PayDay 2

All right! here's the deal: Go in, drill the door and get the loot. Simple as that! ...or so you think. What could go wrong in a heist with a mask? Well maybe an army of policemen trying their best to stop you from running away with the money!

Today I'll write about Payday 2, the "successor" of the first game;  Payday: The Heist.

Listening to music while playing.

Now then, after we've all cooled off by the heat of the gamer girls post, let us start talking about our preferences when we're playing multiplayer or maybe even singleplayer. In game music or "our" own music?

I started listening to "my own music" when Quake 3 arena was around. erm...mostly because I just had a Metallica CD and a CD player next to it. After a while when computers and OS started to handle things better, I had MP3's on my computer and listened to it through Winamp (god bless that program, one of the best at it time, maybe it still is.) 

Zombie Games: Left 4 Dead

Right! I got my Coffee and my music, the plan is to make posts about zombie games. So many games, so little time! So let's get this started and hope there isn't a zombie horde waiting for me outside when I'm done!

We've all loved a good zombie movie or TV show, just look at The walking dead; great show and a great game!

But zombie games, we hate them, we love them! We have games that make you a zombie, we have games where you're the survivors. Who doesn't love a great story about a group trying to fight their way through a horde of zombies, praying to whatever gods they believe in to help them reach the safe zone/house/room. Even when the chances are slim that they will survive the oncoming slaughter.

But since I'm a co-op person, I'll be talking about the games with multiplayer/co-op.

Let's start with one of my favorites:

LEFT 4 DEAD

Made by Turtle Rock Studios, Valve bought them during development. Thanks to that it's using the Source engine we all love so much.

"Pennsylvania suffers an outbreak of 'Green Flu'; a highly contagious virus causing extreme aggression, mutation to the body cells, and loss of higher bran functions.

Two weeks after the first infection four immune survivors---Bill, a Vietnam veteran; Zoey, a college student; Louis, an IT analyst, and Francis, an outlaw biker---make their way through the city of Fairfield, only to discover that the virus is creating more dangerous mutations. After narrowly avoiding these new infected, along with horde of others, the survivors are alerted to the presence of an evacuation point at the nearby Mercy Hospital roof by a passing helicopter. Fighting their way through the city's streets, subway and sewers." 

You can read more about it here, although i recommend you to play it rather than reading the wiki and to spoil the story about it all.

What makes this a good game is the mechanic and story, how the co-op works together as you can knock off zombies that's trying to feast on your friend, to even work as a team to take down a huge zombie called 'TANK'. Not only that, the Characters you even have conversation with each other as you were just sitting there watching a movie.

The gamemodes:

Campaign (Singleplayer) - It's self explanatory really, you play all alone but with AI characters who follow you around, they might be stupid but they have the reaction of a snake! The only issues with the AI is how stupid they are when they see a Witch and could get a lockdown on trying to run around her by running in circles (atleast that's what happened to me!)

Campaign (Co-op)  - The cooperative campaign consists of up to four human-controlled survivors who attempt to make their way between safe rooms and eventually to rescue. In this mode, the special infected are controlled by the AI.

Versus - A versus campaign, each team of one to four players plays each chapter of the campaign as both survivor and infected, swapping sides once per chapter. Unlike campaign mode, dead survivors do not respawn. If at least one player-controlled survivor finishes the level, the survivor team earns 100 points as well as bonus points based on their health and the health items in their inventory. These points are then multiplied by the chapter's difficulty level, and the number of survivors who finished. If all player-controlled survivors are killed, the survivor team only earns points according to their average progress through the chapter and the difficulty multiplier.

Survival mode - This is a timed challenge where players try to survive as long as possible against a never-ending flood of the infected. (added in April 2009 in the Survival Pack downloadable content.)

When you've finished all the missions, you can check out the comic.
I do recommend you play it before you read. 
!SPOILERS! THE SACRIFICE !SPOILERS!

LEFT 4 DEAD 2

This is the Sequel of the famous  FPS shooter LEFT FOR DEAD, but now it's about 4 others that have survived the pandemic of an infectious disease that rapidly transforms humans into zombie-like creatures and mutated forms that demonstrate extreme aggression towards non-infected.

"Few humans are immune to the disease, still carrying the infection but showing no symptoms. The Civil emergency and Defence Agency (CEDA) and the U.S. military create safe zone to attempt to evacuate as many American survivors as possible.

Left 4 Dead 2 introduces four new survivors---Nick, Ellis, Coach, and Rochelle, who are immune to the disease and have individual back stories that are provided through character dialogue. While the game is intended as a continuation of the original, occurring one week after the first game begins, Valve decided to create a new group of Survivors because of the change in location."

You can find more about the story here

Now let's talk about the gameplay; they have learned from the bad things from L4D (if there is any!) new weapons and they also implemented melee weapons for those who like to see the heads and body parts fly.

The gamemodes:

Campaign (Singleplayer) - This one is the same as the first game, you play alone with AI  characters that will help you if you get grabbed by any special infected, but they will move so fast you can't even blink before they are trying to save your butt, compared to the first game AI has been improved.

Campaign (Co-op)  - You and 3 other friends fight your way through the infested city to reach the safe zone. With this you will fight AI special infected, from difficulty easy to expert. Easy is too, well, easy! But 

Campaign (Co-op) Realism - Realism is meant for people who play frequently together online. By this it gives the friends a huge challenge on almost everything! You will not respawn (unless your friends have a defibrillator), head shots are instant kills, outlines on friends are gone, the Witch will KILL any survivor they hit, regardless of the difficulty (not on easy).

Versus - Up to four other human players take control of various Special Infected to try and prevent the Survivors from completing a stage. Special Infected are randomly assigned to Infected players; they cannot control the Witch or any Common Infected. Occasionally, as determined by the "AI Director", players will become the Tank. The two teams swap sides once per stage, and are scored based on their stage progress as Survivors. If both teams make it to the safe room with all four Survivors, a 25-point tiebreaker is awarded to the team that dealt the most combined damage as Special Infected.

Survival - A timed challenge where the Survivors are trapped in a section of the campaign map, and try to survive as long as possible against an unending onslaught of infected. This is a great training of communicating with your friends.

Scavenge - A new 4-on-4 mode that requires the Survivor players to collect and use as many fuel cans scattered about a level to fill up a power generator, while the Infected players attempt to stop them

The Zombie genre is one of my favorites, as long as they have co-op in it. Mostly because I like to work together with friends to beat a game, or just to have fun and maybe some scary moments with them! Not only that, I do love the typical zombie apocalypse theme where we're all lost and you have to trust the ones around you to survive.

Yes, you guys are probably mad because I haven't added DayZ to this post, but relax! I will make a huge one about that, just you wait! If not... I bet it wont be zombies by my door, but DayZ fans! (Ha! I'm funny...)

Team Fortress 2

This is the sequel of the great Mod: Team Fortress, originally based on the FPS Quake that came out in August 24, 1996.
October 9, 2007 the game saw it's light once again but now it was a game made by Valve Corporation with a Source engine remake.

Why in the god's name am I talking about a 6 years old game? 
well, because it's still alive with all the hats and updates! They are still updating the game with new game modes, items and maps! The latest update came December 20, 2012. And I bet they got more to come!
Sure I must admit the player rate have gone down since the release but there are still players playing it! And thanks to Valve for going F2P on this game which increased the player rate again.

The story behind it all:

"The game was announced in 1998, and was first powered by Valve's GoldSrc engine, but it changed as it passed through several different design stages. In 1999, the game appeared to be to be deviating from it's predecessors by pursuing a more realistic and militaristic style of game play, but its design metamorphosed over an eventual nine-year development period. The final rendititon sports cartoon style visuals influenced by the art of J. C. Leyendecker, Dean Cornwell and Norman Rockwell and is powered by the Source engine.
The game itself revolves around two teams, each other access to nine distinct characters, battling in a variety of game modes set in different environments or maps, often with a factory-warehouse theme.

The lack of information or apparent progress for six years of the game's original development caused it to be labeled as vaporware, and it was regularly featured in Wired News' annual vaporware list among other ignominies. Upon its release, the game received critical acclaim and several awards, being praised for its graphical style, balanced game play, humor and for its use of full character personalities in a dedicated multiplayer-only game."

You can read more about the background of it all here (wikipedia)

















What is Team Fortress 2?

Team fortress 2 is a Multi player-only game that is based on teamwork, Attack and Defend,  Control points, Capture the flag, Payload, Payload Race, King of the hill, Special Delivery Or the new "Co-op survival" Mann Vs Machine.

Let's not forget the Cosmetics! You got hats, socks, cigars, backpacks, scarfs, medals, balloons, "pets" and paints, a whole crap of stuff just to make your character look awesome/horribly ugly. Certain items do have a set bonus, but it's not overpowered in any way, like the game Battlefield heroes is.

Let's start with the typical Game play that we have all seen in games:

Capture the flag - This is mostly what I remember from Team Fortress Classic really, Trying our best to take the enemy flag back to our base and defend ours. What really makes this a different type of game play in the Team Fortress series is that you have engineers that can set down turrets that automatically attacks enemies in a specific area, which makes this more or less "challenging" for a fast type of class to grab the flag and run.

King of the hill - ah the typical "hold this area for a certain number of minutes" game mode. Not my cup o' tea, but it works for a couple of rounds before rotating to a different game type. For me it concentrates too much on 1 spot rather than a whole map.

Attack / Defend -  When the team works together it really pays off, especially if you are attacking. This is where it all begins, the RED team defends the points and the BLU tries to take it. There is 2 points total for every "phase" of the map (it might be different on certain maps, Community made for an example.)

Payload - This must be my favorite, BLU tries to push a bomb cart to the drop off point, while the RED tries to stop them. The deal here is that it's not like carrying a bomb to a bomb site like you do on CS, here you need to push a cart that goes on tracks, which makes it more needed for the teams to teamwork to push the payload to the checkpoints and the goal. If the payload is not touched/pushed for a certain amount of time, it will slowly go backwards toward the last checkpoint/start. Beware though! If you are pushing it uphill and die/go away from the payload, it will slide back down to the foot of the hill, which makes it a pain at certain choke points.

Payload Race - 2 teams. 2 carts. Basically the same as Payload but here you need to push your cart as well as stopping theirs before it reach it's goal. in my eyes this is a havoc, because mostly wants to push theirs and ignores the others, which can easily ruined if a player sees the opportunity to stop the enemy team.

Control Points - The goal for this game mode is to capture all points to win, sounds easy enough? Well it's not, both teams start with 2 control points each and 1 locked neutral, after a set amount of time the locked neutral point becomes available and the fight begins. You cant capture a point that is behind the enemy lines, you always need to capture the one closest to yours. Which makes this game mode bearable with the back and forth, even when the fight seems lost you can turn it around. 

Special Delivery - A fairly new game mode for this game, 1 flag. 2 teams. 1 common goal.
The goal for this is pretty much to get the flag to the goal and it's done! Not exactly, it's usually something more horrible than that. Let me explain: When you get to the end, you have to actually wait for an elevator to get you to the top of the rocket, so you can put the flag into it, but wait, there is more! The top needs to be unscrewed, which then again takes time. If you lose the flag, the enemy team can't grab it until it's reset back to it's original place. So this game mode makes it pretty much back and forth pretty often, but not only that, in my eyes the maps are too small for it and too fast really.

And last but not least, my favorite!

Mann VS Machine - oh man, I jumped in excitement when I saw this trailer. TF2 finally had a Co-op Survival part, finally me and 5 other buddies could work together as a team to kill robots and stop them from deliver the bomb to the MANN CO. building. ahem... well there is also public too if you want, but the deal with this game mode is that you got "boot camp" which usually means it's a public server, where you don't get any reward at all if you finish. 

"MANN UP" is the Mann CO. server to earn Tour of Duty loot and bragging rights. By bragging rights they mean the Hats, backs and weapons you have a 100% chance to get one of them if you finish off 1 operation tour. I recommend you strongly to bring friends, bring friends and communicate because some of those waves are so horrible you want to throw a damn coffee mug all over the place when you fail and fail and faaail! Especially with randoms when they are so stubborn on being the class they want when they are the "lone wolf" in a party of 6. it's often I've had to change to a different class because of that.





Let me talk more about Mann Vs Machine and the costs of real money for it:

If you and all your buddies uses a "Squad Surplus Voucher" which gives 1 item per player when you finish off a mission, so that means you will get 6 extra items! 
But before you get excited; MANN UP Ticket costs 0,74 euro and the Squad Surplus Voucher costs 1,49 euro.

Waaaait! Don't rage yet! this is what makes it so awesome! You can trade weapons with other players to get scrap metal, or even scrap your weapons for metal. Metal has become the currency for the game, as long as they got the random item drop while you play. you gain "money" to buy tickets from players, hell you can even buy keys for the MANN CO. crates that drops, it's not often it's any good in them though since it's random drop but you see a list of the things what you can get.

So if you even think Team Fortress 2 is lame because you need to "Pay 2 Win" you're wrong, you're so wrong you should just beat yourself with your mother's frying pan until you see the hospital sign! The only thing Team Fortress 2 is selling is cosmetics, even them are tradeable and dropable.  Sure you got those tickets and keys, but you don't NEED to buy them to unleash a badass weapon, because they drop... and you can trade them... 

But let's see some of the expensive hats/items there is in the game:

HAT OF UNDENIABLE WEALTH AND RESPECT
oh man, i want this hat so bad! This was a reward for completing all 28 objectives in The Great Steam Treasure Hunt.

 
NOTCH!
yes, this is really Notch from Mojang, and this is a one of a kind hat just for him, which makes it really expensive and... well invaluable! it's non tradeable and nongiftable aswell.










THE GOLDEN WRENCH
This weapon got promoted in the Engineer update, players that crafted items at that time had a chance of receiving a Golden wrench. There is only 100 of these.
Official list Here

TEAM CAPTAIN with fire effect.
this beauty got sold for 1500 dollars, DOLLARS!  Why the hell some people will even pay this much for a virtual item is just... strange, well if I had the money for it, I bet i would just waste it as well.

Watching other people play

I remember in my youth that we sat in front of the TV screen or the big old CRT monitors watching each other play games, mostly because we didn't have enough PCs or simply couldn't afford all the console ourselves, but also because we loved each others company. So with the consoles  we made a deal with each other, one of us buys Nintendo games and others buy Playstation and Xbox. Saves us alot of money and gives the console owners the "upper hand" in deciding what to play and when.

But Nowadays I can't stand to watch anyone else play video games, well, maybe except Zelda, Metroid and things in that genre. I need the co-operation in games, I can't stand to play singleplayer games alone, but I do love to play them when others are watching, makes it more fun. 
I love spending time playing with friends and families to try to beat the last boss, surviving the horde of zombies rampaging against us, or just simple kill other players and to show them how teamwork is done.

Let's make an example: 

Skyrim

Dont get me wrong, skyrim is a damn good game and it got me hooked for over 150 hours and I haven't finished it yet! The reason for that might be that I was never pleased with the character I've made or the fact that I just started to go randomly around and stopped playing for a while. After a while I return to the previous savegame and I got lost in what I was doing. Therefore I stop playing on that certain character. I need to recommend something for the game though, you got so many mods for this game. Enhancing the graphics, giving NPC's cloaks, Weapons, armors and even new kind of mobs! So thanks to Skyrim Nexus and Steam Workshop for making the Elder Scrolls World even more awesome! (I didn't think it was possible either!)


Sleeping Dogs

Pretty same as above, but there is a small "connection" between the other friends that has it, you got the leaderboard for the longest wheelie, most Roundhouse kicks 
(not sure if that's the name on it) etc.
The awesome part of this game is the combat system, it's not just the boring "punch, punch, punch"  type when you're fighting, there is combo's. certain people even have blocking, so you have to do a certain combo to break it. Or... if you're more of the gun type, just shoot!
Speaking of shooting, The combat system with firearms is also good, there are some flaws here and there, but overall I loved it to the bits.
What kind of a game is it? Well you could say it's GTA in Hong Kong.

Half-Life I and II (with Expansions and the episodes)

Yes, I know what you're thinking: "how the hell can you say that is boring to play Singleplayer? it's one of the best FPS games in the history!" , just calm down and let me explain myself before you try to torch me. 
I love The half-life series as the next guy, hell I might even love it more! But the clue here is: it's singleplayer. I love the story, I was entangled in it when i first played Half-Life in the 90's and Half-Life II in 2004. 
well.. mostly because it was a new engine and it was a continual on the great story of Dr.Gordon Freeman.



But wait! Here's the kicker!: I Can't stop playing it if I have one or more friends watching me play it, by that I mean sitting next to me or I am somehow streaming it just for those folks. This applies to all games that just have singleplayer. I just love the company when I play games, so that's why I always ask the question: "Does it have Co-op?"