The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I entered a contest, and then I won a contest, thanks to the fantastic people over at On the Stick. I had entered both because I had a good idea and because I wanted to support them. They’re making a fantastic podcast over there, I think. Not just a “for Talking Time” production, but a podcast any gamer can enjoy. I’m certainly enjoying it.

In any case, I won a copy of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Now, I wasn’t really planning on playing this one, but since I won a free copy, I made sure I blazed through the whole thing. On easy, of course. I suck at action games. Now that I’ve beat it, though, I wanted to comment on it a bit. We’ll do mechanics today, and story and other such things tomorrow. I have many things to say about it!

It’s a really weird game. I am just really unsure what they were thinking when they were developing this game.

Just to get the obvious question out of the way, it doesn’t feel like Castlevania or anything. They try to invoke a little of that with powers that unlock things in earlier levels, but I felt no need to ever go back to an earlier level just to be able to hold more subweapons I rarely used, so I didn’t do backtracking. I don’t think this is a problem, but I suppose it could be a problem for some people.
What it is, instead, is like… God of War mixed with all the parts of Uncharted where you’re shimmying along things? I don’t know. There’s so much traversal, and it’s mostly just inoffensive. It’s never any fun, but it’s never really frustrating, as they always make things magically light up to show you were to go. Then you get there, and you might solve a weird puzzle, or fight some monsters.

I personally really enjoyed the combat. I think it’s because I haven’t really played a brawler/spectacle fighter/whatever the fuck this genre is called game in a long time. I played the original God of War, and I played two hybrids of the genre in Brutal Legend and Darksiders, but never really any pure ones since. As such, it was kind of fresh, getting into thinking about combos again. I mean, I’m horrible at it, and there’s nothing particularly whip-like about how you use the whip in the game, but it was pretty forgiving on easy after I got the hang of it, so it was never that much of a problem. I’m sure something like Bayonetta is more palletable for people who really like this genre, but as someone who doesn’t normally go in for it, it was pretty fun.
The best thing about it, I think, were the Light and Dark magic meters and the Focus bar. Basically, you had two magical auras you could throw up at any time. The Light one had a health drain effect, and this is where most of your healing comes from. The Dark one just flat-out ups your damage. There are special combos with each, but I never really used them. However, managing these meters was actually pretty fun. Do I want to end the fight quickly, or be more survivable? I could absorb Magic Orbs into either bar, so I had to constantly be making the decision of which one I needed more. On top of that, the Focus meter meant that if I could get many consecutive hits without being hit myself, I’d get a ton of magic orbs, which was actually enough incentive to make me actually do some blocking and dodging in a game. It made me get more involved in the combat, which was fantastic, as I worried I’d end up just mashing buttons.
I never did find much use for the subweapons, though. Every so often I’d get tired of them telling me I was full up on them, and use them, but they seemed so… separate from the normal flow of combat it didn’t really occur to me. Near the end I started using the Holy Water more to clear out minions, but that was about it.

Granted, there are annoying parts too. I found the Shadow of the Colossus-style bosses to be obscenely annoying. It would always seem to punish me for wailing on the magical seals, since they took about 5 hits more than they should have to break. The sections where a Chupacabra steals your powers and you have to hunt him down while he CONSTANTLY SAYS STUPID SHIT was also annoying. It’s such thinly veiled game padding that it just makes a player sad.

But mechanically, I had a good time. A better time than I thought I’d have, actually. I was kind of prepared for the worst, but the combat was enjoyable, and the rest was fine, and wasn’t going to make me give up. That’s good!

Next time, we’ll weep for Patrick Stewart, but yeah, the game part of the game is pretty fun.

Have I mentioned I like Telltale Games? I like Telltale Games. They make funny stuff, and I always find games of theirs that I play genuinely enjoyable. Still, I was on the fence when I heard the announcement of Poker Night at the Inventory. I don’t know anything about Poker. Okay, that’s not true, but it’s not a card game I really enjoy. The concept of betting actual money just doesn’t appeal to me, so I never really got into it. Still, when I saw it was only going to be $5, I went ahead and jumped in. I liked the characters, and I trusted Telltale. The TF2 unlocks that showed up later also made me feel sure I made the right decision.

The game itself is kind of what you’d expect. You play Texas Hold’em Poker, and these characters you recognize say funny things. The dialog in the game is genuinely hilarious. I’ve laughed quite a bit while playing through it. Each character is true to their nature, and they have nice discussions back and forth that are meta and appropriate. For example, Tycho understands the Heavy is a character in a video game who gets drops from kills, but also discusses his background as if he were not. Similarly, Strong Bad and Tycho go back and forth on the relative popularity of their respective websites, for example. It works, and it’s really well-written and voiced.
There’s only so much voice work and funny jokes, though. It does run out. I had the game set to “idle chit-chat,” meaning the characters rarely talked, and I heard most of the jokes after a few hours or play. Sometimes another one I haven’t heard slips through, but if you had it turned up to more verbose settings, I’m sure you’d blow through the dialog in a much shorter period of time.

However, the game itself is just Poker. It’s sweetened with the TF2 unlocks, but it is Texas Hold’em. Rock Paper Shotgun seems to think that the Poker AI is not very good at all. This very well might be true! I don’t notice it, but I admit I only know the very basics of actual deep poker strategy. It does seem designed around people who aren’t particularly Poker players, which seems a weird decision when you’re making a Poker game. However, I have to say that, as a person who isn’t into Poker, I do find the gameplay pretty fun. I probably won’t keep playing it after I get all the TF2 unlocks (I’m only missing the Iron Curtain at this point) but I am enjoying myself. I have no problem with it.

Just know you’re getting a budget game, and that it isn’t anything more than Poker, and you’ll know whether or not this is a game to pick up. If you like Telltale and play TF2, this is really a no-brainer, though I hope you preordered and got the badass Poker Visor. If you just like Telltale, think about it. It is very entertaining while the dialog lasts, and you may discover that Poker isn’t as boring a game as you once thought.

Today I’m going to talk about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.

No, not the movie. The video game.

First off, I guess I need to justify why I have even played such an amazingly awful game. Well, the answer to that is fairly simple. Basically, I thought the idea would create a mediocre but playable experience. I have always been of the opinion that, if you’re going to make a tie-in movie game on a low budget, you might as well steal mechanics directly from other good games, so that the game will at least play decently well. Death Hollow One seemed to be doing this: it was being called Gears of Potter, and was supposed to be a third-person, cover-based shooter. That’s pretty easy to get into a passable state. I had confidence it might happen.
The other main reason is that, even though I certainly bitch about it and point out its flaws an awful lot, I really do enjoy Harry Potter. It’s kind of stupid in a lot of ways, and there are a lot of writing problems, but it’s also pretty fun, if you just go along for the ride. I’d enjoy running around shooting Death Eaters, right? Maybe?

Anyway, so I randomly put it on the top of my Gamefly, and Gamefly sent it out to me. I played it for an evening and put it down, because oh man, is it awful.

Let me explain to you the situation where I stopped. I was sneaking into the Ministry of Magic. I had to do a horrible stealth section, where I then picked up some information. Then, immediately after that, I got swarmed by death eaters and about 3 dementors. I could not defeat these guys, even on easy, because there was nowhere to take cover. I though, for a second, that maybe I was supposed to sneak past them, but every time I picked up the information, I got kicked out of my invisibility cloak and everyone was alerted to me, and every time I died, I had to redo the stealth part.

Everything that’s not shooting dudes in the game is really awful. The sneaking under the “power draining for no reason” invisibility cloak is boring at worst and frustrating at best. The “walk around and talk to people to solve puzzles” would be cool, except there aren’t puzzles, and you’re walking around in tiny hallways with only one way to go. It’s pointless and time consuming.

The shooting is, unfortunately, not much better. Wands don’t have any kickback, which makes all the spells feel really weak. Plus, they all are. Stupefy is really your only combat option. You get other spells, but they do what Stupefy does, but with more cooldown, or less accuracy. It’s really pointless to use any other offensive spell. In addition, it’s impossible to hit anything unless you “aim,” which actually just locks on to targets. However, if those targets are moving, at all, Harry can’t hit them, even when locked on. It’s ridiculous, and not the Bogart-related spell.

On top of all this, the graphics are nightmare-inducing. The characters are drowning in the uncanny valley. They’re too realistic while being too stiff. They creep the fuck out, and not in a good way. The enemies, which you might want to be creepy, are always so far away that they aren’t. It’s always Harry, Ron, and Hermione who are creeping me the fuck out.

Yeah, this game is horrible, and this experiment with licensed games is over. It was silly of me to think it would be a passable weekend distraction, I suppose. Now I know, though. Maybe Part 2 will iron out the problems, because the core idea is still fine. Shootdude in Harry Potter Land is an idea I can get behind. However, I doubt it will come together into something vaguely playable, and I probably won’t check it out to see.

I don’t want to brag, but I am now a bartender, apparently. I even have the .jpeg to prove it, as you can see. How did I earn such obviously official training? Why, by playing Nimble Strong: Bartender in Training, of course.

Nimble Strong is a fascinating game, since it is in a fairly small group. Here’s a game that’s actually entertaining that teaches you a potentially useful set of stuff, much like, say, the majesty of Typing of the Dead. While you aren’t mixing the drinks for real on your iPhone, of course, you are having to memorize the names and recipes of many drinks in order to succeed in mixing them in the time-crunch scenarios the game puts you in. You can always look at your little book to read the ingredients while playing, of course, but you have to look at the book in real time, and eventually taking too long to review will cause you to not have enough time to mix the drinks properly. It really does start to make you learn the various drink types, and once you finish with the story, a “survival” mode lets you quiz yourself by constantly throwing drink orders at you, outside of the story, and without being able to look at your book of ingredients.
The only thing, gameplay-wise, that bothers me is the Recipe book you have outside the game. There’s a menu option to just let you look at the book, to help mix your own drinks. However, you have to unlock them with the tip money you get from playing the game. This seems needlessly game-y. It would be much more useful, if I was going to actually attempt to mix drinks, to simply have that reference always available for IRL situations.

The story elements of the game are acceptable, although not particularly amazing. The website promises an “epic storyline,” which it really isn’t. At the same time, it does a decent job. It’s obvious from the title and character design that the game is trying to steal some style from Phoenix Wright, and it does that to an extent. The characters are interesting enough to keep you from being completely bored in the story segments, though aren’t spectacular, perse.

Still, if you’re the sort who’d like to learn how to make these drinks, this game seems like a fantastic purchase. I had fun just with the game aspects of it, though perhaps it was a bit pricey, considering I’m probably not learning anything that will ever be of use to me. However, if you were to drink, I think this is a great way to learn the basics. Wrapping it up in a game just makes sense, and it is fun. It’s worth a look, anyway.

Sometimes I forget why I play games, I guess. I do it because it’s what I do. I mean, I enjoy myself, but often it’s not so much a thrill as a way to pass the time. I don’t always realize it, of course. It takes those rare moments to smack me out of it. Whether it be a game that’s so frustrating, I question why I’m using my leisure time on it, or a game so fantastic, it pulls me out enough to make me go “wait a second, this is so much damn fun!”

I don’t know. I got DJ Hero 2 in from Gamefly, and immediately after putting the disc in, I was thrilled. It drew me in. It made me feel excited and energized. After playing for hours and stopping, I stepped back and went, “Holy shit, I was having fun.”

I remember other moments like that in life, where I’ve looked at myself and realized, “Oh, this is happy, I guess. Crazy.” Like, say, the first time I saw They Might Be Giants in concert. I was completely lost in it. Completely happy, and it was extended over a long period of time. At times, the nostalgic feelings that creep up on me when I view a Christmas tree does the same thing. I feel fantastic. I feel loved. It’s great.

There are times I wonder if the fact that I feel this way indicates how horrible I feel most of the time. “Does everyone normally feel like this on a good day?” I wonder. I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. I’ve got lots of good in my life. It’s pretty solid. No, it’s just a heightened sense. A sense of getting away from everything, and of being completely free. It’s great when a good game experience can give you that rare moment.

Needless to say, I paid to keep DJ Hero 2. I’m really loving it. I’ll write more about it later. But it just reminded me how rare that feeling is. I guess I’m lucky the game gives it to me, at least for a little while.

I bought a game while it was on sale. It was called “Snoopy Flying Ace” and it is a game where Peanuts characters fly around and shoot each other in planes while wearing really, really ridiculous WWII-style costumes. When the planes explode, the characters always parachute out, so you know you’re not ruining Peanuts canon by murdering time-travelling Peppermint Patty during WWII.

Anyway, the game is kind of ridiculous. As ridiculous as you would think a multiplayer-focused XBL game based on Peanuts would be. But Brer likes flying, and I thought we could play through the campaign together, because it has really nice split screen stuff, even online. I bought it cheap to save for his visit. At the same time, I’m like, well, I can at least check out the online, stuff, you know?

Anyway, the point of all this is, the game is fucking fantastic.

Well, the multiplayer is, anyway, and that was clearly the focus of the game. You have your normal variety of modes: Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch (Called Dogfight, both because, you know, planes, and also because, you know, Snoopy), a Capture the Flag variant, a “kill the guy with the ball” variant, and a football-style mode called Pigskin. What’s more, there’s plenty of people playing. This can sometimes be a problem with a game, but I’ve never had trouble getting into a full game, at least in the more common modes. You can bring it up, and be shooting people in a minutes. This is a huge benefit for me.

The game has a fairly large variety of weapons, of which you can take two of into a match, along with a basic forward-facing machine gun you always have. You can set various weapon loadouts per Peanuts character, or just switch them around on one mid-match if needed. You can also fly as your Avatar, just for the hell of it. You can also pick what kind of plane you want to fly, although this is mostly cosmetic: there are stat differences between “light,” “medium,” and “heavy” planes, but nothing in between the classes.
What gets me is that all the weapons actually seem useful. When I first looked at the weapon list, I assumed many would be completely useless. But I’m working on the Weaponeer achievement, and that means I have to use a variety of guns. While I figured that the only good weapons would be the Comet Rockets and the Squitos, I’ve found that there really is a good variety of useful stuff out there. Yes, some are better than others, but if you have different styles, they are useful. Even things like the little spinning melee thing that twirls under your plane is not that hard to get kills with. I don’t see one particular loadout when I play. That’s a damn good thing. The game is well-balanced that way.

The game has kill-streak bonuses like Modern Warfare, too. If you get 4 kills in a row, Woodstock jumps onto your plane tail with two magnum pistols and will shoot people behind you. (No, seriously, that’s what happens.) Getting 9 in a row turns your plane into Snoopy’s doghouse, though I’ve never gotten close to that bonus, so I don’t know what it does. That’s neat, but it honestly doesn’t seem to come into play anywhere near as often as the streak bonuses in things like Modern Warfare. I think that’s a good thing.

There are various maps, many with weird environmental hazards, like robots or evil dragon submarines that you have to dodge while fighting. There are also turrets you can man on the field. The guide I looked at for the game seemed to indicate these are really powerful, and I do sometimes get shot down by them, but every time I’ve gotten into a turmulent, I’ve been unable to hit shit. Who knows. In any case, the maps have plenty of open areas, as well as buildings and things to maneuver around. There’s like… 6 or so of them. This is plenty for a game like this.

Really, I’ve been having a fantastic time. It’s extremely polished, and good fun if you like shooting down other people online. It’s not very Peanuts-y or anything, though there are some nice touches. Die a bunch of times with no kills, and you get labelled a “Blockhead,” along with a silly icon of Charlie Brown with a squared-off head. When you win, it plays a little piano tune and shows a picture of Snoopy dancing. It’s a weird product, but as far as online multiplayer goes, it’s aces. The demo even lets you play online matches for awhile, so I recommend doing that and trying it. It might hook you too.
As for the campaign, I’ve not played it. I’m waiting. We’ll see if it’s fun, but I bet it will be. Probably not the deepest thing, but the mechanics are solid, so I’m sure it’ll be a good time.

In the DungeonDragons, a slogan they used for awhile was “Never Split the Party.” You have to have a party with a unified front, or else you’re just not going to get anything done. People will die, combats will be failures, everything will break down into bickering.

But that’s, you know, Dungeons and Dragons. Cthulhu-stuff… well, in a way, that’s different. Tension between your party is part of the horror. Not knowing who is going to turn, not knowing if you’re all really on the same side, even as you’re facing a supernatural threat…

That’s what I think, at least. I’ve been playing a pre-made Trail of Cthulhu campaign on Talking Time for awhile (It’s here if you want to read) with a bunch of cool cats. It’s been progressing really slowly, but it hasn’t been, you know, stressful because everyone is willing to be patient for people to act. I’ve found it very refreshing in that regard, and we’ve been getting some solid Roleplaying done. I love being silly, but too rarely do I have an opportunity to do roleplaying of the serious variety. As such, I’ve been really enjoying it.

However, the character I’ve pieced together, using a premade character and extrapolating from the information I was given, is really at odds with the party. Everyone else seems to be playing their characters in a very Lawful Good-esque kind of manner. Very goodie-two-shoes and whatnot. There’s nothing wrong with that. I often enjoy playing characters like that. But that just doesn’t fit Jan’s back story. She’s out for herself, and she only believes in herself. She believes she knows what she’s doing, and she wants to be in control. She’s somewhere in the Chaotic Neutral or Lawful Evil sort of range. She’s working with everyone because their goals coincide with hers.

And now, we’re at the point where they no longer do, and Jan is going to make sure she’s protected. That means bringing no monsters back to her world, and that means stopping Roger, who is infected, from coming back. Clearly, nobody else thinks that’s a good idea, since he still has his mind, and they’re good people. But Jan has wanted to be in charge this entire time, and now she has a bargaining chip. She’s going to push this and establish control.

I can’t imagine a way this would work out well for Jan. Everyone’s made it pretty clear they’re not going to bow down, and Jan probably isn’t going to back off on this. But that’s part of what makes this situation awesome. It’s a true character moment. It’s deep roleplaying. It’s amazing. My character might end up getting beaten up or killed because of this, but it’s totally worth it. It’s a realistic, tense moment in an awesome game. It works. I hope everyone else sees it as being as awesome as I do, even as they knock me out and steal my gun. Heh.

Brer says I’m totally wrong, but man, I got really frustrated with Metro 2033 on easy. Luckily, thanks to the power of Gamefly, I just sent it back. Take that game!

There’s no doubt that Metro 2033 is a unique game. It’s got a very interesting setting and a fairly interesting story. The dialog and such isn’t like, the best in the world, but it was enough to keep me hooked and wanting to continue. Various mechanics, such as your quest log being an actual piece of paper you have to look at in the game world, were really immersive and interesting. That’s just not something done in many games, besides, I suppose, something like Far Cry 2. Of course, this isn’t a game like Far Cry 2, it’s a linear shooter, along the lines of Call of Duty in its pacing and construction. Not so much in the combat, but in the story presentation, I mean. There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s something really neat here for someone with more patience.

However, I’m not currently that person. I’m stressed and tired, and when I want to game, I just want a fun experience. I don’t want to replay sections constantly, and I don’t want to be lost. Metro 2033 did both of these things to me. The combat, even on the easiest setting, is not forgiving. Enemies take tons of bullets to take down (except, strangely, the monsters and mutants, which go down without issue) and are often in places you wouldn’t think to look. They also don’t just throw a few enemies at you. It’s either a giant arena full of people, or nobody. Bigger combat scenarios would require me to replay them over and over, which is frustrating for me, especially when the game checkpoints just slightly less often than it should, causing me to have to replay hard fights at times. It seemed, to me, that the only thing Easy did was up the drop rate of bullets. I was told that bullets are fairly scarce in this game, but on easy, I was drowning in them. I was not being particularly careful with my shots, but halfway through the game I had stockpiled like 800 AK bullets. This did help and remove a potential worry, but it was not enough to actually make the combat easy so I could just breeze through and enjoy the story.
For a game so linear, too, I shouldn’t be lost as often as I was. The game has a compass, that works as a guiding arrow. It’ll lead you right where you need to walk, over stairs, and so on. Sometimes, though, it’ll just randomly decide that, no, it’s just going to point in the general direction of an objective, and let you figure it out. Giving me help, and then taking it away from me is frustrating, especially when it takes it away in the most confusing environments where I need it the most.

It was these facts, plus the fact that Brer was constantly telling me I missed important things (Sorry love! I’m not mad or something, but that really did hinder my fun), that caused the game to become a chore instead of a destressor. For those more willing to deal with a bit of clunkiness, and who love that European PC game mentality that the game has will probably find tons to love about it. For me, though, it was just the wrong game at the wrong time.

Dragon Age: Origins was on sale for cheap from Gamefly, and I had a coupon I needed to use before I lost it. I had always been meaning to get to it, but I never had. Now, for like $12, it seemed like a good idea. I’ve now finished it, and I must say, I’m glad I played through it. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but it did a ton of things right, and was enjoyable overall.

What really got me about this game was the characters. I expected fairly bland fantasy characters from this game, but I wasn’t given that at all. Every character that joined my party was actually a fairly deep, complete individual, which stopped the generic fantasy setting from feeling as generic and fantasy. I really appreciated that. I’m glad Bioware has their shit together on character writing.
In addition, the conversations your party has with each other as you walk around are really great, and basically made me go, “Why the fuck isn’t that in Mass Effect 2?” It really brought the characters to life, and there were a ton of them: I used the same party for the entire game, and they were STILL having new conversations right up until the very end. It was a great way to show that, hey, the entire world doesn’t revolve JUST around your character, while also building up their character arcs even more.

I was especially impressed with Alistair. I went into the game figuring he would be the most generic dude, in order to sort of… be the guy to compare the rest of the party to, a la Ashley and Kaiden from Mass Effect. Instead, I found a very funny, very charismatic dude who was trying to hide his own insecurity and fear behind wit. He was a really complete character, and instead of immediately tossing him to the side, like I assumed I would, I kept him in the party the whole game, and romanced the shit out of him, marking one of the rare moments when an in-game character in one of these games turned out not to be a lesbian. Crazy! (Okay, I was hitting on Leliana too, so I suppose she was bi.)
His character was totally realistic, too. Part of that was the amazing performance on the part of his voice actor. I savescummed to get the “Recruit everyone” achievement, and I felt horrible about doing it. Alistair was really, genuinely hurt that I’d choose to do such a thing. Similarly, when the decision came to make the final sacrifice, because I didn’t lay down the law and allowed romantic talk, Alistair didn’t let me do the noble sacrifice, instead doing it himself without my permission, which also spurred an emotional reaction in me. The way he went about it was just so realistic. It worked. It was fantastic. Great characters.

The gameplay was… obviously not designed for the 360, but it was way more functional than I had expected. Granted, I also attempted to make it as controller-friendly as possible with my build. Instead of picking a class and skills with many activated abilities I’d have to juggle with limited hotkey space, I instead built a Rogue Bowazon Bard Ranger, which meant that I was firing arrows from afar, able to have a good view of the battlefield without jumping around, and that most of my powers were sustained buffs and animal summons, which meant I only had maybe one or two special attacks that needed to be hotkeyed. This worked really well, and actually fit my style in general pretty well too. However, during the short sequences where I had to control a mage, for example, it seemed pretty clear that the game was designed for a PC, as you just had too many powers to switch between.
I’d also have problems selecting things. Since I couldn’t just click on objects, I had problems destroying barriers, for example, or always talking to party members when I was trying to loot bodies. Granted, it worked most of the time, but it was just clunky enough to show that this wasn’t designed for consoles, and would work better on the PC.

Don’t let that stop you from playing it, though, if you don’t want to do the PC thing. It’s still a great game, and a lot of fun. I’m really glad I finally got around to it. Hopefully I won’t wait so long when Dragon Age 2 comes out. Also, hopefully I can borrow the Awakening Disc from someone and play through it. That would also be fun. But maybe I need a little RPG break first. Heh. That was a lot of RPG!

Because I know the number of times I will play through The Passing is limited to maybe one or two more, I recently listened through all of the possible dialogs throughout the campaign. They’re fucking hilarious. I suggest you play The Passing like a million times or just watch the videos here.

It just amazes me how brilliant Valve is. Or at least, it did when I started listening to these clips. The Left 4 Dead maps don’t really change much, at least layout-wise, and you’re expected to be playing these maps over and over again. Putting in, seriously, this much dialog is such a great solution and, more importantly, builds a slightly different narrative each time. It creates the feeling of variation, and also makes the characters extremely strong.

Seriously, Valve has done a fantastic job of storytelling in Left 4 Dead. Do they get enough credit? I don’t know. But you’ve got very deep characters and a fairly cohesive narrative, even when all the players can do whatever stupid bullshit they want. The game is designed to create narrative high and low points, and it actually work. When you play it, it’s not just a game. It is a narrative. There’s sometimes narrative in, I dunno, Modern Warfare multiplayer, but it’s always meta-narrative. It’s always the player interacting with another player. In Left 4 Dead, this is often the case, but it is also, simultaneously, a narrative about the characters. Because the game is all about interaction between these four people, the player narrative becomes the in-game narrative. It works. It works damn well.

It’s something more multiplayer needs to do. It makes it way more engaging. Then again, it’s what makes Left 4 Dead so unique. Brer and I have talked about how to take Left 4 Dead into non-zombie genres. It would work. I would be quite enamored with it. Hopefully Valve can do it! Or someone, I suppose. One just assumes Valve because, you know. They’re Valve.