The blur between games and reality....

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Everyone knows my current addiction to L4D2 right now.

As much as it sounds like the name of some kind of abused substance, L4D2 actually stands for Left 4 Dead 2.

It's a FPS shooting game where it's you and your teamates against a whole load of zombies.

Nothing I like more than teamwork. But even Diablo2x allows up to 8 players per game.

L4D2 is rather pathetic as it limits to 4 humans per game (everyone else who wants to join has to be 1 of the super-power zombies, which is no fun to me because sometimes I am promptly shot and killed before I can even blink my eyes).

I was returning from a toilet break after having played the game for a good and solid 2 hours when as I stepped back into the LAN shop, I heard someone shouting to their friends: "Oei! Jockey! Behind! Behind!"

Okay, in short, the game consists of MANY zombies (duh?!). There are thousands of 'idiot' ones. Like.. common peasant zombies that are all over the place.

Weak when alone, but there is strength in numbers (I told you this was a teamwork game).

On top of these peasant zombies we have the superpower ones, that, in short consist of the following:

- The Witch - On the surface, she looks like a classic damsel in distress. A lady crying at a corner. Of course, noobs are only tricked once. Some noobs keep a good distance away from her after their friends warned them about this particular character.

Usually you'd be attracted to her presence by the sound of a girl crying. It's not a pitiful kind. It's the creepy kind that gives you goosebumps. That's where you know you've got to walk carefully and turn off all your torchlights.

She has super long nails that can compete with the Empress Dowager herself from ancient China dynasties, which is used to tear you apart, and not for some manicure competition.

Worse thing is, once you 'startle' her, though I still feel the stupid witch is just over-reacting... She'd set her sights on you and come straight at you no matter how you run (and she usually catches up because she is THAT fast).

This, of course, will not happen if you have a self-sacrificing teammate (which usually is an idiot like me) who runs smack into her path and ends up being attacked by her instead. At which point, it is only courtesy that you stop running away.. come back.. AND SAVE ME!

- The Boomer - my personal favourite to kill. He's so big, you won't miss him and you can easily 'settle' him from afar, though if he gets near enough and pukes on you.. you'd better be surrounded by your teamates. Aptly named because upon death, he self-destructs, spurting his green goo all over you, temporarily blinding your sight. Need I mention that this bile liquid would also cause all zombies in the vicinity to run towards you because they are attracted to it?

- The Smoker - This zombie has nothing to do with cigarettes, believe me. Basically, he has a super long tongue that ties around you and drags you towards him. Kinda like the way a frog eats a fly. Unfortunately whenever I'm the zombie Smoker, I always break my tongue while trying to hook 1 of the human. Damn I hate being zombies :(

Upon death, Smoker.. well.. unsurprisingly emits Smoke that will partially impair your vision and disable your microphine feature that connects you to your teammates.

Luckily, we were all sitting beside each other in the LAN shop, so all we had to do is turn our heads and scream at each other.

- The Spitter - A permanently puking fella. He must be feeling very unwell. Upon death it melts into a green puddle of acidic liquid that will decrease your health stats as long as you stand in it. Irritating when you kill him in a small enclosed room and you need to get out. Fast.

- The Charger - Poor guy always is the butt of all jokes in countless Youtube paraodies of the game. He has one huge arm (similar to The Thing from Fantastic Four), yet his other arm is.. well.. filmsy.

- The Tank - One hell of a bad a$$. Tanks are capable of scaling walls and getting to you no matter where you are. As his name states, it's probably the hardest to kill, other than the Witch. I so... hate.... both of them.

- last but not least, we have the Jockey. Jockeys are superbly irritating, just by the sound alone. You would have thought they were related to Monkeys (though so are we). Jockeys have the ability to sit on your shoulders and steer you away from your teammates which, as we all learnt the hard way, is NOT a good thing.

They'd usually jockey until you reach the midst of a huge horde of Zombies.

The solution? Your teammates have to rescue you, and they have to do it fast!

Click here to watch a Youtube Vid of the Charger, Witch (you can even hear her) and a female Boomer in action.I really liked the song they played at the end of the video. LOL!

PS: I want to just officially declare that I, along with CK, SZ and Gary.. had the good fortune of playing The Passing just now.

Major spoiler alert: Bill was the one who died :( I, however, still wished that it could have been Francis. The creepy part was how the Part 1 survivors didn't even look sad. Jeez!

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 2:02 am