Left 4 Dead Demo Impressions

I have to start by saying that I’ am a great fan of COOP games (The team work games not shelf stacking type). So I was very excited to see valve working on their own cooperative shooter, especially as it involves zombies. Personal preferences aside I decided to download the demo to see if it was worth buying. I played the demo on steam, and although I do have a 360 I felt this was more of a PC game. The game is 1-4 player coop and 1-8 player versus. The demo is coop only.

Now it seems valve have some weird idea on what the purpose of a demo is. To me the idea of a demo is to

Heavy update (TF2)

The heavy update was released last night, conveniently just as I got home from work. The update focuses on the heavy class, giving him 35 achievements and 3 new weapons/items. There is the sandvich, which is basically a glorified first aid kit and fun to see in action. The sandwiches heal 120 health and leave the heavy vulnerable to attack in the few seconds it takes for them to munch it down. There is a new mini gun called Natascha which slows enemies down but deals less damage. The last item which most people know about is the KGB (Killing Gloves of Boxing), these gloves give 5 seconds of critical hits when used in exchange for a slower hit speed.

As well as the updates to the heavy there is a new payload map (badwater basin) and a new gamemode called arena. Arena has 5 maps, two new and three converted old ones. Arena is played in rounds where teams face off in a one life battle. There are few health packs around so you need to be careful. The round ends when a central point is captured or one team is knocked out.

There is a new “meet the” video out about the sandvich, you can watch it here

As per usual the class update has turned the game on its head with 90% of all players being heavy. Its a site to see given the heavies large size, watch them lumber around with their miniguns in the masses.

Team Fortress 2: Heavy Update and new map coming next week

Next week Valve are adding a new control point map and giving the heavy class some love by updating it with new weapons and achievements. The names of the new achievements are available but there is no indication on how they are gained. As far as new weapons and adjustments go, the only confirmed weapons are a pair of boxing gloves which apparently increase the heavies critical melee damage. Who knows what the other weapons are, but I hope they are something to make the heavy more of a viable stand alone class.

Valve have put a little teaser site up here with the boxing gloves and some of the achievements being added. If anyone has any clues on the other guns let me know in the comments!

Making Vista more gaming friendly 1

Vista as it stands right now it scolded by the gaming community for being slower than XP at gaming. Due to a recent troublesome virus on XP I decided to go full vista and I have no noticeable performance difference between my old XP setup. Anyway I have been playing with vista and looking into ways I making it more gaming friendly. Some of these enhancements will be the same as XP as it is after all a very similar operating system.

• Install service pack 1

The first thing to do is to make sure you install service pack 1. This includes all the small performance updates that were released, including some vital ones that increase multi core and memory performance.

• Turn off automatic hibernation

When you use your pc for gaming you often need to download large files. This could be the game themselves (if digitally purchased) or patches for games. It seems vista by default sets you pc to hibernate after 20 minutes (I think) of idle time. This is obviously no good if you want to leave you pc downloading big files while you do something else.

To turn this off go to control panel -> System and Maintenance -> Power Options -> Change when the computer sleeps.

Change the put the computer to sleep option to never to turn off auto hibernation.

• Install the gamertag gadget

If you have a 360 or play a lot of the games for windows titles then you may want to show off and keep track of your gamerscore. There are a few gamertag gadgets but the one I have been using is called compact xbox360 gamercard. To install a new gadget that is not in the gadget list go to get more gadgets online. From there search for gamertag and you should find this nice little gadget.

• Install the Steam gadget

The steam gadgets displays your favorite servers in the sidebar and shows how many people are in them as well as what map the server is on. To get his gadget simply go to get more gadgets online and search for steam. When you click a server the gadget expands to show the players, scores and an image of the map.

Zelkina: An Introduction, and 1st Review

Hi there! I’m Zelkina, I’m a 22 yr old girl. Games I play included Day of Defeat, Team fortress 2, Guild Wars, Travian, Call of Duty 4, Company of Heroes, BF2142 to name a few. I’m also in to rock/metal music and like going to concerts and such. I also write fan fiction and my own stories, am a big Harry Potter fan so much of my fanfiction is based on that. This is my first attempt at a reveiw, so i hope you enjoy!

Zel.

After much complaining and utterances of “Why haven’t you got it yet?” from my clan mates, I purchased Day of Defeat: Source two weekends ago. Bargain price of £5, with all the conversion charges and what have you thrown in. That, and we had been playing from about 12 noon that day as they were doing a free weekend of it.