Left 4 Dead at a glance

by Brendan Rose

The surprise hit of 2008, and an instant classic for me, was definitely Left 4 Dead by Valve software, makers of the archaic masterpiece Half Life. Half Life spawned games like Team Fortress 2, Counterstrike, Half Life 2 and eventually the evil and draconian Steam, which often refuses to let you play a game even though you’ve already paid for it.

Left 4 Dead is a Co-Op zombie shooter modeled on a movie theme. The zombies are kind of like those from 28 Days Later, really wild and crazy running at you slavering and screaming for blood, trying to rip your throat out when they notice you, and just standing around staring off into space when they don't.

L4D features 5 boss zombies. The Boomer, a bloated fat zombie barfs or explodes, sending a hoard of lesser zombies to kill you. The Smoker, like the licker from Resident Evil, constricts you with its tongue and drags you away to eat or strangle. The Hunter moves quickly and dives at you to tear you to shreds with his hands. The Witch cries until she's startled and then rips you apart. The Tank slaughters everyone half the time; you really need to stick with your team or you'll find yourself swarmed, restrained, and dead pretty quickly.

All the monsters and most items are placed randomly by the AI director, ensuring that every outing through the four chapters of screaming infected, each containing five levels, always feels fresh and new.

The game also features a versus mode where two teams face off as either the Zombies or the Survivors.

There is no way to express the joy of ditching your three stupid friends as they die in a hoard of zombies, overcome by their own dumbness, while you escape unscathed. Left 4 Dead features crisp live voice chat (or garbled gibberish on 360), swarms of enemies, and is really one of the most fun games of the year. I bought it twice, so I can easily recommend that you buy it once.

Far Cry 2 at a glance

By Brendan Rose

I wasn't particularly excited about Far Cry 2. It was released along side a slew of other more interesting titles and it was one of the last that I picked up. I played through the start, wasn't really impressed, got frustrated hunting diamonds, and gave up. That was it for a while. But after sitting down with it, sometime around the point I'd just wiped out an enemy unit and blew up a fuel tank which set fire to the grass that spread all through the area as I drove away, I realized, I love this game.

The graphics are rich and colorful; the African landscape looks great, ranging from dry plains to lush green jungles. It's a very pretty game. Not as pretty as Crysis, and I was disappointed that destructible buildings didn't make it over for instance, but at least it doesn't abuse and debase your computer like Crysis does.

Sure the story is crap, and it's just repetitive shooting and driving from place to place, but it's fun. The action is solid and the graphics are pure and beautiful. It’s one of the nicest looking games I've played, and it looks even better on the PC. The fire physics are the best I've seen in a game so far. It's also just plain cool to see your character pull a bullet out of his leg with a knife. It's a well rounded, polished, balanced and fun action shooter. The landscape is detailed and full of color and life, and it's funny to run over a gazelle.

Far Cry 2 is said to be a sequel in name only. It carries over none of the story or mutant powers of the first game. You are dropped into an unnamed African nation in the middle of a civil war and your mission is to track down and kill the arms dealer supplying both sides. The plan goes sideways as you're overcome with malaria and you have to start doing missions for either side for diamonds to buy weapons, and help the underground for malaria pills.

The AI is passable but nothing to scream about and there is the issue that you will be fighting the exact same enemies, time after time for the rest of the game. Most of the variation centers around your choice of weapons, and there's plenty. the game also includes a map editor.

There's not much depth to be found in Far Cry 2, but what it does, it does well. If you like first person shooters, it's worth a look.

Watch the video below for a taste of Far Cry 2's eye candy.

Fallout 3 - Game of the Year

by Brendan Rose

Fallout 3 is the next in line of the classic series of games from the nineties that allowed you to wander a post apocalyptic wasteland and lose much of your soul in the process, pillaging and tormenting survivors. With it's over the top violence, prostitution, drugs, pimping your wife for money, and killing little kids that throw stones, the game quickly gained cult status among fans. They were warped and deformed by the game forever, and hid in damp caves until the release of Fallout 3. Many of them were frightened and hateful towards the new game, but most have now come to accept it.

After the developer tanked, the licence was picked up by Bethesda, makers of the classic Morrowind, and the tripe Oblivion. Oblivion was a terrible game, but it's barebones engine provided the perfect framework for the new Fallout.

A lot of people thought it was just Oblivion with guns, which was true, but far more importantly, it was Oblivion with decapitation and dismemberment, and they fixed the damn level scaling, and the guards don't attack you everywhere for crimes in one city.

But that is just nerd history. The game starts you out being yanked out of your mothers vagina and told to decide the sex of your character. Your father (Liam Neeson) then has you sent off and you begin a series of milestones in your characters development in the underground vault where you decide your stats and skills which have an important impact on your character. You can also choose your appearance.

The game tries hard to give you the option of pursuing whatever interests you and still being able to get by. If you want to play it like a shooter, you can put your points into perception and weapons. If you want to use stealth, or melee, or focus on speech, the game will accommodate you.

As you level up you are able to receive perks depending on your stats and level that bulk up and customize your character in often unique ways. You can kill most of the people in the vault eventually, not all though. You can kill almost anyone in the game actually, which is nice. One of the first choices you're presented with is whether you want to destroy a town (Megaton) or save it. Your choices have some effect on the story and the ending is dynamic based on a few variables.

It's a very polished, fun game, with lots of depth. The wasteland goes on for miles and it's rich and full with beautiful graphics and plenty of detail, and it's just nice to be able to wipe out a town.

There's also a lot of depth to most of the characters, with a nice variety of dialogue choices, which makes it a lot more fun to blast their head off. The game uses a system called VATS to freeze time and line up attacks against different body parts and then watch all the violence in flashy slow motion. It's a nice throw back to the original isometric game. Strangely, watching limbs and heads go flying off, does not get old over time. The only problem is the regular FPS style fighting feels a bit clunky, you really need to use VATS.

Also available for the PC version is the GECK, which with a simple PHD in Quantum Physics, you can design and build your own levels, and the rest of us can try vainly to place one NPC that immediately runs away from where we placed it.

You can follow the main quest or just explore the wasteland, doing side quests, of which there is an abundance. There are also other characters you can recruit depending on your alignment.

There's a nice variety of enemies to suit different points in your development, ranging from Raiders to Supermutants to The Enclave, and plenty of random monsters like the Deathclaws. It's a nice nod to the spirit of the original games, and the next logical step for the series. The ending, however, is terrible...just terrible.

The main story lasts about 20 hours, and if you like exploring weird vaults and caves full of monsters, there's a lot more beyond that to be experienced.

It's my favorite game for 2008 and definitely worth a try.


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