w00t! Another AAR from our game tonight:

We retried Carnival on Expert given our miserable attempt the other day... and we completed it !!! Our plan was to basically rush it, not even stopping to search for goodies... trying to gain as much ground as quickly as possible, and it worked a charm. I think we only restarted once during the campaign.

We had some trouble in the finale, but that was down to the good honest difficulty and bastardness of the SI, as opposed to our noobishness and FF'ing. Can't remember who topped FF, but I didn't. Overall it went really smooth compared to last time.

Lighting the tank is pretty important I think in the finale. Not only does it make him easier to kill, but it makes it easier for us to keep track of him (given that he's up in flames like a gay man at Mardi Gras). Sticking pretty close is important too while he's burning.

Ox and I had the same amount of FF at 22.

I'd be up for a game this weekend with Satis and Shiny if you guys are up for it. Haven't played with you two for aaaages. Wanna give something a stab?

Sounds good to me And I can talk Satis into almost anything

heh...yea, I'm up. I could do with some good zombie ass-kicking.

I'm good to play in a few hours.

Small AAR of last night's finale for Derf's sake...we tried playing on expert once or twice but with a bot (Ocram had left too) we pretty much sucked. Also, our concentration was a bit gone with me coming in from outside and Satis and Shiny probably at least mildly drunk.

So we switched to advanced to get some closure, Ocram jumped in again and we had a ton of fun. Stumbled a bit at the "endless zombies" panic event but Shiny saved the day with her chainsaw.

The finale was hilarious - we tried it 2-3 times and succeeded, but the way in which we did it was very typical O'Cram "rats always survive" style. While me and Satis were collecting gas cans and Shiny and O'cram were taking a nap by the race car, we had a tank. Me and Satis ran to the top floor to collect the last 2 cans, which were in a dead end hallway. We throw the cans down, when we notice the tank is coming right our way and blocking the only path out...I'm thinking, we both try to run past it, one guy will make it.

That's when I saw Satis jump ship to the next floor, or at least trying to. He didn't jump far enough and hung from the balcony. Which left me alone with an angry tank in a hallway. Needless to say, it incapped me, and as I go down I we get the 'escape' animation...Shiny and O'Cram has taken the gas cans we'd thrown down and were in no hurry to come to our aid, camping near the car while me and satis, their heroes, met an untimely end upstairs. I won't forget this!!

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Also, some AAR stuff derf forgot to mention from our two Dark Carnival expert tries:

- After failing 5-6 times on the large opening map of Dark Carnival (in the first, fail attempt), we finally made it to the saferoom...and wiped. I was limping and Derf shot the alarm car right next to the safe room to fuck me up, which worked, as they got in and I was incapped. Then, in a bizarre moment of humanitarianism, Peltz opens the saferoom door (during the alarm horde), only to get incapped too, when a spitter spits in the saferoom and a jockey or charger pins our last survivors. It was absolutely hilarity. AND DERF GOT WHAT WAS COMING TO HIM!!

- Not a fail moment, but an epic win moment in our second run, when we tackled the panic event with the endless horde in chapter 4 of DC...we were prepared to the max: I had been hauling a chainsaw along for 2-3 maps without using it solely for the panic event, and we'd saved 2 pipes.

We hit the button, horde comes, we fight it off without too much worries. The doors open and I pipe sideways, opening the route to the gates. I run in and take point, fire up the chainsaw with three others in tow. A stealth boomer vomits on me so I can't see shit, but I keep running ahead with the chainsaw roaring away....we get about 60% of the way when Derf throws the next pipe way towards the end of the "lane", clearing the way a little further. At this point I still can't see shit because of the combination of bile and accumulated zombie blood from the chainsaw blocking my vision. I run into the last stretch, hack through another horde, chainsaw runs outta fuel but we're there. I noticed O'Cram is on the floor, apparently I incapped him. But we made it, in one go. Glorious, epic, great teamwork.


Other general remarks: derf already touched on it, but it's worth repeating: on most large-ish (and even not-so-large) maps, especially on the finales, it seems absolutelty critical to move in a group of at the very least 2,ideally 4 for example while running from the tank. With 4 special infected capable of pinning now (or twice as many compared to L4D), you WILL get pinned if you move alone. It's suicide. I even think the finale of Dead Center is largely dependent on your ability to move as a group.

Best lines of the game (on the Bridge finale of The Parish, expert)



3 mins later





fucking snipe tank

I wonder...if I had still been alive and incapped and you had a reasonable amount of time, would you still have revived me? Or left me to die?

If I was still high on the adrenaline i shot myself up with to finish, then yeah sure. I'm not as cold hearted as you, Mr. "Ooh! Safezone is 1km away. Every man for himself!" If I wasn't high on adrenaline, I would have probably left you there. It's a risk thing.

I was pretty confident though... 2 pills (100HP) and adrenaline turned me into a battering ram. I even managed to dodge and outrun a tank + Z's from 12 oclock.

I think you acted as a decoy of some kind, since I though when me and Satis got incapped, we were done for, but O'cram had time to revive me, and I just about remembered to revive Satis (things were a bit mental). I guess O'cram and Satis just got mauled since they were on low health.

Quite a smooth run imo.

yea, overall the run was very smooth. Derf had some car alarm moments repeatedly on the first level... but otherwise we did a good job of really owning that campaign. Far better than the swamp one before. Man that was horrible.

As long as we're relatively "on" and don't suffer from extreme bad luck, the "one person calling shots, generally trying to stay on the move" tactic works wonders. And the Bridge finale isn't as bad as it seems as long as you push on. I actually found this right after...apparently it can be even easier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVwT0mFEzJM

key seems to be to stay left and just...run.


Man, I had so much fun reminiscing about that finale and my botched movie-like abandoning run to safety.

And yeah Derf, I was dragging a shitload of zombies and SI along to the chopper. Also, I used one of the pipes on the hood of the humvee near the chopper to give me some more room - but that could have actually helped your rescue more than anything else (I didn't really need them tbh).

I was wondering about one thing tho: if I get incapped IN the chopper by the tank (and don't die) and you arrive later, does that count as "making it out" for me or not?

AAR for yesterday - me, Derf, Ocram and Peltz tackled Dead Center on expert and beat it relatively easily. We took 5-6 tries on the finale to get it right, but in the end we managed to find the ideal formula and got out all 4.

It was actually a rather uninspired attempt - I wasn't in the best of moods so my insipired leadership wasn't at its usual level, for one. The first level (which is laughably easy and short) almost wiped us completely before we even made it to the elevator leading you into the building fire. Derf wanted a restart, but we denied him. DENIED!! Erh...so we limped on to the saferoom, in any case.

After that we picked up our pace a bit. The outdoor map level to the mall was a breeze, including the coca cola panic event (even if some things went wrong with the chain of command of piping/biling, but hey).

Inside the mall we just tried to move move move and get on and down stairs as quickly as possible. Once you're in a hallway or corner the mall is pretty easy, it's just near the stairs that you can get gutted. There was one incident with a tank spawning right after the only dead end part of the map, inevitably wiping us, but other than that no probs here either. The hard panic event (with the alarm system) was progamed with well-placed pipes, bile bombs and me on point with the ultimate weapon for this shit: chainsaw.

Then, finale time...after a few tries, Ocram suggested we do the upper floor first, then move from that to the intermediate floor and then fuel it all on the ground floor. That was what we need and it worked like a charm. Basically, we can get all the cans except for 4 of them down on the ground before the tank spawns...when it does, you just gotta circle the intermediate floor and shoot it/put it on fire. After it does, collect the final 4 cans, kill a horde, go down, pipe, collect the farthest cans on the ground, then work on the nearest ones. The final 4-5 cans were a bit chaotic, we would probably have done better to assign 2 "runners" and 2 "overwatch" or "buddies" to go with them instead of just randomly having people run and fuel and shoot, but it worked out in the end. Thanks to Peltz for picking me up before fueling the last cans btw.

We're really getting the hang of it - even on an "off" day we can work expert without too much bad luck. Derf is slowly suggesting realism expert...we'll see.

P.S. since we couldn't find a half decent server anywhere I just handpicked one with the console server browser and had the rest join my game once I had connected. Upside: superb pings all over (50 +-), stable server. Downside: can't change campaigns, can't choose characters (confusion). Just figured I'd let you know it's an option.

See, not a word on how you ditched my ass after the cola run and how you shot the car alerting the horde. haha.

Anyway the first pipe at the panick event was a failure, it dropped inside the store and hit all of us when we jumped out of the window. Pity i got sandwiched by two zombies. I tend to get incapped and killed alot because somehow we cant stick together till the end of the map. We really need to practice that the first one to reach certain point, ie the stairs, the door, the escalator turns around and provides cover. Its going to be essential with the realism mode anyway as the loss of even one gun can be the difference between success and failure.

The true problem is that subcounsiously we try to beat eachother at how many zombies we kill thus the gunfire probably drowns out the voices of cockeys.

Awww, Peltz got noobed

Haha, jk.

Regarding that cola panic event, I volunteered to grab & carry the cola, but also to throw the 1st pipe, so I figured i'd grab the cola first thinking you should be ok until I get back... unfortunately, I ended up throwing the pipe a little close to the doors cos I heard you guys mentioning something like "wheres the pipe?" ... so i threw it a little hastily, maybe thinking to myself "oops, did they mean before I grabbed the cola?".

Anyway, that panic event was one of the smoothest runs ive personally ever had, since I was able to get the cola to the objective without stopping once. Okay, so we lost someone along the way, but that's part of the team effort... someone taking the pain

Expert realism will definitely require more sticking together. I think may become obvious to everyone pretty fast.

We definitely need to sort our escalator tactics... Nothing majorly bad happened this time round, but I feel uncomfortable as hell fighting on them. I suggest we simply race up them and dive into the nearest corner to defeat the impending wave / scattered Z's, rather than fighting on the stairs.



Subconsciously? Haha, fraggin teh Z's is my favourite passtime.

Thats because all the Z's were busy attacking the bile bomb i used. I wish someone had a molly, would've been fun with them running into fire. The bilebomb buys enough time to get the cola and run outside. Its more effective than pipes in that situation. It would have been smoother had you yelled guys im outside follow me. Coz you managed to get quite far ahead before we started to follow you.