Be patient & play with people who don't suck.

Another common problem is people not being able to see the screen while playing split screen so they sit right next to my 360, directly in front of the television. I have no problem with you sitting at home blowing cigarette smoke directly into your disc tray, but this isn't your home & it most certainly isn't your 360, show some fucking respect & wait until you're not in the middle of the game to light up. More importantly, get away from the expensive technology while you're doing it. I have no problems with people smoking in my room, but I do have a serious problem with people blowing smoke into my 360 & my external Hard Drive. This is more of a personal problem though & has less to do with the game.

Back to reasons why this game fails. Well: Let's see;

It seems to promote people yelling & talking a bunch of shit to a screen, which is totally fucking lame in my opinion. There's nothing wrong with yelling DAMMIT, or FUCK in agony after dying for the umpteenth time, but it is really fucking annoying when you shit talk each special infected you kill. On top of that when the game gets louder so do you & it really hurts my fucking ears. Chill the fuck out & just play.

Another good reason as to why this game is annoying, though this reason is quite specific to XBL. On Steam it is more than normal to go on & have a game with intelligent adults who know what they're doing & understand that staying in a group is probably a good idea. On XBL you run into a bunch of ignorant 14 year olds who shout nigger every other word & run through the map like their feet are on fire. Oh well, that shouldn't be a problem, at least the other two in the group are.. Oh wait, they ran off too. Well great, now I'm all alone & there's three separate hoardes coming since the other players decided to just high tail it through the map. Way to go dickweeds.

I hate 14 year olds & I hate Left 4 Dead.

xox