Left 4 Dead PC or 360?

I’m perhaps a freak but I like TF2 on the 360. Definitely getting L4D on the 360 as well!

I’m guessing we’re thinking of two different elements of L4D. There’s the co-op campaigns, where the survivors are fighting to get out of town against AI controlled zombies, and then there’s the competitive mode, where some zombies are controlled by other people. For the competitive mode, you have a point, but for the people only interested in playing through the campaigns with their friends (against the AI), either the game is fun out of the box, or it’s not. I don’t see how post-release support would change someone’s decision there either way.

Yes. 5

It will definitely by 360 for me. I have a superior sound system on my TV, plus a more comfortable setup. I think the PC fanatics have a point that the community will probably last much longer on that platform the same way TF2 has, but I don’t imagine I’ll lose much sleep over that.

The anticipation is that co-op mode would get extra maps and game features (weapons, unlockables and so on) as time went on, like TF2 enjoys. I’m not sure why you’d think changes would affect competitive mode only, since they use the same assets for both modes. It is less a question of whether or not its fun out of the box, and more of a question whether it can still be novel 6 months, a year, 2-3 years down the road.

I would guess the game is intended to have a huge amount of replayability (i.e. the very long time frame considerations are appropriate,) as zombie locations and challenge are scaled with player skill over time.

Does the PC version support the Games for Windows jazz? I’m leaning toward PC for two reasons, the first being due to my impression that L4D is a PC game at heart and the second is basically due to co-workers also getting this as PC so we can play on work game nights.

I’m an achievement whore at heart and was happy that Fallout 3 did the Games for Windows thing and let me add achievement points to my Xbox Live account. If L4D does the same it’ll be a win win for my point whoring heart!

The Steam Community service is a direct competitor with Games for Windows, so I don’t think Valve is going to be including GFW support in any of their products any time soon. That said, Steam does offer its own achievement system as well as in-game chat and such. So the points won’t carry over to your Live account, but you will still get popups and possible rewards for completing meta-objectives in game.

Yeah, that’s a good point. I guess I’m thinking of the campaigns as something similar to campaigns in other linear first person shooters, but the way you describe it, it sounds like the goal is to be more like Diablo 2, where you’d want to play through the campaigns over and over and over, with new twists being added to the same campaigns maybe because of randomness?

If its going to be the same maps every time, with only enemy placement changing (like Rainbow Six Vegas’ Terrorist Hunts), and the replayability coming from DLC, then the DLC could just as easily be added to the 360, although, I hear you guys on Valve’s track record with DLC on 360 not being great with regards to TF2.

I guess if I was to think back to Rainbow Six Vegas, we played Terrorist Hunt every Friday (on the 360) all the way until we had ‘finished’ each level. And by then, they introduced the first set of DLC maps, which we all bought and took a few months to finish (they were much tougher than the original maps that came with the game), and by then they released another set of maps for Terrorist Hunt, which we downloaded and played through until Halo 3 came out.

If the situation with L4D is analogous, we would have been fine if the additional maps hadn’t been released for Rainbow Six. We could have switched to a different game once we were done with the maps that came with the game, and we certainly got more than our money’s worth out of the game.

I guess the fundamental disconnect is that I keep thinking that if the experience is more like Terrorist Hunt, or a linear story campaign, then I don’t really see a need to extend the game beyond the 20 or so hours that it’s meant to entertain you for. However, if the experience is meant to be a more dynamic one, like with Diablo 2, where you experiment with different characters, have random maps, random boss placement, random monster configuration in each situation, then it’s a different story.

Some co-op detail from RPS:

If I’m playing it on a console, I may as well be playing it with my feet.

PC, no question.

PC for me!

PC. For all the reasons listed in choice 1 and 2, minus Live.

Off Topic question EvilIdler, I wanted to try that kind of setup one day.

I assume you use a wireless keyboard and mouse? Doesn’t the keyboard get uncomfortable in your lap? The only time I tried using a keyboard in my lap, I didn’t like it at all. Or is it one of those nifty really thin Mac keyboards that some of colleagues at work use? And what about the mouse? Do you just run that over the couch cushion next to you? Or do you have some kind of mouse pad sitting on the cushion next to you? Are you able to be really precise with the mouse with that kind of setup? I’ve never found a comfortable way to use the mouse, even on the side-arm of the couch. It’s all too mushy and falling down all the time.

Having your mouse hand that low (on the couch next to you) is incredibly damaging to your hand and wrist. You’d be way better off with some kind of TV tray or sitting on the floor and using the coffee table.

agreed. PC is the only way to go.

To be fair to Live, while there are a lot of asshats, I’ve also populated a pretty decent size friend list with people I really like playing with.

Seeing what Valve did with TF2 on the 360 makes me want a decent PC again.
Valve - killing console gaming since 1998

What did they do? Maybe it’s a case of what they didn’t do? It seems OK to me. Is there a ton of new content that console users aren’t getting or something?

Yes, there is.

That’s shitty. Are they waiting on cert or something? How old is the new content?