So, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead, Valve’s recent zombie co-op shooter. I must say, I love it. It’s not a perfect game, but there’s something really fun about getting together with three of your buddies and spending an hour or two trying to survive the zombie-pocalypse. The weapons and items all feel pretty good (though I feel like the hunting rifle, for me, is the least useful of them all), and the game really forces you to stick together and cooperate; there are a couple of types of infected that can easily kill a lone survivor.

Something to note: if you play this game in single player, you’re not getting the full experience. It’s fun in single player, but not nearly as fun as playing with real people. The AI-controlled survivors are pretty useful; they have good aim and they’ll watch your back pretty effectively. They do not, however, take any sort of initiative like a human player will, and they also can’t use grenade items. That said, however, playing with even one other human player, especially if that player is someone you know, multiplies the game’s fun by a factor of 10. If you’ve got all four slots filled with people who know each other and gel as a team, you’re in for a real treat.

Also of note is that the versus mode, where one team plays the survivors while one plays the boss infected, is something of an acquired taste. I really didn’t like it that much the first time I played it. Playing the boss infected can be kind of frustrating at times; they die very quickly, and you have to wait 15-20 seconds to respawn. You don’t get to choose which kind of infected you spawn as, which can be irritating at times. Also, it can be hard to judge the range of an infected’s attack and, in the case of the smoker and the boomer, you have to wait a while for your attack to recharge if you miss. Playing a tank can be either very satisfying or also very frustrating; sometimes it feels like your big, meaty fists are going right through the survivors’ bodies without effect. When you get in a few good hits, though, you can really turn the tide of a match.

All that said, though, versus mode is starting to grow on me. I feel like I’m starting to get a better handle on how to play the infected; you have to be very patient and precise, and you have to coordinate both with your fellow boss infected and with the AI horde. You’re most effective when you wait until the survivors are distracted or panicking, then strike. If a smoker and a pair of hunters all strike at the same time during an infected rush, it can spell curtains for the survivors.

There’s also something to be said for playing the survivors against human opponents. They’ll often do things that the AI-controlled infected won’t do, and those things are often unexpected. It is, however, a very different game; there’s less continuity and it’s not quite as cinematic as campaign mode; in many cases, you won’t be making it through an entire level, but you’ll play the next level anyway.

At any rate, I think that there’s a lot of merit in both modes of play. It’s a great game, full of zombie-stomping fun, either way.

First of all, the most recent session report is up.

Second, I recently downloaded the beta version of the D&D Character Builder. I have to say, it’s very impressive. The program makes it really easy to make D&D characters, and it’s fantastic how they’ve got content from Dragon and other published products, like the Adventurer’s Vault right in there for you to use, even if you don’t own the physical product. It’ll automatically generate a character sheet for your character, which you can customize to a pretty great degree, and it’ll generate power cards, magic item cards, and reference cards for you, too. It’s pretty sweet.

It isn’t perfect, though; there are a few things it could use. The ability to create your own items would be really nice, since most DMs are going to be giving their PCs various things that aren’t in any published product. I’m not even talking about new weapons or magic items here; the ability to give a PC an item like “an old, tattered journal” or “a necklace depicting a skull with ram’s horns” would be fantastic. Similarly, it would be nice if you could edit the text in the character sheet and power cards. Most of it is pretty good, and there’s a lot of auto-calculation (though there could be more), but I would like to be able to type in my own notes in various places. There are also some issues with the personalized information that it puts on your power cards. The ranger’s Twin Strike, for example, allows you to attack with both your primary weapon and your off-hand weapon, but the power card only includes an attack bonus and damage for your primary weapon. It would be nice if your off-hand weapon were included, or if you could type that in yourself. Since many of the ranger’s powers allow you to attack with two weapons, this seems like a glaring omission.

It is, however, still in beta, and there’s time for it to be tweaked still. As it stands, even with a few things missing, it is a fantastic product, and when the full version comes out, I’ll be really happy to be a D&D Insider subscriber.

So, for the last couple of days I’ve been checking out the Left 4 Dead demo on Steam, and I really like what I’m seeing so far.

At first blush, the zombies appear like your garden-variety zombies; they shamble around aimlessly and don’t seem to intelligent. Well, the second part’s right; they really aren’t that smart (as you’d expect). But they don’t shamble around when they spot you; they charge at you, full speed ahead, like something out of 28 Days Later. Individually, they’re not that tough; a couple of shots will take one down. Trouble is you almost never run into them individually; it’s a full-on zombiepocalypse, and that means huge swarms of zombies rushing you from every direction. But that’s not even the worst part.

See, there are these boss zombies, infected that have somehow evolved beyond the rank-and-file undead. Smokers have long tongues that they use to lasso you with and then constrict you, and they blow up in a puff of smoke when you kill them. Hunters are super fast and super agile, and can pounce on you and rip you to shreds with their claws. Boomers are huge and fat, and can vomit on you; when they do this, it blurs your vision pretty severely, and attracts mobs of infected from every angle. Tanks are . . . well, they’re like the Hulk. They smash things. And they’re really, really tough. There are also witches, who sit in the dark and cry until you shoot them or shine a light on them, at which point they go absolutely batshit crazy and rip you to pieces.

I think what I like the most about the game is the sense of teamwork and camaraderie that the game fosters. Sticking together and watching each others’ backs isn’t just a good idea; it’s absolutely critical. separate from the group, and you will die a messy, painful death. Stick with the group, though, and you can watch out for each other, cover each other when you reload or heal up, and fend of the hordes of onrushing Zs with hails of bullets and shotgun shells. It’s absolutely awesome.

Now, the demo is only available for a few more days; once the game comes out, they’re turning it off. Originally I was kind of ticked about that, because I figured I probably wouldn’t be able to pick up the game until after Christmas sometime, if I didn’t get it for Christmas. But then my friends Chris and Tad decided to buy me an early Christmas present. So, when the demo runs out, zombie season officially opens. And I’ll be there, shotgun in hand.

Last weekend was D&D Day, and I’ve finally written a session report for it. It was a great session. There was only a single combat, at the very end, and there was a lot of investigation and role-play. It was a lot of fun, and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. I feel like the party is really beginning to gel, and they worked really well as a team during the fight.