l4d – The Daily SPUF

Back 4 Blood, Left 4 Dead and Ambience

September 11, 2022September 5, 2022 Medic 0 Comments b4b, back 4 blood, l4d, left 4 dead

Recently I’ve been watching zombie things. Shaun of the Dead is my favourite zombie movie, but there are plenty of other ones. I’ve also been playing zombie things, namely Left 4 Dead 2, as well as trying out Back 4 Blood. While one is the spiritual ancestor of the other, these games invoke very different feelings. In this article, I am only going to compare aesthetics, ambiance and the general background setting. The gameplay is best left for later. Different timelines in similar apocalypses While yes, Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood are set in very similar universes, the… [Continue Reading]

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Warhammer: Vermintide – Almost Literally Left 4 Dead 2

December 11, 2018December 9, 2018 Medic 0 Comments l4d, left 4 dead, rats, vermintide, warhammer, warhammer: end times - vermintide, zombies

My brother has been pestering me to play Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide for ages. But the 50GB download and the fact that it was a coop-based shooter akin to Left 4 Dead put me off. I can barely get through Hard Rain on my own or with players, how was I supposed to do that with magic involved? But I couldn’t say no any more when brother dumped said 50GB on my external hard drive then asked me where my Steam Library was. With Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide installed, I had to play. Also I’m shortening that title… [Continue Reading]

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Left 4 Dead – My First Game on Steam

July 19, 2018July 16, 2018 Medic 0 Comments l4d, l4d2, left 4 dead, nostalgia, ramble

I still vaguely remember buying Left 4 Dead. It was a long time ago. I was on holiday in the UK visiting my family. We were in the town where we used to live when I lived in the UK too, in the town centre, going through a gaming shop of some sort. I picked Left 4 Dead up for £15 and happily took it back to my grandma’s. I wouldn’t be able to replay until I returned home, a week or so later. That was also when I made my Steam account, which is now, what, 8 years old?… [Continue Reading]

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Playing Left 4 Dead 2 with Stupid Mods

February 18, 2018February 14, 2018 Medic 0 Comments bionicle, bohrok, fun, l4d, l4d2, left 4 dead, mods, rahkshi, silly

In my siblings’ quest to find something we all want to play, I suggested Left 4 Dead 2. We’d been suggesting it for ages, but never got around to it because sister’s computer ‘wasn’t letting her’ or something like that. But on the weekend, she clicked L4D2 and it loaded no problem. Brother squealed with joy, and I silently lamented the fact that we were all going to die repeatedly. Of course, I’d also forgotten that I’d also installed a fuckton of dumb mods. Okay, not a fuckton. One of the mods I had was genuinely useful. It, like many… [Continue Reading]

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On Rochelle

June 12, 2017July 3, 2017 Medic 0 Comments character, l4d, l4d2, ramble, rochelle

It’s unusual to write an article on Left 4 Dead 2, when aabicus is so clearly better at the game than I am. And with only 30 hours (apparently) on the game, I look like a bit of a noob, even though as many as seven years ago, I was being dragged around Advanced coop campaigns and the only one I never managed to beat (and actually played) was Hard Rain, because that is genuinely a grueling campaign. That being said, I also know quite a bit of the ins and outs of the game, and I’ve always liked how… [Continue Reading]

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The Unfinished Campaign – Dam It

November 27, 2016December 19, 2016 Medic 0 Comments campaign, dlc, l4d, left 4 dead, map

Dam it is, as the title suggests, an unfinished Left 4 Dead map, made for the original game, not the sequel. According to the site where it was released, this three-part campaign was supposed to fill in the gaps between Dead Air and Blood Harvest. After all, at the end of Dead Air, the finale involves you filling up a plane with fuel so you can take off and fly to safety. Knowing Left 4 Dead, that never lasts. This campaign is designed to have its own unique bits, that required their own scripting in the Source engine to work.… [Continue Reading]

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The No Mercy Heist

October 11, 2016November 6, 2016 Medic 2 Comments heist, l4d, payday

My very first first person experience was a very long time ago, when I played Left 4 Dead back in 2009. I crawled through the map of No Mercy, and although I never made it to the hospital in my first attempt, the feeling of terror and thrills that the game gave me stuck around for a very long time. I never ended up playing much Left 4 Dead in general, due to it being a game where you want decent people to play with, but later play-throughs cemented that feeling. No Mercy will always be my favourite Left 4… [Continue Reading]

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On Left 4 Dead and how it was all ported over

October 3, 2015 Medic 0 Comments criticism, l4d, left 4 dead, non-tf2, sequel, zombie

There’s something about the original Left 4 Dead game, how it still feels better than Left 4 Dead 2. But this isn’t like the feeling aabicus has with Payday 1 and 2, or Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2, this is something different. The games I just mentioned, the sequels are, well, completely different. Payday 2 gets rid of old Hoxton and replaces him temporarily until you unlock the old version by saving him and is basically a whole new game, focusing more on the constant expansions than one little thing. The differences between Team Fortress Classic and Team… [Continue Reading]

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Game Design: Differentiating Your Baddies

June 4, 2015January 15, 2017 aabicus 0 Comments analysis, design, killing floor, l4d, Left 4 Dead 2, non-tf2, On Shooters

First-Person Shooters do a great job of naming all the guns. Whether borrowing real-world names like “M14” in the name of accuracy, generic names like “sawed-off-shotgun” in the name of clarity, or custom names like “Klobb” in the name of uniqueness, I can’t think of a single instance where I was disappointed in the dev’s firearm naming efforts. But this satisfaction does not always transfer to their naming of the things being shot. In a way, I think it’s almost more important that the bad guy units in a shooter be given decent names, especially if the devs are hoping a… [Continue Reading]

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Leave Impracticality 4 Dead

February 28, 2015 aabicus 0 Comments advice, l4d, mod, mods, non-tf2

Every single element in Left 4 Dead 2 is there for a reason. Its features, weapons, zombie types, etc are balanced between each other and have their own role to play. All unnecessary aspects of the setting have been trimmed out, boiling the zombie apocalypse into a polished and nuanced nutshell. It’s a great game for players new and old, as a standard normal-difficulty campaign can throw enough curveballs to keep veterans on their toes while also letting the inexperienced focus on reaching the next safe room and surviving. However, if you limit yourself to only the base game, you’re… [Continue Reading]

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