Just got this on PC. If I happen to be on when some of you are playing, shoot me an invite and I'll be glad to join you. Name's WolfDemon86 on Steam.

Tokubetsu, a cheap way to beat No Mercy on expert (campaign only, not versus):

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

http://www.saxypunch.com/miscimg/ach.php.png

This game is definitely loads of fun. Especially on Versus mode. Though, maybe I'm too critical about how people act on there, but there's a lot of people that don't even try to coordinate attacking. Like hunters just jumping on someone while other infected still haven't spawned yet as well as all of the survivors being right beside them, and then there's all of us progressing forward as survivors, only to turn around, and spot one of your teammates playing around half a map away, and get pounced.

While I agree that there is not a lot of 'coordinated' attacks, a lot of the times I'll go ahead and pull this stunt is when I, unfortunately, am the only hunter/smoker alive and everyone else is dead. The reason for that being is that every second that you cost the survivors from moving forward, those seconds are spent with the other infected soon spawning. Sometimes it's the difference between a decent attack made by just a boomer, or through the small confusion of knocking the other survivors back, a newly spawned smoker can nab another one, thus costing the survivors more time they should be using to run to the safe room.

Though, I agree, when all four infected are up and running, a coordinated attack is great, with the boomer being THE handiest infected to have period. I can't express how grateful I am as a hunter/smoker to see a boomer nail two or three people with a spit or an explosion so that the survivors that are still free have to mow down a wall of zombies just to get to the person I pounced or entangled.

Last night was epic...first map of Blood harvest and I was playing with three other people who were halfway decent at playing infected...it went down so smoothly halfway through. Me and two others were hunters, and we had one smoker. The smoker (in plain sight) snared someone up, and us hunters systematically (within like...3 seconds) all managed to pounce on every single other survivor so that all four of them were completely screwed.

Weird thing was, they were actually all laying there, snagged or pounced, and it didn't stop...the round only ended when they were all brought to that incaped phase. Which was weird in my book.

Yeah, I'll do the same in those situations as well, and it's understandable to do so. Though the guys I meant are the ones where most of the team is alive, and setting up an ambush up ahead, they'll go and attack them too soon. Oh, the ones that annoy me the most though are when you're a smoker, and you catch someone, and then a hunter for whatever reason will ignore the person coming to save that person, and instead pounce on the guy you just snagged.

Though, I seen a potentially epic show today. I failed to do this myself another day, and someone did it today. Essentially on the fourth map of No Mercy, with the elevator someone caught one of the survivors and dragged them out of the elevator as it was closing. It was beautiful.

Also, I can understand why the round didn't end. In that situation it didn't matter, but I've had a lot of times where I had pinned the last guy as a hunter, and a tank has come up and knocked me off, only for the guy to kill the tank, and bring back all his party.

Truth be told, I forgive a LOT of people who pounce something I've snagged due to the fact that lag and all that shit has a lot to do with it.

There have been times where I've wanted to pounce a Louis that was standing in front of a Francis, only to have pounced a Francis instead of a Louis.

That's why I typically try to snag after a hunter pounces, or hopefully the hunter isn't lagging enough to accidnetly pounce my guy.

Yeah, I've done the pouncing an incapacitated guy when I meant to pounce the guy whos up beside him.

Though, the people that generally pounce my smoker'd guy are usually those who had plenty of time to know I have it. Like that I've just dragged the person from maximum distance to myself and I'm beating on him, and the hunter will pounce him, and the person coming to save them moments later arrives and slaughters both of us.

I could understand it being, "Oh, lag, sorry about that man." but there have been times where it happened multiple times in the same match by the same person. Though now that I'm talking about the game, I really want to go play it.

Oh hey it's the lobby freeze bug I guess I'll always have to play games in progress and can't play with my friends, yay Valve. :)

I've noticed for the last few days a lot of servers have been lagging like shit...which I'm not sure what to blame it on.

As for the lobby freeze...happens to me like...1 out of 100 games so I'm not going to worry about it too much. I'll chalk it up to it's the 6 days between christmas and new years where everyone really just doesn't give two shits about their job and enjoys the small time frame two super holidays.

Give it a week and it'll be fixed.

Yeah, for me it happens 4 of every 5 times. Apparently using an on-board NIC or setting the right doo-dads on a Killer NIC will fix the problem, but I have to use wireless because of this room.

The lag is happening because it's the holidays and everybody's playing.

Sup guys, I was able to aquire the game this new years eve, so I'll be able to blast zombies with you all now :3

Pang and Sass led me through a session and its pretty fun. I got dropped the first two times (Which I suspect was due to fullscreen mode), but after that it was smooth sailing (After I went to windowed mode).

Dark Nation

Please

Do not use a mic with speakers again

it made my ears sad

that is all :(

sorry! i didn't know that was a problem! i will correct this for next time.

Just got the game a couple days ago and am finding it to be quite fun. It's not really the type of game I'd ever play by myself on account of being a pansy, but with 3 other friends playing it's highly entertaining.

So far I've gone through about 3 of the campaigns (was AFK for half of Death Toll), with Dead Air being the one I haven't tried yet. Despite my lack of familiarity with FPS games it's been fairly easy to pick up and play, though I seem to have a knack for setting off Witches.

Haven't tried versus yet -- I prefer playing with friends rather than random people, so I guess I'll have to see when 7 other people manage to get on at the same time.

It seems like every server only runs No Mercy or Blood Harvest, are Death Toll and Dead Air just exploit-ridden or what?

Were they for Vs? Well you can only play NM and BH on Versus so that would explain it, but I hear the other two will become playable in the next update whenever-that-may-be. DA is my favourite campaign so playing Vs. on that would be fun.

I've only played with a few of you so far, and it's been fun. I'm not able to use a mic though so I dunno how you guys would feel playing with mic-less ppl. I hear of ppl kicking people with no mics from their games, but I never play with strangers.

You found a server running Blood Harvest? LUCKY

"There's a witch nearby"
"What where"
*points flashlight*
*incapped*
*killed*
"lol"

Although the best one seriously was when I saw the witch, ran past it to higher elevation to try something out, and then you ran right behind me and triggered her somehow.

I have only done Dead Air and Blood Harvest. The Director is a total hater since the only time I did Dead Air, Taco + a friend got to safety while another friend + I got hit with a crate to the face by a Tank, which blocked the exit so we ended up dying. The initial run of Blood Harvest with Taco and his roomie went smoothly, then later when I tried it with a full team (Saka the Witch Startler included) it was nothing but wipe after wipe after wipe. The best wipe being my knee-jerk reaction to seeing a tank = throw a molotov. Except it was our brilliant strategy to all hole up in the restroom, with the tank. So we all just kind of lit up all pretty like :eagletear:

I really wish Saka would stop shooting me though. The black man is NOT A ZOMBIE.

I don't always use a mic because the room I'm using doesn't have a door and I can't really control myself when a Hunter's on me, but generally the best way to play without a mic is don't be a dumbass and follow the orders of the guy who DOES have a mic. Maybe type something so people know you're not just some jackass.

Additional Spam:
OH SHIT A HOARD

*runs away*

*gets pounced*

The best thing you can do if you don't have a mic is learn to make effective use of the voice commands (Z and X menus, since some people don't know). Spamming "LOOK" at a cache of molotovs is a lot faster than typing in your discovery, since the Survivors will happily call out the names of any items you tell them to look at.

Of course, this goes both ways, it's important to LISTEN not only to chatter over the mic but to the chatter amongst the survivors. Zoey will often notice things Zoey's player doesn't.

(Of course, this may only apply to PC, I have no idea whether XBox version has radial menus)

Luckily I do play with people who has mics so I listen to them when I can. I actually have a mic of my own but I can't use it as the PC is in the living room and I don't want to disturb all my family members (I live in an apt). If the PC was in my bedroom or something, then it would have been different.

I hear you can also bind voice commands to a key too which would be even beter than using the Z/X keys. Not sure how to do it though. I think it's something like 'bind L "look"' or something?

As far as I know the 360 version doesn't have any menus for voice commands, so mic-less people can't communicate at all. I kick anyone without a mic when starting a game now since generally they always seem to do their own thing and ignore what's being said. There are plenty of reasons why people may not be able to use mics, but they're always such a drain on everyone else that I've stopped putting up with it.

I guess you folks wouldn't want to play with me then, since I don't have a mic. Actually, none of us in the games I played used mics, but we typically got along fine. I guess it helped that half the team really knew what they were doing so the unexperienced ones could keep up.

Stop looking like a zombo, mang. :(

I think I fixed the Mic problem, but its hard when I don't have pang or someone else to help me work through the apparent problem with it without getting super impatient after like 10 seconds.

In other news, I came across this:

http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/3576/tank01aq9.jpg

Apparently someone crafted together a papercraft version of the Tank, which can now terrorize your home.

Papercraft: You'll Need Teamwork To Finish This Left 4 Dead Tank

D/L w/ Instructions in the article.