Yea - we will be awake - but we have to take our animals to the vet on Saturday for shots in the morning here but should be home by noon.

Just give me a time that fits for you guys and I should be ok. Let's hope J can join us too.

I played the first 2-3 parts of the first campaign with AI buddies and it sure is fun! I did get wasted halfway the 3rd mission but that was because Louis startled the witch (I was already crouching past her), the dumb sob. So I started running, only to get gangraped by a whole ton of infected while no teammates came to my help as they were too busy with the witch.

The game feels very cinematic at times, and I suppose the tension gets even better as you crank up the diffculty. On normal it wasn't too hard 90% of the time...but then I haven't seen anything yet, I'm sure.

I think i'm open for playing in the afternoon/evening as well. I'll see/hear when we'll play tomorrow.

Me, J, Satis and Shiny got together yesterday for some Left 4 Dead. Finished all 4 movies on normal with 4 survivors! Well, we had to do the final mission of the 1st movie again because me and Shiny didn't make it to the chopper, but that's ok, we were still warming up.

It's a whole load of fun, probably some of the best fun I had with a MP game in a while. The game mechanics are intricate and require a lot of quick thinking (or thinking under pressure), but it's not like you need to read a huge manual or need tactical briefings either. Not on normal, anyway.

What I like the most is the teamplay. It feels very natural. There's still some 'pressure' to score individually, but when the chips are down all that matter is making it out alive. Now, I haven't played any PUG's yet so maybe that's just because we're 4 intelligent people and not complete asses, but it's still cool.

At one moment, we got rushed by the horde (with some addional horde coming because we got vomited on by a boomer) near a pair of automatic stairs...me, J, and Shiny were downstairs, Satis was isolated upstairs. Everyone's busy not getting swarmed, so things are hectic...sudenly I realize Satis is pinned by a Hunter upstairs, so I run up only to find him positively SWARMED by infected. I shoot my way through the waves of undead, blow the hunter of Satis, and fend off some more infected. J and Shiny join us upstairs, Satis swallows some pills and things are looking better. Then a boomer explodes near me and I attract ANOTHER wave of horde...I decide to go down the stairs to keep them away from the rest (and give them a better shot at them), but with my troubled sight I corner myself blow the stairs. A mass of infected pummel the shit out of me, leaving me incapacitated below the stairs...someone throws a jerrycan down in the group of undead and sets it on fire. I find myself in an inferno, shooting as many infected as I can...when the fire dies down, only a few are left. My hp is nearing death. Satis appears and helps me up, Shiny heals me and J gives me some pills. And we continue on towards the safehouse. Epic stories.

Of course, I could tell you all about Satis' "save yourself" philosophy too.

Don't forget the classic moment when I blew up a gas can near then end and made very injured J limp through it. I'm such a bitch - but in honesty I figured if i waited much longer to blow it we would be worse off as a team (the rest of us 3 were on the rescue boat about to be heavily swarmed.)

Was great fun I look forward to more hopefully today.

hehe... yes... when I see the evacuation vehicle, I'm on it. I'm more than happy to provide covering fire from its relative safety. It was a lot of fun, though. Shiny and I have another errand to run, but we should be up from some more gaming in a little bit.

Another fun game yesterday...after a few runs on expert (with me dropping from the game two times when it got fun ) against the PC, we tried our hand at some versus mode. Basically, you team up in a group of 4 against another group of 4, and you play the mission both as survivors and infected. The survivors need to get to the safe room, the infected need to stop (ie kill) the survivors. Both get graded on their performance.

Our performance wasn't exactly stellar, in part because of my inexperience but also because we were up against an extremely well-coordinated enemy team for most of the game. They killed us quickly in two missions as infected, and finished most missions as survivors. They did especially well as infected.

Either way, I had a lot of fun. I'm sure we'll get better coordinated as we play more. When I went to bed yesterday I made a few mental notes:

- pushing infected away is a very powerful and efficient move. Should use it as much as possible when swarmed, preferably while moving around.

- in closed areas: once the horde attacks, we should find a closed room of some sorts to defend in, the smaller the better. The "rescue closets" seem to be perfect for this. In addition to being easily defendable, it also puts the infected players off guard in versus mode because they can't spawn in the room (cause of line of sight). Apart from the tank, the infected are pretty useless when attacking from the front. Finding appropriate rooms and/or reflexes will improve as we play.

- in open areas: once the horde comes in and we need to stand ground, we should form some kind of shiltrom defence where we sit in a circle, backs to each other and shooting/pouncing off infected. The only counter to this is (again) a tank, or a smoker. But the latter can be prevented from doing damage with a little bit of attention. Of course, should the horde all focus on one side or player another can assist them. That's why we'd all need to crouch - so the rest can stand up and shoot over them.

When it comes to playing infected, I noticed that it's usually necessary to just...wait for the right moment. Attacking, even with all 4 players, without the assistance of the horde is pretty much pointless when you're playing against a mildly coordinated team. With a well-coordinated attack from two hunters and a smoker, with some backup from the horde you can pretty much cripple the survivors in one go, if they let their guard down for 4 seconds. The 4th (not pinned) player might save the others yet, but at least one of the players will suffer some serious damage during that time.

All in all, great fun. The game reminds me of a classy remake of a similar MP game for HL1 a few years ago, with vampires and vampire hunters. And there's nothing like Shiny popping a bullet in my chest when I'm 1 meter from the safe room.

Yeah pushing is very powerfull, like when you're vomitted on and kinda blinded, you're best option is to retreat in a corner (if you kind find one) and start rightclicking like hell.

I think we played on advanced btw, not expert

And if we would have mics we would be (even?) (more?) coordinated i think.

Yea, but I think Ox is ashamed of his Belgian/French accent.

advanced, expert, you know those things get mixed up in my brain

good idea @ pushing J...I usually just shoot my shotgun empty in the direction I think zombies are coming from. That should partially explain why I'm always shooting your asses. Apart from my triggerhappiness, it can be a bitch trying to protect teammates with a shotgun because of its spread. For a hallway full of undead, it's simple awesome tho.

@ mic...I'm not ashamed as such (whore) but don't forget I'm shacked up with other people, people who work shifts and sometimes make early bed calls. So the noise is one thing, me screaming my girly fears of death over everything is another. Besides, I don't even own a mic.

if we're all investing it I might be persuaded to get one and use it at regular intervals, we'll see. But people tend to barge into my room and ask me questions...not cool. They don't understand the concept of "i'm in an online game". I'd get my own place but I need a new job first...not gonna rent a flat here only to find out i gotta move to brussels in 2 months' time.

This was again fun - although I got a bit frustrated. Ox is picking the game up and how to play it faster than I did by far. However, the things like walking in my firing line often frustrated me. So, I started to drink a lot. Now keep in mind he is kicking the shit out of how bad I played at first and that I am still not very good... and well I could not resist the urge to blaze a shot off at Ox. Now I should hve looked a bit more at his health before doing so as that was an incap for him which made me feel like even more so of an ass. Sorry

I totally would love to play again and soon

I have a mic, but I dunno - I have stopped really wanting to play too much with mics in games because I like to avoid people really knowing I am a chick. I used to want people to know I was a chick, but I dunno - I'd rather not anymore. It causes too much drama. SO, dunno. I think if you play with peeps for a few times you learn their styles and such and can kinda know what they are doing. Satis and I have this to a degree that it works well with us two playing.

I do admit about the only time I find it useful is when someone got ganked and needs rescue it speeds things up. But that to me is not often worth the talking. OK I better run /hugs Sorry again Ox I was being an ass yesterday.

Haha, it's ok, so don't worry. For all I care you can all shoot the crap out of me once in a while, as long as it's not all the time. I'll be the first to admit that I ran into quite a bit of friendly fire, which is in part because of the shotgun choice (ie it's a frontline weapon so I run around a lot). I'll try to be more careful next time.

I try not to get peeved while playing anyways...it's just a game, after all. The only time I got frustrated was when I sucked incredibly bad and got owned by a tank, a hunter, another hunter and a zombie horde in the same fucking mission. Y'know, the one with the tank in the tunnel right near the safe room.

Oh and when the british guy started whining how I fell off the roof, on my first game ever as an infected. I didn't even know I was in ghostmode!

and on survival.

It's basic principles probably, but you might want to check it.

Also something i forgot to add (and is mentioned in the texts): we should always try to stay clear of witches.

Ox - that british guy was an ass - bottom line. You were fine and if you knew how absoutly awful I was at infected when I first tried. I had no idea to crouch for hunter, no idea how to play the smoker at all. The boomer I would jump off buildings to try to get a splat that would get everyone. It was bad. I kept asking satis to let me play more of those over and over so I could practice. Unfortunatly those teams I would be on would suffer with my learning curve. And again it was massive as I still suck - but I am way way better than I was.

As for the witch. I dunno Satis and I have played where we did not bother the witch all through the game and with us killing the witch. Granted I jacked that up really bad yesterday because I had a misunderstanding with Satis. I don't think it matters either way as long as you have a plan.