Left 4 dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2 was recently introduced to the gaming community. One of the things that made this game so successful was the importance of Play itself and how it works within Left 4 Dead 2. Another aspect I want to focus on is the online aspect of play and how it differs from the solo play by itself. In Left 4 Dead 2 it is an upgraded version of the previous Left 4 Dead title. With L4D2 you get a few things that definitely makes the game something worthy of your money. One of the biggest is the new campaigns that are added in, you get 6 new campaigns all extremely hard. The play style of L4D2 is definitely focused on team play with friends online. The first game lacked the difficulty of being swarmed, you cannot feel as much pressure in the first L4D that you experience in the newest version of the game. The amount of zombies that the game can handle is increased by an extremely large amount, which in turn makes team work very important.

Key Idea's #1: Teamwork / AI

While one person is up front with the melee weapons the other players will either be watching the teams back or just killing zombies in the general protection of your team mates. The AI in L4D2 has really improved in some aspects but as well in some aspects it falters. Although artificial intelligence has come a long way their are parts to having it in games like this it has areas that need to be worked with a little more. If you have a charger on you and he is slamming you into the ground you're AI teammates will not be able to figure out whether to help you or to kill the zombies that are on them and then to help you. They are the best team mates if you have no intentions of experiencing online play because with online you get people who can change priorities depending on the groups need of assistance. The AI also has a problem of weaponry changes depending on the groups build up and also the picking up and using of explosive weapons. Now with a new game also will come new enemies that you have to

work as a team and also understand the enemy to know the best way to stop it. When you see one of the enemies named a Witch she basically kills any player in one hit. If you are playing with AI you cannot coordinate an attack as precisely as you could with an online group of actual people. You can start shooting it and hope you kill it before it kills one of your players. Or if you encounter the Tank your group really needs to kill it fast, and the AI on your team falls short yet again with the lack of comprehension and understanding of the situation to do what is best for everyone. You will notice them running around, being mauled by zombies or getting stuck in specific spots.

Key Ideas #2: Replay, Play...

Now with a game like this you might wonder "What do I do when I finish all the campaigns?". This was a big question when the first L4D came out, when the gameplay was finished the most you could do was replay all of them online on a harder difficulty with people you knew or maybe people you don't. Now while this really didn't get THAT old, it definitely got to the point of being a little routine. So how did the second L4D make up for the first? Well in the second

installment of Left 4 Dead a few things were added that significantly increased the difficulty and stress of the game, even on its lower difficulty. Now in both of these games, the difficulty of the level is based on two things. A.) Being the difficulty you selected, and B.) The game reads the players to see how well off on ammo the players are or how well off they are on health, the games in level difficulty will be judged by that as well. This area added on top of the amount of zombies able to be in L4D2 increases the difficulty of the entire game no matter what difficulty the campaign is set too. Now all of this added with the new zombies and the difficult terrains add in for some serious replay value. You can assure yourself that no matter what; each time you play this it will be different, whether its which guns appear where, or how many zombies come out of any given area at any time. This aspect of Play is very important, it builds a strong following in the gaming community when creators add in parts like this to make the game more enjoyable for everyone who puts money into this game.

Knights of the Old Republic

Knights of the Old Republic was a game from 2003, it won game of the year two year's in a row; also winning the award of RPG of the year. KOTOR plays out like a RTS/RPG mixture, the play style with the combat is very slow and you have to choose an attack and wait for it to go off before you select another one. This game goes down so in depth into the game play and the story which is why it ended up being so epic. What makes this game so great is the way you can develop your character, and also how that character progresses through the story. It is also one of the first games that the creators put so much time into how the players converse with the rest of the universe. The customization of the game is also so endless or so it seems. Everything in this game just adds up to one epic story that has a very high replay value, or in my opinion it does.

The next portion I would like to discuss is the aspect of choosing Good from Evil. In a game like Fable you can select which side you choose from actions you carry out through out the entire game. What Fable doesn't have and what KOTOR does, is making the side you choose effect everything in the game. KOTOR does such a great job with this, you start at the beginning of the game not even knowing who your character is when you wake up in battle aboard a spaceship. From that point on every action you take whether its conversing with an in game character and acting rudely or generously towards them, or killing an in game character when the chance arrises; these choices will in tern effect how the entire rest of the game will play out, even the ending to the game. A few parts that I feel are memorable to this game that was brought about by the

character development and working with stats, and also the Good or Evil side you choose is just the story itself. Everything works really well in this game because it actually makes you feel a connection to the players you deal with and your character yourself, basically a good description of the entire game would be a full on George Lucas movie that you are the main character. This game is filled with twists and turns and it really makes you feel that you are experiencing the motion picture first hand. Overall KOTOR was one of the most memorable games I have ever played, the multiple experiences you can go through in this game is just so awesome, I can always pick up this game and play it through and it never seems to get old. Every time you play it it really feels like you are playing a new game and a new experience, KOTOR was one of the first of its kind and it ended up being a game that would go down in history as one of those games other people try to replicate because of the success.

Call of Duty 4

1 Overview

Call of Duty 4 is a game that falls into the category of First Person Shooter (FPS). When you start the game you can choose an offline campaign which follows a story. Most people aren't playing this game because of it's single player aspects so I will mostly focus on the Multiplayer aspects.  While online you have to first join a game, one thing I love about CoD 4 is that it automatically plugs people together who are all looking for a game all into one bunch so the Matchmaking is very quick. Once the game starts you have weapons and perks all setup for your specific preference and play style. We will come back to those later. Their are two different teams, OpFor, and Marines. The many different Game Types of Call of duty 4 help with this game not getting old; well focus on one called Team Deathmatch. Basically it is the OpFor vs. the Marines, and each kill gives 10 points along with a UAV, Air-strike, and a Attack Helicopter you can call. Once one team gets 750 points the game is over. The maps offer many area's to position yourself for your own

 advantage, also knowing the game also can help out in many situations.

Key Idea #1: Perks

Now these you see are called perk's. Each player gets to choose one of each color as a perk they 

want to use, so three total. These things called perk's give your soldier a Heightened skill, so lets take Stopping Power for example. Well take one from each row and I will describe what they can do. Stopping power is a red perk that makes your bullets do double the damage as 

they normally would. The next one we will choose is Last Stand from the yellow row. When you get shot dead with this perk you don't die right away, you fall over and you have about fifteen seconds to use your pistol to try to kill who killed you and maybe some others if you are lucky. The last one is the Munitions perk, you can choose different perk's that can give you increased Frag Grenades, Claymores, RPGs (for helicopters) etc. Now all of these perks aren't unlocked right away you have to work your way through the ranks which comes from winning matches and getting kills and what not. Many things come from being unlocked in this game which makes it a great game of customization for most.

Key Idea #2: Weapon's

In Call of Duty 4 the selection of weapons is a very decent sized amount. All weapons you can choose from come from ranking up. The weapons you receive have many customizable features. Most guns can upgrade with some basic things, a Red Dot Sight, an ACOG scope, a mountable grenade launcher, or a Silencer. These customizations also work very closely with the games 

perks and I will explain how. If you chose the perks UAV jammer (You do not show up on radar), Dead Silence (You do not make noise while walking) and then a Silencer on the end of your weapons, you will be off of the radar no matter what. You can do this with many other perks and weapon customizations. The point being is that the weapons that they have a selection from is so vast that their is no way someone could go through the multiplayer game and not fine a weapon that they enjoyed using. I have four different set ups I use. They are all for different play styles I use and if one doesn't work I switch to another one. What makes COD 4 such a successful game is the customization in all aspects, you can unlock skin colors for your guns which doesn't sound like much but it does add in customization for the hardcore COD fans like myself. All in all it is the small customizations in COD that makes the actual game itself so big on a competitive game standards. It out-reaches games like Halo 3 and Counter-Strike by so many things. And soon we will all have COD 4:2 which add much more customization. I will be doing a review of that when it comes out.

Bioshock

One of the great reasons for Bioshock's success was how it put you in awe when you first looked at the city after traveling down from the crashed airplane. You see a massive array of towers and buildings underwater that has never been seen before by your character ( or so you think ). The city of Rapture was supposed to be a Utopian society created by a man named Andrew Ryan. What ryan was trying to do was to create a society where everyone was allowed to spoil themselves and reap the reward of life itself. The definition of Rapture is an expression or manifestation of ecstasy or passion, which is what Andrew Ryan was trying to create with his city. Although his plan was to make an ultimate city, he ended up making a place where chaos runs free, and right around the corner could be some junkies that would love to kill you. All in all the game based in the city of Rapture gives off an eery perspective and feeling while playing through it.

Although the city and story do make the game a work of art, their are a few more details for myself that make this game something more than a simple First Person Shooter. When you start the game you are introduced to something called Plasmids. These are special powers that allow you to do certain things. You can get fireballs that you can shoot out of your hands, or electricity to shock enemies in water, or something that allows you to swing harder with a melee weapon. This type of character customization allows a deeper and more intricate playing scenario for anyone. It doesn't just send you through the game doing the same old stuff but instead you can customize your character with certain plasmids to make your trip through Rapture an easier time, or more entertaining at that. I believe that having this amount of customization; although small it still gives depth and personality to the game.

Last but not least, we have the weapons customization. Their are several weapons in Bioshock all of which are customizable, excluding the ratchet. You find weapon upgrade machines through out Rapture, they are only good for one time use, but they upgrade the weapons you have to be more powerful and will eventually help you when you start fighting harder and harder enemies. This is also another nice little piece of customization which I think puts a little more kick in the game. You can play it different ways using different customized weapons and it doesn't get boring. Bioshock two was a success because of three basic things, The story, the setting, and the customization. When Bioshock 2 hits stores any fan of Bioshock will be crossing their fingers for more customization and an even deeper and captivating story but only time will tell.

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