Hah, really? That's a fun bonus.

I've now resumed the download.

Which classes are there?

Leader, heavy weapons, medic and tech.

Just had a quick look: i think that since there are 8 characters, meaning 2 of each of the 4 classes, you can probably mix those up. So you could have 2 squad leaders and 2 medics. Again, i think.

I just had a quick go at offline practice, untill i fell in some pit

I'll lead and take point

If we can combo it up, it may be worth having 2 weapons guys (nothing wrong with extra firepower). But then I don't know how critical the other classes are. I guess we'll just have to see.

Anyway, if no combo applies, then i'd be happy with leader

J could be medic?

Satis Tech?

Or whatever, i don't care that much.

yea, doesn't matter to me too much. There's an achievement for getting a tech through a level without dying... I don't know if that means you must have a tech, or if there may be other achievements for each of the classes. *shrug* I'll be interested to try this tonight. I'll probably get shiny to download it at lunch and at least try it with her tonight. If any of you guys are online, perhaps we could do something as a group, but it being a Tuesday and usually pretty late in your area of the world, I'm not sure how well that'll fly.

It's national holiday tomorrow so I can stay up relatively late if necessary. May not be sober though.

I've got a long day at work, then football until about 8pm, then need to catch up on sleep... But i STILL DONT WANT TO MISS OUT ON ANY GAME TONIGHT!!!

Since i'm going to bed soon, i tried a bit of offline practice again. It seems not all weapon pickups/packages are just class limited: i ran into a mobile sentrygun, and i could pick it up as squad leader, and this time as tech guy as well.

My squad got slaughtered pretty badly. And it was all my fault probably
Be prepared to get wiped / your ass kicked the first time(s) because you won't know what to do at certain times.

I also read that medics are crucial at times, they have medguns appearantly. I mainly seen a lot of bitching about noobs on fora i frequent, and it's indeed not very newbie friendly if you get dropped between experienced players i imagine.

Good news: there's easy, normal, hard and insane. So if we start on normal, we can learn (and unlock stuff).

Don't have too much fun without me

Hehe. I had a spin on offline practice mode too. Just for 10 mins as the officer. OMG this game looks awesome. Straight off the bat, the graphics looks excellent and functional.

I didn't yet see any officer specific abilities, although I noticed that I could command the medic to heal an area.

I also like how I encountered a door that required a tech to unlock it... so this kinda makes Techs essential. There was also 1 door i had to un-weld, which I would have preferred the Tech to do, since it's his job, but whatever lol

I think the Weapons guy was carrying a deployable sentry gun, cos at one moment i managed to command him to deploy it. But then I couldn't figure out how to give it back to him once un-deployed.

I like how when you reload, you lose the ammo in that magazine (cos you drop the mag, not switch it)... this makes it pretty cool cos you gotta keep an eye on your ammo. Luckily for me, as the officer, I decided to grab the crate of ammo instead of a secondary weapon I deployed it and smiled when I saw my 3 bot companions replenish ammo from it.

I spotted J playing it and he said that the Tech is in for a hell of a time because he will need to open doors and shit as the team guards the area. I think this is pretty cool though.

Oh, this is a potential starting loadout that we could go with.

I prefer slower, more powerful guns in most cases, so i'll go with the [forgot the name] close range gun as opposed to the assault rifle (if i play officer of course). I'll also go with extra ammo (for the sake of team play) and also since apparently the leader is some kind of demo expert, i'll take the mines too.

Weapons, which is probably gonna be Ox, obviously you'll have the biggest gun available + a sentry gun for times where we know the shit will hit the fan. Seeing as you like medkits so much, you can have your own personal one too.

Medic... whoever that will be, maybe J / shiny? ... takes the AR (not sure if he gets more choice with guns), obviously a medpack crate and he may aswell take the flares. I actually accidentally deployed a few flares and they're pretty cool. If we run into dark places, we will need them for sure.

Tech, maybe Satis? (seeing as you're the mechanic in L4D2). You get the friggin prototype gun (with autoaim i believe!!!)... secondary not sure... maybe more ammo, or maybe another gun. Oh and 3rd item, you need to hump the hand welder.

Oh and a few pointers for keys...

1 is your 3rd slot weapon (flares, mines, etc)
SPACE is a cool ass roll button
shift is "move slow" but also duck
default voice comm key is C, i changed it to V

I came home too late as derf had gone to bed and the rest seemed occupied (also was too tired to play properly) but I fired up a little offline practice to see what it's like and god it looks awesome. Like a top-down L4D in space!

Still need to flesh out the abilities/weapon unlocks a bit, but dang! THANK YOU VALVE!

yea, I played some offline practice as well. All the classes seem very playable to me, so I'm certainly willing to play whatever. Lots of teamwork for sure. As a heavy, deployable sentry ROCKS. I could definitely seeing us having two heavies with sentries, they're so handy. Moving quickly is important as well... the swarm just keep coming, so there's no point in trying to wipe them out. The flares are supposed to help auto-aim stuff like sentries, so definitely helpful, and the medic is the only one with an area heal. the first time I played, ammo was an issue, so team leader with ammo crate is very important. Tech is indispensable for opening doors. Basically, everyone is handy, which is quite nice.

I'm looking forward to playing this game as a team. It should be much fun.

I believe I remember seeing that it was possible for someone other than the Weapons guy to hump a sentry gun, which means we may be able to retain 2 sentries and still have all 4 classes on-board.

It makes sense to me if the Tech carries the 2nd sentry.