If you are a Gold Member on Xbox Live (and seriously, if you are planning to play Left 4 Dead 2 as single player or local multi-player only, you are missing out on the best parts of the game), the Left 4 Dead 2 demo is out.
Personally, I’m not going to bother. To me, a demo is something you play if you are not yet decided on purchasing in order to see if you enjoy the game. For example, I played the demo of Mirror’s Edge because I wasn’t sure of the game, and I’m glad I did because it saved me money. But from all accounts, Left 4 Dead 2 is going to be Left 4 Dead only with more awesome. Considering how much I love the original, there isn’t a chance in hell I won’t love the sequel. Valve just doesn’t make crappy sequels.
As a birthday gift this year, I was given a pre-order of Left 4 Dead 2. So I will happily wait for it to show up and not spoil any of the game playing a mere demo. But I won’t judge you if you do play the demo. Have fun!
So, yesterday morning, after breakfast at IHOP, before getting gas for the car, the wife and I swung through Target to see what was what.
The new Xbox 360 Elite was due out, and they happened to have one. Just one. They also had eight Nintendo Wii’s (left from the 20 they’d had just an hour before). In full financial abandon, we bought both.
This should be fun…
The 360 takes another step toward closing the Console-PC gap with its upcoming release. Check out the details over at gamerawr.
The biggest thing to me, and the step I’m saying they are taking, is the addition of the keyboard. Frankly, voice communication has only come so far, and for games supporting multiple chat channels, like MMOs, voice is severely limited. Some games just need text, and without a physical keyboard its just too hard to do. If you don’t believe me, trying using virtual keyboards, or even your 10-key phone pad to write long messages. There is a reason people invented text message short hand. (And deep in my heart of hearts, I hope this goes toward the erradication of needless short hand.)
Should this take off as I expect it to, we could be seeing the beginning of the end of PCs as a gaming platform. Though some might think this is great, its not entirely all roses. How do indie game devs break into the console? Maybe Microsoft could start offering a program to burn viable 360 discs so that indie games could be run… but I don’t really see that happening because it opens alot of doors to piracy. Also, if game modding continues to be popular, consoles do not exactly support making mods, at least not modeling and creating textures. As, of course at this time I don’t believe Microsoft supports external game servers… the PS3 claims it will though (or will support paid hosting of game servers).
In any event, the 360 is adding something new that may have an effect on the industry as a whole. Time will tell…
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