Leveling Down

It’s that time of the year again…as 2009 draws to a close and the holiday season is upon us, cmfl3x and I decided that we wanted to do our own “Leveling Down” gaming awards for 2009 where we choose winners in several categories for Xbox 360 games that have been released in 2009. At the same time, we also wanted to preserve the holiday shopping guide that Leveling Down produced last year but felt that the awards and the shopping guide were too similar.

Instead of separate 2009 awards and holiday shopping guide posts, we’ve decided to combine them this year into one. Every game we’ve nominated within our awards are games worth considering for the holidays, but at the same time, we’re also declaring the winner. Consider the awards as, if you can only buy one game from the nominees of the category, buy the winner. But if you are further interested in other games from the category, you should definitely pick them up as well as they have aspects that all make them worth considering. Game boxes have been provided for all nominees, and all of them link to Amazon, our gaming retailer of the year due to not only their ridiculous gaming deals, but their constant vigilance in price matching practically all competitors.

Our 2009 awards/shopping guide will span all week, with cmfl3x and me alternating posts and writing about a few categories each day. This will culminate on Friday when we both share our own nominations for Game of the Year, and our picks for Game of the Year. I will kick things off today with three categories: 2009′s Best Fighting Game, Best Role Playing Game, and Best First Person Shooter for the Xbox 360.

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I finally took the shrinkwrap off my copy of Left 4 Dead 2 last night, and gave it a spin by playing through the first campaign with AI opponents on Normal difficulty and the second campaign with friends & AI on varying levels of difficulty. My impressions of the retail version of the game don’t seem to differ drastically from those of my demo impressions, but I do have some stuff to talk about so hit the jump if you’re interested in hearing my thoughts on it.
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The last two big holiday titles of the year were released yesterday, and delivered to my door courtesy of Amazon. Yet, after checking out my friends list during prime time last night, it wasn’t quite apparent that these big holiday titles had arrived. Scanning through the dozen or so people online on my list yielded just one guy at the bottom playing Left 4 Dead 2, with no Assassin’s Creed 2 in sight. About half of my friends online last night were playing Modern Warfare 2, which is a pretty respectable number as the night of Modern Warfare 2′s release, about 3/4 of my friends list were playing it. I was surprised to see that even Brutal Legend got more of a spotlight than either Left 4 Dead 2 or Assassin’s Creed 2 last night among my friends. Maybe Left 4 Dead 2 won’t ruin the holidays for me after all and I’ll still have people to play it with when I get to it later.

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Obviously my claim that Left 4 Dead 2 will ruin the holidays is a little far-fetched, but let me explain. While I didn’t love the recently released Left 4 Dead 2 demo, I think the game will still be an enjoyable co-op title. I still have it pre-ordered, yet the primary reason for my crazy accusation is this: Left 4 Dead 2 is releasing 1 week after Modern Warfare 2.

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I just reacquired Call of Duty: World at War. Yeah, it seems silly with Modern Warfare 2 right around the corner, along with the fact that I did not enjoy the multiplayer for Call of Duty: World at War much at all, but the zombie mode had me wanting the game again.

This past weekend is the first time I’ve ever actually paid money for map packs to a game on the 360.  With all the map packs on sale for $5 each, I sprang for all three. Ironically, I wasn’t even buying the map packs for the 9 multiplayer maps that all three map packs gave me access to. I was buying the three map packs because each of them had a new zombie map with new features and gameplay. The zombie mode in Call of Duty: World at War is serious business!

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The Left 4 Dead 2 demo hit the marketplace yesterday for Live Gold members, and I was able to give it a spin. As someone that really enjoyed the first Left 4 Dead, I felt it would be good for me to share my mixed thoughts on the demo. But first, what is the demo all about? The Left 4 Dead 2 Demo features the first 2 (of presumably 4) parts of The Parish campaign, one of the five new campaigns in Left 4 Dead 2. You are able to only play those two levels – either offline with AI (as well as split screen with a buddy) or online with others. The demo menu also shows various other modes that are not available in the demo: Versus, Survival, Scavenge, and Realism. Scavenge and Realism are new to Left 4 Dead 2.

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Many of you probably have seen this already, but if not it’s totally worth checking out. Purportedly this is the opening cinematic from Left 4 Dead 2, and it looks amazing. The first game’s cinematic actually told a lot about the gameplay in the game, something we only realized in retrospect. What does this cinematic have for us?

First, I think the setting looks great: the survivors are in the deep south near New Orleans (or in?) which is pretty awesome, and the music in this trailer does a nice job of setting the tone. In general, it seems like there is a chance that Valve might be expanding the storyline a little more - this time you could play Left 4 Dead without even knowing that the campaigns were linked, but the scene on the bridge where the government is bombing the zombies makes me hopeful there will be more of a storyline in this one.

Secondly, you get a look at some of the new special infected, such as the Jockey who can jump on the survivors and steer them around, and some freaky witch-like character. It also seems like there are going to be zombies with hazmat suits on, so I’m going to assume that molotovs aren’t going to work on them. You also get a look at some of the new melee weapons, such as the chainsaw, frying pan, and bat (there’s another video with the GameStop exclusive baseball bat out there as well).

There also seems to be the same campy humor that was present in the first game, and the survivors seem like they’re going to be as fun to play as the original cast. All in all, I’m getting pretty pumped for this game: my gaming time is going to be SERIOUSLY crunched in a few weeks. Looks like I know what I’ll be spending my $40 Amazon credit on!

I love achievements. Even though my wife says the greatest achievement I have ever unlocked is “most hours spent in front of glowing screens” (that was for Vidmaster: Endure in Halo 3: ODST), I still really enjoy trying to “achieve” these meaningless rewards. It makes me wonder though, have achievements changed how I play games, or was it me who changed?

An example: in Left 4 Dead, once I finished the Expert campaigns, the game began to be less fun. It was okay to run through a campaign, but with no sound effect at the end of the tunnel, I found it less exciting. Same with ODST and the Firefight maps: will I ever go back and play them after I’ve unlocked the achievements? Firefight is a mode I could potentially have seen myself playing endlessly, but I know that thanks to the achievements, I’m not really gonna want to go back after I finish the 200Ks. If those achievements didn’t exist though, I might just keep playing to keep trying to beat my top score. But since achievements arbitrarily define these “top scores” in a lot of games, it takes away my inner desire to beat myself because I know what mark I have to get to to prove to the world my skill.

When I was a younger gamer, I just use to play games over and over because I loved them. I must have beaten Super Mario Bros. 3 like 6 or 7 times, and gotten to the last stage a bunch of other times as well. I used to race against the computer in Mario Kart 64 just for fun (though some of the shenaningans the computer pulled in 150cc drove me nuts), and I even played through the original Halo multiple times just for fun. Nowadays I can’t see myself doing that anymore. It’s partly because I don’t have the time, but it’s also because once I get all the achievements I want, I don’t have the motivation to play anymore. The only exception is multiplayer games I love: Halo 3 and Modern Warfare took up hours and hours of my life and I never really wanted to stop.

I guess in a way achievements made it easier to fit my gaming habits into my changing life habits. Now that I have goals in games to strive for, I can budget out the amount of time I’ll need to play, and that way I can balance my time better. It’s not as “pure” as when I was a kid, but let’s face it: I’m not a kid anymore, and I have responsibilities that are much more important than beating games 50 times. Instead, I can just focus on the achievement for beating a game twice and then go to bed!

The Crash Course campaign was just released for Left 4 Dead on the PC and 360 last week. While the PC version of Crash Course is free, Microsoft has forced Valve to charge $7 for it on the 360 – an odd price for 360 DLC since most tend to be either $5 or $10. The pricing makes sense if you were to consider the $60 initial price tag for the game – each of the 4 campaigns was basically $15, and since Crash Course is half the length of one of the 4 campaigns, $7 is about right. Unfortunately, the retail price of the game today is $30, so $7 for half a campaign seems a bit steep, especially when considering that PC owners get it for free. Owning both the PC and 360 versions myself, I decided to give the free PC version a try.

The Crash Course campaign can be played in co-op, Survival, or Versus, but it’s the Versus aspect of Crash Course that was the primary instigator for its release. Since the “Crash Course” campaign is only half the length of the other campaigns (2 parts instead of 4), players can play a versus game in half an hour instead of the usual 1 hour where they may not have enough time.

Left 4 Dead’s never been much about story, but Crash Course takes place after the “No Mercy” campaign since the level begins with Bill, Louis, Francis, and Zoe standing next to a crashed helicopter. The four characters also have new lines, which not only add more to their beloved personalities but help guide players in the right direction through the campaign.

The campaign is indeed short, but it’s still very enjoyable. I actually have very little to say about it aside from the fact that it feels like a natural addition to the original campaigns. The Left 4 Dead formula works, and while some have complained about Left 4 Dead 2 simply being a cash grab since it’s coming out so soon after the original, I can’t imagine people not having fun with it once it comes out. Crash Course gives us something new to briefly play around in if you can’t wait until Left 4 Dead 2′s release next month. For fans of the 360 game that want more, it really just comes down to whether or not you’re willing to pay for it. It certainly helps that there are extra Achievements with the DLC, but it’s still a burn that PC gamers get it for free.

With my brother in town visiting for an extended stay, I’ve started looking into games that we can both play together online off the same 360. He’s into competitive games (especially fighting games), while I’m more into co-operative games, so I figure we can meet in the middle with games that we can play against other people while still being on the same team. The trick is finding these types of games that allow for us to both play together on one console and still fulfill those requirements!

It’s slim pickings but here’s the list I’ve compiled:

Halo 3
This is probably the highest rated and most popular game of this list that allows for both of us to go online and play adversarial modes off the same console. Of course, you either like Halo or you don’t. I’ve come a long way in that I don’t find Halo 3 as bad as the first couple, but ultimately, I’ll always end up choosing a Battlefield or Call of Duty game over it if I were playing online alone.

Gears of War/Gears of War 2
I believe that both games allow for us to play on the same console in adversarial matches, as well as the Horde mode in Gears of War 2. Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of the adversarial in the Gears of War games (too imbalanced since the gameplay design doesn’t work well for multiplayer) and my bro isn’t too into the Horde mode (he finds it too mindless).

Left 4 Dead
Every mode is available for us to play online with split screen, but I don’t enjoy the Versus mode so this is more co-op friendly than “co-op adversarial” friendly. The problems I have with the Versus mode is that it doesn’t really reward skill as much as it does figuring out where all the glitches and optimal “smoker pull spots” are. In other FPS adversarial games if you just go in completely new, you actually stand a chance based on your FPS skills alone. But in Left 4 Dead Versus, if you don’t know all the glitches/spots or how to deal with them, you’re done before you even started.

Unreal Tournament III
The 360 version is the only one with split-screen online, allowing us to play adversarial modes. Unfortunately, there’s no matchmaking in the game and the userbase is tiny. No one plays ranked anymore, and for unranked games, you’ll be lucky to find one or two matches. Game is practically already dead.

Age of Booty
From the same guys that did the matchmaking code of the Halo games, Age of Booty is an Xbox Arcade title that I felt my brother and I would enjoy. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a big following for the game so practically no one plays it online anymore, just like Unreal Tournament III.

In short, it looks like very slim pickings. I would have loved to see one of the Call of Duty games or Battlefield games offer split-screen online, or even older titles like the Rainbow Six games, the GRAW games, Team Fortress 2, and Shadowrun. Maybe we will have to get back into Halo after all, since it’s the best of what’s available. Perhaps it’s a good time too since Halo 3: ODST “drops” next month.