Let's Play Half-Life 2

A while back a bunch of Valve fans started a Steam Group named A Call for Communication, this is basically them just wanting better communication between Valve and the fans in question. This is all Half-Life 3/Episode 3 related as fans are becoming seemingly impatient with their wait for the return of a certain Mr Freeman. Along with fans making this page along with a Facebook page, twitter and a Steam forum thread. We have also seen Operation Crowbar put in to place as well where fans bought and sent crowbars to Valve HQ as yet another not so subtle hint.

Now it would seem they are going to try and get Half-Life 2 to the top of the most played list on Steam as an attempt to grab the attention of Valve. This mass play through of the Valve game is set to start at 7pm gmt (11am pst) this Saturday. I am actually playing through Half-Life with intentions of moving on to Half-Life 2 once I have finished. I believe I could finish off the first game by Saturday and join in with this. If anything, it's an excuse to play through the game again.

Q.U.B.E

Q.U.B.E has grabbed my attention as of late. The little news I have read about it has compared it to Portal. So I downloaded the demo and gave it a shot. Upon loading up the game you can definitely where it's been influenced from. A first person puzzle game with a bright and light colour scheme has Portal written all over it. Instead of explaining the game below is my play through of the demo available on Steam. It seems little a fun little game and I reckon I'll get it some point down the line.

Left 4 Dead - Blood Tracks

Another write up of my play through of Left 4 Dead 2 custom campaigns. This one is named 'Blood Tracks'. It is a four level campaign and includes the original L4D survivors. Just like the last few I have done, there will be a video below of me running through one of the levels in this campaign with the rest of them over on my youtube channel.

So we start off this campaign along the coastline with only secondary weapons (unless I'm completely blind but I played it a couple times before recording it and couldn't find any). So you start heading in land trying to find your way to the train tracks which eventually lead to you rescue, but I'll get to that later. You end up heading through a shipping yard which is where you get some primary weapons and come to the first zombie alert event where you have to move a big container with a crane which is blocking your way to the safe house which is not far from this point, it's round the corner and through a building. It could do with a few more infected through out the map, does seem a to lack somewhat in the zombie department on this level.

Now we have the second level which sets you off leaving the safe house and heading through an industrial yard where you can get some decent primary weapons. Towards the opposite end of this place you have to take a turn and go through a woodland area which leads to to a house where a horde alert event happens. This one is quite the pain in the ass, after you blow up the house you drop down to some train tracks below and have to run through a ridiculous amount of infected hunting you down. You have to be extremely quick running to the safe house otherwise you could easily get over whelmed.

Level 3 continues down the train tracks you came across in the last level and leads to a quite interesting tank encounter. You come to an area with a bunch of shipping containers and there is a safe room type door which is closed, as you go to open it a tank bursts through the door. First time I did this I crapped myself. After defeating the tank you head through the now gaping hole where the door once was which takes you to an abandoned underground train system which you fight through, eventually leading you back outside. From here it is only through a couple buildings to the final safe house. This level seemed to have a decent amount of zombies in, could maybe of used a few extra special infected but overall it is fairly balanced.

Now we come to the last part of this map. It is quite a short walk from the safe house to the finale area.  Just a quick walk along to the end of the tracks and through some buildings leading up to the rail bridge. This is where you hold out and await rescue. I find this finale quite difficult as I can't seem to find anywhere to hold out as everywhere seems to be fairly open. Though I have always tried to take the higher ground and stay about the walkway between the two houses. Every time I have attempted this at least one person hasn't made it to the escape train.

It's an alright map and I find it misleads you in to a false sense of security in the earlier levels due to the lack of zombies until the hordes come along especially on level 2. I will definitely be playing this campaign again as I am determined to master the finale and get everyone to safety. I'm sure I will manage it in a couple more runs at it. Below is my last attempt at the finale and was probably my worst run out of all my attempts as only Bill made it.



Next campaign on the list is 'City 17'

Left 4 Dead - Left Behind

Here comes my third entry of my Left 4 Dead campaign write ups. This one is 'Left Behind', it consists of only three levels, however these levels are quite long and could have easily been split up in to four, possibly five at a push. The campaign itself is really quite challenging and I would suggest getting a melee weapon as early as possible as the hordes when they come are quite large and just as you think you are doing with a horde attack more come along.

The first level starts you off in the outskirts of a city, you fight your way through streets and buildings, along with a brief period in sewers. There does seem to be a lot of supplies laying about, but considering the amount of zombies you easily can go through all of your ammo quite quickly (which is why I suggest grabbing a melee weapon).

Second level of this campaign you take exit a building and head once again into some sewers. After you escape the sewers it's a short walk to a dam, which is where I got a bit lost and had to put the in game hints on as you go on a scavenger hunt to find parts to a computer so you can open an electronically locked door. There is a lot of back tracking at this part as it seems you have to get them in a certain order even though some parts are really quite close to each other. Just like the first level there is a hell of a lot of zombies but there is also a lot of supplies to make up for this. After you have figured out this frankly quite tedious task of fixing the computer to open the door, you make it to the other side of the dam. Awaiting you is a train taking you to the final level, but first you have to wait for a cable car to get you down to the platform below while you defend yourself from on coming zombies. This horde seems to be lacking severely in the zombie department and could of don't with a lot more. I would say this final horde is quite pitiful to be perfectly honest. This level could do with some tweaking but overall it is still quite good.

Now we come to the finale which will be based at a military base but first you have to get there. After fighting your way off the train and through the train station you come to a gated area. A gated area which looked like it was being defended by the military at some point, due to the dead marine with a gun right next to you. He also happens to have a radio with him which tells you there are zombies heading your way which come along when you open the gate. It can never be easy, so after the initial group of zombies you have to find your way past another security door which leads to what looks like a loading dock for trains, I'm not sure but I did have yet another tank battle here which was fairly easy due to the openness of the area. It's not just a couple more streets away until you get to the military base. So now we are at the finale finally. However rescue isn't coming for another 10 minutes yet. Luckily there is a shed load of ammo and supplies to keep you going until they get there. To start with it was quite annoying until I went up in one of the watch towers and so long as you keep an eye out for smokers this finale is extremely easy as you can kill everything climbing up the ladder.

It is a good campaign, though could do with a few tweaks here and there and maybe be split in to 4 levels instead of 3. Below is my attempt at the finale of this level and like with my other write ups of these campaigns if you want to have a look at what the rest of the map is like I have uploaded my run through on my youtube channel.



Next campaign on the list is 'Blood Tracks'

Left 4 Dead - The Dark Parish

'The Dark Parish' happens to be L4D2 campaign 'The Parish' except you guessed it, it is dark now. It makes sense now, but when I was having a mass download of all these maps, I kind of just went for a load rated 70 or higher, never really looking at descriptions of well many of them. This one included I should of put two and two together really due to the name, but it never clicked until I loaded in game.

As most people all ready know 'The Parish' map as it is one of the official l4d2 campaigns I will not bother going in to full blown detail about it as 'The Dark Parish' is pretty much the same as it's day time counter part. There are a few differences though, there seems to be more zombie spawn areas and less supplies lying about. Anyway here is a video of my attempt at this campaign, be warned it isn't the greatest footage in the world.



Next campaign on the list is 'Left Behind'

Left 4 Dead - Two Evil Eyes

So here we have a little review of Left 4 Dead custom campaign Two Evil Eyes. It is quite a long campaign and has a total of 6 levels.

The first one is ridiculously short and a simple cross a bridge, through a house full of zombies, round a corner and your done. It does seem like a little taster for the rest of the campaign.

The second level is a bit longer than the first but still not the longest level. Just like the first level there you do have to alert the horde quite early on which is easy enough if you get on top of the crashed train before they get to you. It does also seem to have quite a lot of special infected and you encounter your first tank of the campaign, which you can actually go hide up a tree from (if you go round the back of the tree house). After that it's just through a house and the safe house is the next building over.

Level three is where you finally get your hands on some decent weapons instead of the stock uzi and or shotgun which are just outside the safe room. That's the good new, bad news is you are now entering a swamp. Swamps are never good news, let alone a zombie infested one, so after wandering about killing zombies on your way, you come to a building. However this building happens to be closed off with no way in, luckily there is an open manhole nearby. I would say a tunnel is better than a swamp, so you head on down the man hole and find very little zombies down there, at least I did. This doesn't seem to be any old sewer tunnel though, it seems to be a secret tunnel to a garden area which is full of supplies and weaponry and an alarmed door. Obviously not wanting to head back in to the lovely swamp, you of course open the door, which in turn alerts the zombies. I chose to cheese it through the horde instead of sitting there fighting until the alarm goes off. While fighting through zombies I noticed a gate which you can't get past at the moment, so I follow the path round which leads to a car park with a few supplies towards the back of it, near a button you have to push, which opens up the path previously blocked by the gate. The walkway you unlocked leads you to a boat on a little river which you have use to get to the docking station which is right next to the next safe room.

Now we have a bridge level as the fourth part of this campaign. I found this quite difficult on normal (I was playing with random people that seemed to like wandering off by themselves and bots though), it took me 2 or 3 tries to actually finish this. While you can go with the I am going to just run and gun, never stopping to get this over with, there is a train crossing about halfway across so you have to wait for it to pass, and trains being noisy and all, it alerts the horde. I found so long as no one gets incapacitated you will generally be okay with this level, the moment someone is down it becomes hard work (though that might be the genius I was playing with that kept running ahead). The map itself is quite short yet quite challenging.

Next we have a quite dark and gloomy level. As you leave the you hear a helicopter over head which happens to be your rescue in the finale. After listening to what he says you carry on with your journey which is through a cemetery at this point of time. After fighting towards the back of  this creepy place you end up falling through the floor into a cave. Which is where you have to alert the horde by blowing up a barricade, doing so you are stuck in a hole with a wall of fire on one side and a horde of zombies on the other, it's not a great combination. Anyway you fight through this tunnel and escape you have literally a couple streets left to the safe house. However the house is fenced off, and the only way to get there is through the garden which is blocked by an alarmed car which you set off as you jump past it and on come the horde for another battle before you get into the safety of the house. The level isn't all that hard on normal but I could see it getting rather tricky on advanced.

We are nearly to safety as we leave the final safe room and head away to find the helicopter that you heard in the last part. So you head out and a short walk away you come to an almost dried up river bed which leads to an abandoned house on a cliff side, where you can stock up ammo and whatever other supplies it has inside. Just round the corner from here is where the escape finale will happen which consists of a few buildings and a helipad (which is blocked off until it's time to go). I found your best bet is to hold out on the roof tops and if you have actual people playing with you, I suggest using the fire and explosive rounds which are laying about for the tanks only, but of course you can't get the bots to work like that, which made it a lot harder than it had to be come tank time

On normal it took me about 40 minutes give or take to finish, so it is a decent length campaign. That was first attempt time for it as well, so no doubt you could finish it a lot quicker than I did. The hordes could maybe do with getting tweaked a little as some were pretty small while others seemed far to large. The special infected seemed quite nicely spread out with a decent amount of them to make it a challenge. To be honest the first two levels probably could have been combined into one, due to the shortness of the first level. Other than that I enjoyed this campaign and will be playing it a lot more. I would say it is definitely worth a download. Below is my shoddy attempt at the finale, I do make it but only by using everyone else as bait. I need to get this finale done with some people, hopefully leading to everyone escaping. I do have the rest of the campaign recorded on my youtube channel as well if you want to go check out what it's like, just fyi.

Next campaign on the list is 'The Dark Parish'.

Left 4 Dead Custom Maps

Recently I downloaded a shed load of custom campaigns for Left 4 Dead 2 and will be playing through all of them and posting up my thoughts on each one of them along with footage of me playing through them. Below I will write a list of each one I plan on doing and will include links to my write ups once they are done. I will start off with 'Two Evil Eyes' and continue down the list as it is, as that is how they are ordered in game for me, so it will be simpler to keep track. One last thing all these maps can be downloaded from l4dmaps.com and if you need a how to about installing them here is the link.

Two Evil Eyes
The Dark Parish
Left Behind
Blood Tracks
City 17
Dark Blood
Dead Before Dawn
Dead On Time
Dead Series
Dead Aboard II
Death Sentence
Detour Ahead
Die Screaming II
Gas Fever
Golden Eye 4 Dead
Haunted Forest
Highway to Hell
I Hate Mountains
Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Zombies
Kokiri Forest
One 4 Nine
Let's Build A Rocket
Left Or Right
Left 4 Mario
Military Industrial Complex II
Dead Flag Blues 2
N. O. Meltdown
No Parking
Night Of The Living Dead
Resident Evil Outbreak
Overkill
Precinct 84
Questionable Ethics
We Don't Go To Ravenholme
Vague Reminders
Run To The Hills
Salt Hell Park
Source Of Infection
Suicide Blitz 2
The Return Of The Jockeys
Tour Of Terror

My playthrough/review of The Baconing

I have been playing through the new Deathspank title, The Baconing. It is based on a true-ish story. So getting into the game you are met with an intro video explaining a little about the story, basically you will be playing as Deathspank, who would of thought, so he had been busy vanquishing every bad guy he could find. He soon becomes extremely bored as he has nothing to do, and one day he decides to put all of the Thongs of Virtue all at once, which for some reason summons a giant evil version of Deathspank named the 'Anti-Spank'. To defeat the Anti-Spank, Death Spank must burn each of the Thongs of Virtue in Bacon Fire.

You see the return of many npc's such as the Wise Cow and the Thongolith Researcher who you come across pretty early on. As the game progresses you meet a number of other people you met in previous games, I'll get into that a little later on. Anyway you get a choice of 3 level difficulties to start easy, normal and hard. There is also an insane difficulty which is unlockable once you complete the game. You can also change difficulties on the fly dropping it down to easy when your stuck or keep dying and knocking it back up whenever you like.

Starting the game it throws you start into action, within a few seconds into the game you get ambushed by a load of Cyborques (Anti Spanks minions), getting you immediately used to the controls which are easy enough to pick up, be it keyboard and mouse or xbox controller, they are both quite simple and easy to pick up. I personally prefer keyboard and mouse controls, first of due to the more accurate aiming of your weapons, along with the fact I played the past two Deathspank games with these control so I'm used to them. I did have a shot with my controller and they are fine and just as easy, it's all preference at the end of the day. 

Like the previous games a lot of features have made a come back, such as the outhouse save system. The choice to have 4 weapons and 4 items which are all easily changed. Though weapon wise I tend to just use two, some sort of melee weapon and a crossbow/gun. You still get strange quests, the first perticularly weird one I came across was one I got from an orphan where I had to go rescue said orphans teddy from ghosts. After a few quests you unlock a gate leading you to the first boss, 'The Mineorque', which is really quite difficult, even after I switched down from Hard to Normal. He is some dude with a drill on his head, he uses drills to attack you from underground if you get to far away from him and a flame thrower if you get close to him, while trying to kill him he also has minions to keep you occupied as well which kept killing me just as I started to get some offence on the go.

The game definately has got that Deathspank feel to it from the music to the verbal abuse of orphans to the terrible yet somehow fitting voice acting. On you go with the story and you come along to Z.I.M.O.N's place which leads to the first bacon fire. Before you go inside you have to cross a set of bridges turned into puzzle where you have to flick switches in a certain order to get across to go get a door code. This took me quite a while to do this as you have to use a combination of of flicking switches and positioning yourself with outhouses. So you get go into the house of Z.I.M.O.N, which has a very Tron looking enviroment, so you meet him and must complete a game of Simon says before he will let you through to the first of the Bacon Fires where you burn your first Thong of Virtue, doing so extinguishes the Bacon Fire opening up a path with leads to the next area 'The Forest of Tomorrow'. 

You come across a couple more folk from previous games now, this time it's Ima Applehole and her husband Strunken, who marriage you happened to ruin in the last game, now you have to make a clone of the husband to help out Ima as Strunken is happy being single and doesn't want to go back to her. To get towards the second Bacon Fire you have to reunite a radioactive family. So after talking to the mother of this strange family, she tells you the rest of the family is late for dinner, so off you go hunting down the rest of the family, you find the dad up at the robot brothel, and have to kill a load of robot hookers before he will return for dinner. You then have to get the son, whose hanging about by the cloning facility to come back but he won't return until he gets a dog to play with, which you get after making a clone of Ima's husband, she gives you her two headed dog as a reward. Then you go after the daughter, who has artificially created a boyfriend and is out in the middle of no where,  so you go along and kill this robot boyfriend, pissing her off and she storms off home. So you go back to get your reward for getting the family back for dinner, then they all start arguing and blow up, which they seem to do when they get annoyed, and knock out the wall behind them leading to the second Bacon Fire.

The third Bacon Fire is at a casino in 'Rainbow Way' which is run by the Leprechaun McMafia. If you think Godfather mixed with everything stereotypically Irish. So you have to gain the trust of the Godfather of the McMafia and do random quests for him one of which you have to go kill 'Anti-gambling' Monks and Nuns and blow up their bus. After this you still need to need to do some quests to get some Elvis styled armour such as saving some miners trapped in a cave in, but it turns out they trapped themselves in so they can get a longer coffee break, its quite funny. After getting the right armour you past the god father, where you will compete in 'Ultimate Opera Championship' which is where you encounter your next boss. Which is a conductor, which takes some beating, who has a load of minions to fight along side of in form of musicians and opera singers.

After beating the last boss and burning another of the Thongs, you head through a sewer and end up at Barnacle Lake, where mind sucking barnacles seem to be taking over a lot of the folk round here. So here you meet Captain Taint, who you got a ship off of in Thongs of Virtue, the same ship that you will commandeer once again in this game. So after talking to a barnacled Taint you ask him for the keys to his boat and does willingly and you also get a quest from the barnacle that's controlling him to save the Mother Barnacle that is trapped in the Cyborque fortress, so after sailing around doing a number of quests, which you did round about this far though the game in the last game aswell. After a progression of quests it takes you to the Cyborque Fortress, so on you go fighting a number of enemies getting further into the fortress, once everything is killed you find the mother barnacle, which you have now freed due to the killing of everyone. So it tells you the way to the next Bacon Fire which is not far at all and just down a path ahead of you. This now leads you onto the next area, Valhalla Heights a retirement home for gods after people have stopped worshipping.

At Valhalla Heights the main quest line is how Emilio, God of Orphans, has been murdered, a title you will become after doing some chores for Zeus, who along with Thor are both suspects in Emilio's murder. Both of which deny doing it, as Zeus is to old and decrepit to do such things, and Thor was busy playing golf. While on this quest to find out who did it, you come across another familiar face, Rich Cabin, from the previous game, this time he is working in real estate, but is doing it quite shadily by evicting Gods from there homes so he can sell them on and make himself richer. First you have to evict Ganesha, a big elephant god who is looking pretty swanky, with his shades and tracksuits and jewellery, anyway you have to get him out his yard with a trail of peanuts. Then you go after Anansi, a spider who sounds very much like Bill Cosby, I spent ages talking to him purely for his voice, to get him out his yard all you need is some bug spray from the golf shop. And finally you have to evict Elvis, where you get him to give you an autograph of draft papers, which you get in Hell's half acre, you then show him the papers and inform him he must go to war, he leaves completing your last eviction quest. Anyway back to the storyline. After you find out Thor and Zeus are not behind the Murder of Emilio, the Sheriff of Gods (who you got the murder quest from originally, I forgot to mention earlier but cba to go back and find where I should of put it in so it's staying here) finds some new evidence pointing blame towards the Midgard Serpent. This is the point where you head down to Hell's Half Acre heading for the Midgard Serpent, but first you must help Hades who has been imprisoned by said Serpent, Hades will only tell you where the final Bacon Fire is if you release him, and to do so you must sacrifice a number of enemies, by killing them in the sacrificial circle. So you get past this burning the final Thong of Virtue and meet the next to last boss, who believe it or not is immortal. So you kill him a few times and eventually he gets bored and just leave, you still count this as a victory and complete your quest of killing the Midgard Serpent also with the little minions that appear after each time you kill him there is a weapon lying on the floor you have to pick up to kill them with. On you go and escape from hell to a nice grassy area, which has a few boarded up entrances with 'DLC under construction' signs over them. So whether they are infact going to make some dlc for the game or if it's just a gag about the ridiculous amount of dlc in the world today, but I'll not get into a rant about that just now.

So you wander through this small open area and come across the final outhouse, you should get an  achievement here so long as you found every other outhouse in the game, next to this outhouse there is a tunnel that goes WAY down. Really that's what it says when you scroll over it. This leads to eventually to a little arena type area where you will fight the Anti-Spank. He is really quite nasty. You have to kill both of his arms and his torso, all of which have individual health. I found it easier to kill the arms first from a distance with my orphan gun then go full force on the torso, while full up to the nose with potions and invulnerability orbs. I looked up strategy guides to killing him as I died the first few times. So now you have rid the world of the Anti-Spank you get your outro video, where you find out the Anti Spank was making a time machine and now enters references to Back to the Future, and leaves you with some what of a cliffhanger ending blatantly put in there to leave an opening for another adventure with Deathspank some point down the line.

Now I have pretty much done a run down of the entire story of the game, my thoughts on it. If you like the previous Deathspank games, you will no doubt like this one. If you haven't played though before but do like hack and slash RPG's and random humour I suggest you give it a shot aswell. For a tenner you can't go wrong with this game at that price, I played through the game, it took me what over ten hours to finish it. There's some 'big' titles out there that don't last that long. It's a fun little game and well worth the money, keeping me amused all the way through it.