Playing Left 4 Dead 2 with Stupid Mods

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 HUD mods, puts a number to how much health you have, so you’re no longer guessing. I’ve always despised when games don’t tell you exactly how much health you have while you play, because we simply don’t have time to look at your health bar, see how full it is and make an estimate. The whole point of a HUD is easy access to important information.

Every other mod though was a pile of crap. Including the Kaiju Blood mod that makes blood blue. I’d installed it to go alongside all my other mods, most of which are related to Bionicle or Minecraft. I have a bunch of Bionicle 2010 Bara Magna characters running around as special infected and Minecraft enemies filling in the gaps, mainly because there are no Bionicle characters for Smokers, Boomers, Spitters and Smokers. Oh and I have Rahkhsi as survivors because fuck playing as good guys. I want to play as the creatures who destroyed Ta-Koro and killed Jaller.

The last mod I have simply silences the Survivors, making them only use normal call-outs. So they don’t say any plot points but they do call out ammo piles and incoming special infected. I honestly just forgot to disable this mod after I did that stupid Lehrahk 4 Dead video. I’ve considered revisiting that some day but eh, it was kinda shit.

Still, it’s an insane bunch of mods. Not as insane as some parts of the L4D2 Steam Workshop, huge parts of it being simple retextures really made for personal use but published anyway.

All this so that my Bohrok Swarm doesn’t look too stupid. I jumped for joy when I saw this in the Steam Workshop for Left 4 Dead 2, and I even went looking for a LEGO-themed map to use them on. But these days? They’re… eugh… The Bohrok Swarm simply doesn’t work very well. Mainly because their heads flop around and you can’t easily headshoot them. Turns out their head is actually their neck. Sure, you can see the Bohrok coming a mile away.

I’ve disabled most of those mods for now. They were honestly too distracting and too in-my-face. Left 4 Dead isn’t a hard game, but when you’ve got stupid models you’re not used to and a ton of hitboxes that simply don’t match, then you’re in for a world of pain.

Although I’d probably be in less pain if my siblings were better at planning. And throwing molotov cocktails. Seriously, I was downed four fucking times because those two had no fucking idea how to throw a molotov, setting me on fire and leaving me to die. Also, camping in little tiny corners is a shit idea, but no one listened to me when I said we’d all get killed.

So good riddance, stupid mods.

Except for the Rahkshi survivors. I like them. I actually went and renamed all the files so I could have a full squad of Rahkshi. They work absolutely fine for the original four survivors, but they do… weird things when you play as L4D2 survivors. The two official ones for Coach and Nick work fine, but the ones copied from the Bill and Francis mods don’t have all the required animations (and the animations are probably in the wrong order too) so you get a spasming pair of Rahkshi who seem to randomly look downed or dead. I used to use the old Velociraptor L4D2 survivors but really Rahkhsi are more fun. And more humanoid.

You know what the worst thing is though? I recorded about 3 hours worth of gameplay, and all of it is unusable. It’s simply too choppy and too laggy to deal with. That and I have a weird habit of not really shooting much, so much of the usable footage was just me looking for pain pills or the remains of my siblings’ battles.

It’s a shame really, because No Mercy was a blast. Fuck Dark Carnival though. Fuck that campaign and its stupid narrow finale paths.