Red vs. Blue Contradictions

I found a list of RvB contradictions while going through some of my documents back from the original run of the series, so I decided to post them.

• Eulogy
• Episode 17: Tucker says 'eulogize'.
• Episode 51: He says he does not know what the word means.
• Spanish
• Episode 16: Donut says, "Am I the only one not understanding any of this?" on Lopez speaking. 
• Episode 75: He says, "I took four years of high school Spanish."
• Sex
• Episode 21:"Sometimes at night when I think about my parents having sex I get really mad for some reason."
• Episode 76: He says, "Maybe we should have the doctor explain, uh, just how babies are made you know..."
• Armor
• Episode 21: Caboose is shot in the foot. Episode 89: Simmons says, "You are wearing state-of-the-art biomechanical  body armor. It's designed to deflect bullets and absorb explosions.
• Sniper Rifle
• Episode 26: Caboose uses the sniper rifle.
• Episode 82: He says he does not know how to use the sniper rifle.
• Episode 100: Yellow Church is pushed out of Caboose's body not as a ghost but as a physical body.

Also as an additional note Church from Episode 51 can be seen in Episode 23.

Bugs, Glitches, Exploits, and Shortcuts

A negative opinion lurks over those deemed 'exploiters' in most games, but is this really just? Do such individuals who use said tactics really deserve to be looked at in such a poor fashion? Rather, there is a difference between bugs, glitches, exploits, and shortcuts that are strewn together under the umbrella of 'exploit'. Therefore, I will differentiate these so that such a misinterpretation no longer occurs:

• Bugs - Bugs are an unintentional, uncontrollable, serious problem that can either allow a player or team to automatically win or can kill a player or the entire team.
• Glitches - Glitches are also unintentional and uncontrollable, but much more minor compared to bugs. Glitches might stop a player from reloading or restart the respawn timer.
• Exploits - Exploits give a holistic advantage over the enemy team or player in a game. This means that the exploiter can have no risk of backfire otherwise it is a shortcut.
• Shortcuts - Shortcuts are the usage of map-specific mechanics that allow a player to skip a certain part of it (shortcuts are only applicable to games such as Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, whereas the other three can apply to any game). Shortcuts are differentiated from exploits in that they can kill a player or team. If a player has to jump from one platform to another and the possibility of falling off exists, then it is a shortcut. If no threat to the player exists, it is an exploit.

Left 4 Dead vs. Left 4 Dead 2

This post began on October 9, 2010, but I have only just now completed it today. I have, many a time, partook in the year old argument (stemming from the Boycott), of the similarities and differences between Left 4 Dead (1) and Left 4 Dead 2 (to which I will refer as L4D and L4D2 respectively), along with which constitutes as a better game.

Read my BioShock 2 review for my abbreviated synopsis of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.

Plot

The first and most important aspect of both L4D and L4D2 easily identifies as plot, followed by character development. Left 4 Dead was known as a game with no plot. The player could decide for him or herself the predicament of the survivors. The player could either think of the campaigns as a chain, a series of separate events all linked up, or individual instances of "What would happen if?" scenarios, such as, "What would happen if the survivors were stranded in an urban area at the time of the outbreak?", or "What would happen if the survivors were stranded in a rural area at the time of the outbreak?".

The Left 4 Dead comic portrays a time-line of No Mercy, Crash Course, Dead Air, Death Toll, and then Blood Harvest (The Sacrifice, The Passing) based on this page, which contradicts the inevitable storyline caused by the Crash Course DLC: No Mercy, Crash Course, Death Toll, Dead Air, and finally, Blood Harvest (The Sacrifice, The Passing) based on this webpage. The Crash Course DLC also leaves Dead Air and Blood Harvest swappable, without the influence of the comic.

Left 4 Dead 2 has no such freedom. All campaigns have a regimented connection with the other campaigns. The survivors start at Dead Center, (meet the original survivors in The Passing,) take Jimmy Gibb's car to Dark Carnival, crash the helicopter in Swamp Fever, get gas for Virgil in Hard Rain, and have the military pickup in The Parish. Because of the control Left 4 Dead gives the player over deciding the storyline for oneself, it has a greater plot, a great plot in no plot.

Character Development

Now it may not be fair to compare the original survivors to the new survivors seeing that the original have a comic and an ending to their adventure, so I will try to constrain characters to the game and DLC.

Simply put, the original survivors have very general personalities that can be applied deductively to the player, whereas the new survivors have very specific personalities that, to the contrary, cannot be applied inductively.

For instance, Bill is a old military veteran; he represents the leader and veteran gamer type or simply the senior member of a team. Francis is the dark-humored biker who represents the trolls and punk gamer types, or a player with a darker sense of humor. Louis is the light-hearted minority who can represent either the minority gamer or players who play games to have fun. Finally, Zoey represents the casual gamer or the female gamer.

Left 4 Dead 2 can have no such comparisons: Coach is a high school football coach, Nick is a gambler, Ellis is a redneck, and Rochelle is a news reporter. There is no leader, no one character represents minorities, and Rochelle cannot represent the female gamer as a news reporter (female college students represent the female gamer best for obvious reasons). Nick is closest in representing a character type with the mystery of his 'profession' similar to the mystery surrounding the Left 4 Dead survivors before the comic, as well as his pessimism. It is only to Nick that I will concede successful character development, which is why by this objective reasoning he is my most played character.

User Interface

Left 4 Dead 2 tries to look the part with a rugged, bloody, and raw interface. The consequence is that it does not look as polished as Left 4 Dead's user interface. The first-aid kit and pain pills are much better looking in Left 4 Dead compared to Left 4 Dead 2. This is good for comparison.

In addition the user loses small things such as not being able to see his or her feet in Left 4 Dead 2, as well as the 'vocalize' command. Left 4 Dead 2 also has the 7/8 glitch, where a server reports to Steam that it has 7/8 players but upon connecting to the server the server believes it is full and kicks that player.

Sound

Left 4 Dead 2 uses themes from Left 4 Dead's music except with a Georgian/Louisiana. This is disgusting not because of the region it takes after, but because Left 4 Dead 2 bastardized Left 4 Dead's music.

Gameplay

Just as two is better than one, seven is better than three. Left 4 Dead only has two tier 1 weapons: pump shotguns and submachine guns, and three tier 2 weapons: auto shotgun, assault rifle, and the hunting rifle, whereas Left 4 Dead 2 has four tier 1 weapons: pump shotgun, chrome shotgun, submachine gun, and silenced submachine gun, and seven tier 2 weapons: tactical shotgun, combat shotgun (SPAS), hunting rifle, sniper rifle, M-16 Assault Rifle, Combat Rifle (SCAR), and AK-47. Left 4 Dead 2 also has tier 3 weapons (special tier): the M79 Grenade Launcher and the M60 Machine Gun.

Left 4 Dead does, however, have superior pistols. The default pistol in Left 4 Dead 2 is the P220 and, when duel-wielded, the Glock as well. These two pistols are vastly inferior to the M1911 from Left 4 Dead, as they usually are in modern warfare games as well. The Magnum almost makes up for this when incapacitated, but when standing duel-M1911s dominate overall.

Left 4 Dead 2 obviously has the addition of melee weapons, so no comparison can be made. No comparison can be made to laser sights, incendiary ammo, or explosive ammo either. It did, however, add bile bombs on top of molotovs and pipe bombs.

Everything health-related is multiplied by two. In addition to health packs are defibrillators and in addition to pills are adrenaline. Adrenaline is, in my opinion, the greatest addition to the Left 4 Dead universe. It is because of this and all the aforementioned additions to Left 4 Dead 2 that allow it to dominate over Left 4 Dead in terms of gameplay.

Scoring

Left 4 Dead's scoring system is based on survival and health. Health packs and used pain pills add onto your score once you've reached the safe room. This, in contrast to Left 4 Dead's system based on distance and survival, is far superior. Left 4 Dead 2's scores should have been hidden so that score is only shown at the end of the map, like Left 4 Dead. The result is that a player joins and sees his or her team down by 300-2000 points, which results in a 25-50% rage factor.

Community

The Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 communities have many of the same gamer types. Amongst L4D and L4D2 a gamer will find: hardcore (CEVO) players, casual players, griefers, exploiters, shortcutters, rushers, trolls, and punks. The difference is the quality and quality of such groups and individuals. Left 4 Dead 2's features such as Team Versus brought a plague of hardcore players along with the game appealing

To play a game a L4D or L4D2, a player not only has to ensure that his or her team wins, but that the other team does not lose so much that they leave. This creates a large difference between Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. In L4D, if the enemy team ragequits, the game goes on just as it would. In L4D2, if the enemy team leaves, the server shuts down. Thus, these two ways of playing identify as:

1. A game to win.
2. A game of politics.

If a good player or a good team wipes the floor with pubs, they disconnect and the server shuts down. Server shutdowns are the worst change between Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 that has only increased trolling and griefing.

Overall

In comparing Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, I grant each the following in which is better than the other:

Quality	Left 4 Dead	Left 4 Dead 2
Plot	✓
Finales		✓
Character Development	✓
User Interface	✓
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Director		✓
Events		✓
Sound	✓
Gameplay		✓
Gametypes		✓
Scoring	✓
Community	✓

Review of Fable III (Spoiler Alert)

Some of this review will be a comparison to Fable: The Lost Chapters, which is expected being the second sequel to TLC. I'll start with the list of good things about the game, so that hopefully everyone ignores the list of negative things I found about the game.

Pros

1. Weapon upgrades.
2. Special battle scenes.
3. No wasps.
4. No beetles.
5. Addition of wolves.
6. Balverines have a much more fierce attack than in Fable: TLC.
7. Guards do not upgrade
   
8. Manage all properties from mini-map.
9. Gun handling for different directions.
10. Treasury.
11. Attacking stops the player from opening chests.
12. Jobs. – Sometimes jobs can be tedious, but since the player can just spam real estate you only play a job for fun (hopefully).
    
13. The mini-map lists all silver key, gold key, and gnome locations.
14. Music during sex.
15. Co-op: Can kill gnomes and collect silver keys from your world in another player's world.
16. Reaver – At first I was angry because I wanted Reaver's head on a platter a lot more than Logan's, but his speeches when you are monarch and you make a decision are riveting and made being a monarch that much better.
17. Fast travel – A necessity otherwise it would be a dominant walking game.
    
18. Buying houses seems to spawn people so even if you let half your kingdom die, you can regain some of it.
19. You still collect rent for your world in another player's world.
20. The Darkness. – When I first traveled to Aurora with Walter it felt like I was in an entirely different game, not even in the Fable universe anymore. At first I marked this as bad, but I enjoyed it later on.
    

Cons

1. No armor.
2. No trolls.
3. Hollow Men – A far underpowered version of the Undead from Fable: The Lost Chapters, mainly due to their having no skin or armor to make them harder to kill.
4. Interacting with people not in realtime. – You spend the majority of the game in a black screen as you transition to talk to someone.
5. No health bar.
6. No Mana bar.
7. Can only buy what is on display in a shop. – There is some degree of annoyance having to run all across each area buying potions, food, and new weapons.
8. Only two weapons for each class (mêlée/ranged). – The rifle/pistol dichotomy makes sense, but sword/hammer? What happened to the maces, cleavers, and greataxes from Fable: TLC?
9. Pistols should be duel-wieldable or have more ammo than the rifle. – When the player starts out, there is no reason to use a pistol over a rifle. The rifle is stronger, has a greater range (they are ranged weapons after all), and has the same ammo as the pistol. Of course, duel-wielding two different pistols would make pistols far superior to rifles, so in short, pistols should have had six shots to them.
10. Only one type of quest. – Whereas in Fable: TLC, you could have Gold/Silver/Bronze quests, all quests other than core mix together so you can have a series of relationship quests spamming your quest list, or have your quest set to the gnome/book/flower quest that will lead to nowhere.
11. Cannot chose emotes. – Sorry, maybe I hate playing patty-cake whenever I meet someone. I would prefer to shake hands but that goes away after the first emote pack.
12. Back-story shallow. – Yes, Logan is the hero from Fable II, but what made Logan Archon? There is no telling why he was 'the last great Hero'.
13. No paths. – Paths are interwoven with cities so that every area has some sort of human settlement with mobs either all around it (Silverpines) or many mobs before it (Mourningwood). The rest of the areas do not show up on the map because they count as being part of another area, so you may either not know they exist or forget they exist, such as The Hole. Mini-areas should at least show up on the map in grey.
14. Should not tell the player if his/her choices are good or evil. – The player should be able to surmise for him/herself whether choices are good or evil.
15. No access to your inventory. – If there was anything I hated about this game, it was not knowing whether I had something necessary on hand or if I would have to go travel to get it again.
16. The subtitles for letters transition too fast. – Far ahead of the speaker's pace.
17. The Hero says 'Who's a lovely boy?' when tickling little girls.
18. Can only hold 10 of one type of food, and can only have that type of food on hand. – i.e. that type of food would be replaced if the player picked up or bought another type of food.
19. Co-op can switch the amount of gold between the two players.
20. Co-op bug where the owner of the world cannot use the map, but the guest can.
21. Cannot use the map in demon doors.
22. Cannot tell the gender of a baby before naming it.
23. 'Unhappy' responses the same as neutral. – My wife came up to me and said 'Nice to meet you!'.
    
24. Worst. Final. Boss. Ever. – I wanted to kill the Crawler, some big evil tentacle thing that would use crazy Darkness attacks or blind me or some such. When he took control of Walter, I thought it was a mini-boss, when killing Walter ended the game, I thought it was a joke.
    

Overall, and using my standard for all games, these are the ratings I would give Fable 3:

Attribute	Rating
Overall	3/5 ★★★☆☆
Plot	3/5 ★★★☆☆
Character Development	3/5 ★★★☆☆
Gameplay	4/5 ★★★★☆
User Interface	2/5 ★★☆☆☆
Video	3/5 ★★★☆☆
Sound	2/5 ★★☆☆☆

Basically, it is a good game, but not worth $50, maybe $20 (Overall); the plot was decent yet predictable (the evil monarch committing evil acts for an ulterior good cause); the character development between Walter Beck/Ben Finn and a few other characters is decent; the gameplay was not phenomenal but it was fun using firearms and spells; the user interface failed in not having things like the inventory; the video was good but I thought it was only slightly better than Fable: TLC; and if I try to think of the music, Fable: TLC music comes to my head.

In conclusion, I've told this to many people, but if you ever hear this you can know I started it:

Lionhead Studios should make a Fable Ø based on the events detailed in books from Fable: The Lost Chapters. It would be the tale of William Black, the first Archon of the Old Kingdom and the Hero who defeated the Court (The Knight, Queen, and Jack of Blades), with creatures such as dragons as normal mobs or mini-bosses as well as the return of Trolls (which Fable III removed), and possibly ogres and other such mythical beasts not in the Fable universe yet.

Forgive my use of a vowel for a slashed zero, but the actual Unicode 0̸ does not display well.

Griefing is Dead

Left 4 Dead 2 has always enabled the greatest of griefing to occur, more so than almost any other PC game. Left 4 Dead 2 instilled a high population of griefers because of the outrage at the abandonment of Left 4 Dead (1), and L4D's current obsolescence.

Left 4 Dead 2 griefers could employ a variety of tactics, such as:

1. Killing oneself and/or others.
   
2. Mic-spamming.
3. Leaving and rejoining to avoid a kick.
4. Spamming votes.
5. Et cetera.

With the addition of the Restart Game and All Talk votes, VALVe allowed for an escalation of griefing that involved continuously restarting chapters, especially when a team loses. If griefers enjoyed their time on Left 4 Dead 2 before, they enjoyed it one thousand times more now.

From August to November, the reign of griefers continued, until VALVe restricted voting to one vote per person, per round (on average).

Today, VALVe succeeded in the final strike against griefers by ensuring that votes to kick take effect even if a player disconnects. As of today, the reign of griefers in Left 4 Dead 2 has ended.

Review of Loom

I just finished playing Loom, an extremely old adventure game (the first release on that of a floppy), that I have found in extreme distaste. This qualifies as one of the worst games I have played in quite a while, as it uses the point-of-no-return game style multiple times, in which you have to either load to a previous save point or restart the game if you forgot something. The game took me a total of around eight hours to beat from 11:00-19:00 on Wednesday, the 20th.

I will also use this post to prototype how I write reviews for games. I will start by listing the possible attributes of a game, and then explaining why I gave it that rating in detail.

Attribute	Rating (Unicode)	Rating (Plain Text)
Overall	★☆☆☆☆	1/5 Stars
Plot	★☆☆☆☆	1/5 Stars
Character Development	★☆☆☆☆	1/5 Stars
Gameplay	★☆☆☆☆	1/5 Stars
User Interface	★☆☆☆☆	1/5 Stars
Video	★★☆☆☆	2/5 Stars
Sound	★★★☆☆	3/5 Stars

Plot
The game had a somewhat interesting plot, but it lacked severely in execution. For instance, without spoilers, the player has to meet all the characters again at the end of the game and it becomes a let-down, because you do something for each of them and it never expands into the other characters' conditions at the end of the game. The ability to hear drafts by ear interested me more than the plot, which is a rarity as I usually play singleplayer games for the plot.

Character Development
The game had no character development whatsoever, something expected of at least the main character in an adventure game that usually tries to convey a morale learned by the main character. The characters stay exactly the same as you met them the first time to the end of the game.

Gameplay
Gameplay makes for the worst quality of this game. As aforementioned, the game has 4 points-of-no-return, three of which where the player must use a draft from earlier in the game almost immediately after reaching that point or they must start over.

Secondly, the game plays around three or four drafts with higher notes than the user has already learned, then the user has to go past a point-of-no-return and expected to figure out that draft without the ability to relisten to it.

The game should have implemented the following systems:

• Unlockable teleporters for all the points-of-no-return unlocked after a user progresses past the point.
  
• The ability to pick up the book at the beginning of the game and store drafts in it.
• When a player hears a draft the player should have to replay it to learn it and add it to the book.
• The game always allows players to relisten to drafts which require a higher note than the user already knows.
  
• A notification to stop the user from progressing to a point-of-no-return without learning all drafts in the area.
  

User Interface
I had to figure out how to play this game myself. I found no instructions in the game directory and found it quite tedious. F5 opens the Save/Load dialog, F7 toggles fast/slow animation, F8 prompts a restart of the program, F9 toggles subtitles, QWERTYUI play the notes CDEFGABC respectively, and space pauses the game. All the function keys could have easily become an ESC menu, and the game should have told you the use of the other keys.

Video
I will never judge an old game on its graphics, because I love old games and I play them a lot, but I do judge them on their graphics compared to other games from the same year and what the video has to offer.

The video does not go fullscreen; now that is a basis of personal preference, and it might benefit the user in the end as I could easily pause my game and work on something like this with it on the side.

The video's largest problem probably stems from the environment; when I first started the game I did not recognize that you had to turn around and go down the mountain from behind it. Usually a game where a player cannot see his or her character does not bode well.

Sound
I actually found myself surprised in the quality of the sound for this game. The voice actors had a lot of definition to them, they did not sound awkward or fake. In addition, and most obvious, the game requires the player to replay four notes by ear on the hardest difficulty, which seems easy for some until they actually play it. The game also had decent FX sounds and music when the player did certain events.

Steam Profile Summary

I don't have enough room on my Steam profile to post this, so I'll post it here:

I am a fluent EventScripter. My premiere work is PracticeMod which no longer works because of the CSS update, followed by Squads Mod and Pure Jailbreak. PracticeMod originated from Practice Weapon Restrictions which aimed at simply restricting weapons to lower ranking members. Pure Jail Break came from Jail Break Muting, which aimed at simply muting Terrorists, Spectators, and Dead Counter-Terrorists for a free-flowing game of Jail Break.

I also started working on Array, HordeMode, PandaHacks, UnitRename, UnitScrimmage, DeadChat, Juggernaut, MercFire, Pause, Specter, SurfDeathmatch, and WeaponRestrictions. As a quick description of each:

1. Array was to create managable arrays in EventScripts.
2. HordeMode was a port of two cfg scripts by White to spawn 300 health bots with only knives and the players had to survive for 3 minutes.
3. PandaHacks are a number of scripts converted from cfg to EventScript provided by TechPanda.
4. UnitRename was a script that would change a |KTM| member's name to full Greek with a squad symbol and appropriate tags but the CSS update stopped that.
5. UnitScrimmage was a port of PracticeMod that would allow CSS teams to have Ready Up scrimmages.
6. DeadChat was a script to allow dead players to chat deprecated by DeadMsg (not my script).
7. Juggernaut was a script that would spawn one Juggernaut/5 players with 999999 health and about 85% speed and the other team would have to kill him.
8. Specter was a script that would spawn on Specter/5 players with 1 health and 300% speed.
9. SurfDeathmatch creates Deathmatch in Surf.
10. WeaponRestrictions was a very linear script and one of my first next to PWR. Nothing is automated with loops and every line is written out manually.

Bioshock 2 (~comparison to Bioshock 1) Review

So I finished Bioshock 2 on the 18th at around noon and I've had a list in my head of things I did and didn't like. Of course I've procrastinated on writing this and I have other things I want to get to, so I feel I must finish it already.

In short, I would say Bioshock 2 was to Bioshock 1 as Left 4 Dead 2 was to Left 4 Dead. To explain these quickly:

Left 4 Dead 1

1. Better characters.
2. Better sounds.
3. Better UI.

Left 4 Dead 2

1. Better gameplay.
2. More gametypes.
3. Better AI director/events.

Bioshock 2 had better gameplay, i.e. the duel-wielding that should have existed in the first, but Bioshock 1 had a better storyline and even a better atmosphere in some cases.

To expand on the latter of those statements, Bioshock 1's storyline was the People vs the Parasite, whereas Bioshock 2's storyline was the Tyrant vs. the People. Sofia Lamb does not rally the splicers against the Tyrant nearly as well as Andrew Ryan did against the Parasite. The atmosphere of Bioshock 1 is better in that you have areas that stay in your head. Arcadia, Fort Frolic, the core of Rapture (starts with an 'h', I can't look it up on the Bioshock Wiki as there seems to be a problem with it), I mean nothing in 2 compares to shutting down the core.

As with atmosphere again, when you saved Little Sisters in Bioshock 1, it looked beautiful, like you loved her, in 2 you just put your hand on her and Turn on the Bright Lights (yes, an Interpol reference). Also Somewhere Beyond the Sea was a home run for Bioshock 1, that game got me loving that song.

As far as gameplay goes, hacking was much more fun in Bioshock 1 than in Bioshock 2, sure it was realistic in 2, but who cares about realism 10,000 leagues under the sea? Health and Eve restrictions at 5/5 was ridiculous, iirc it was 9 in Bioshock 1. I'd either have 5/5 Health and Eve when I didn't need them or about 0/1 when I did need them, because you use 5 after about three or four battles on difficult then you have to run back to the store to buy more.

Ammo was annoying on Bioshock 2 and the same thing, either I had no rivets or I had too many. Default max was 48, upgrade increased it to 62 I believe which helped a little. Same with the machine gun (240 max) and the shotgun (24 max). The elimination of tonic categories was one good move for Bioshock 2 though.

I also hated how I could play on High Graphics for Bioshock 2 but not Bioshock 1 with the same specs, I noticed Bioshock 2 installing Visual Studio 2005 Redistributable. I'm sorry, TWO-THOUSAND FIVE? Code five years out of date, especially now that it is 2010 with the release of VS2010.

If there are two big kickers though that make Bioshock 1 better than Bioshock 2, these were it. First, Bioshock 1 was level-based, Bioshock 2 was linear. If you missed a Power to the People you couldn't go back for it, but in Bioshock 1 you could. The second is that Bioshock 2 had no final boss, sure you had a big horde attack you, but no Frank Fontaine trying to rape you with Adam.

So in a shorthand list for reference, things which made Bioshock 1 better:

• Saving Little Sisters looked beautiful
• Hacking was more fun
• No Health and Eve restrictions
• Ammo less restricted
• Somewhere Beyond the Sea
• Using Visual Studio 2005 in its time
• Player can go back to previous levels (i.e. not a linear game)
  
• Final Boss

Things that made Bioshock 2 better:

• Duel-wielding
• No tonic categories