Left 4 Dead 2? More Like Left 4 Dead WOOOOO, amirite?

For my secular gift giving annual occurrence day, I was lucky enough to be given a shiny new copy of Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to, surprise surprise, Left 4 Dead. There wasn’t a lot of love for this game seeing as Valve managed to release it approximately a year after the original, very quick turn around for a game. As such, people presumed that the new content could simple have been released as a patch or DLC, rather than a whole game. Even once people started playing it, they claimed that the changes made to the game weren’t deserving of a whole new disc, that it felt like a rushed expansion, not a whole game. To those people, I cry from the hills “BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!” and this is why.

• The New Special Infected: In addition to the existing rosters of the hunter, smoker, boomer, tank and witch, three new special infected join the line up. There’s the incredible fast and very disruptive charger. As his name implies, he charges through the survivors, knocking them aside and grabbing one of them in the process, who he’ll proceed to to smash into the ground. Then you have the jockey, a rather infuriating spec-infec who jumps onto a survivor, then rides them about like a cheap whore on speed. This can often lead to you being corralled into either a hoard of infected or even worse, into a boomer or spitter. The spitter is either the sister, or worse, girlfriend, of the boomer. As her name implies, she spits (she defo doesn’t swallow). And her spit happens to be rather corrosive persistent acid that can be used as a denial of ground attack. In addition to these three newcomers, the witch now wanders around during the day (oh joy) and some of the classic spec-infec now have new skins more suitable of the deep south.
• Speaking of deep south, that brings me to the new levels and the new story, which you can actually call a story! Unlike L4D where each campaign was styled like a zombie B-movie, with only the vaguest of plot threads connecting them, L4D2 has an actual story with connection between campaigns and reoccurring characters. The levels are also very beautiful, featuring day and night cycles, weather and dynamic routes controlled by the improved AI.
• The biggest improvement is the portfolio of weapons. In the first game, there was a very limited selection of armaments, 9 in total (staring shotgun, machine gun and pistol, upgrade shotgun, machine gun, hunting rifle, second pistol, moltov and pipe bomb). In L4D2 I have actually not been able to count the weapons. There are multiple types of each class plus a new throw able, boomer bile, which makes infected turn on each other. There’s also the adrenaline (increases speed and ability to shake off infected), incendiary and explosive ammo (which you deploy so other survivors can upgrade their weapons with new ammo) a grenade launcher, and best of all, MELEE WEAPONS!!!!
• Melee weapons are the best new feature of the game! I cannot convey how much fun they are! I was cackling with joy as I decapitated zombies with a katana and making chainsaw noises as I sliced and diced (vading ding ding ding [chainsaw noise]) There are eight melee weapons in total; cricket bat, machete, guitar, chainsaw, katana, crowbar, fire axe and police baton. If you’re lucky enough to get the code from Game (in the UK) you’ll also have the limited edition baseball bat (but this doesn’t count to the use all melee weapon achievement). I love the fact each weapon has its own charm, The katana and machete both slice and dice, separating undead from undead body. The cricket bat is a nice little tip of the hat to Shaun of the Dead and the chainsaw is just too much fun to explain.
• Then you have the new survivors, new game mode and loads of immersive little features and ways of playing through the campaign. Gone is the method of run and gun, run and gun, stand and gun. You now have to collect items, turn off alarms, run gauntlets and basically play a much more realistic zombie apocalypse.

Well, that’s the end of my love for Left 4 Dead 2, all you people who trash talk it, you fucking phail! Peace! Lulz

My Dream Facebook/Twitter App

I love using facebook and twitter from my mobile phone. Since I got an unlimited data plan, I’ve been tweeting everywhere, from bed, from the toilet, from a car, everywhere. But there is a common problem; none of the twitter apps I’ve used, or even any I’ve seen, are perfect, lol. There are some features I’d love to see.

Firstly, cross-swiping would be nice. Many twitter apps feature side by side screens for time line, mentions, direct messages etc. I would like to see the ability to make a horizontal left the right or right to left swipe gesture, in order to transition between those screens.

Second, I’d love decent picture support. Not just twitpic, but a system by which I upload a photo, select which service to upload to (twitpic, flickr, facebook) and for facebook upload, which album and tags, not a mobile upload folder. After you select the service, you can choose to make a tweet about uploading the picture (either using a twitpic address or a tinyurl for other services).

My third dream feature would be automatic url reduction. You enter a full url, either in facebook or twitter, then the app detects the url and automatically converts it to a tinyurl address.

Geotagging and geotweeting integration would be great as that is a feature I’ve been dying to explore. It would be nice to be able to geotag a photo when uploading so other people can see where I took it, as well as the same for tweets. It would be useful to be able make a tweet about the quality of a restaurant and have the tweet contain the location of the eatery in question.

A Rant About Christmas

But first, a disclaimer. As a general rule, I love christmas. I've had my depressing festive periods in the past, as has everyone, but usually it rocks, especially last year.
Second Disclaimer, I am not prejudice against any form of religious denomination........But I am getting sick to death of christians at christmas!

Let me explain with some detail about the crux of my argument. Firstly, I am not debating the validity of the hypothesis that a child called, or later known as, Jesus, was born. Whether or not he was the offspring (and yet simultaneously the same entity as) and arbitrary deity is a discussion for another day. But Jesus WAS NOT BORN IN DECEMBER!!!! He was not born in winter, he was born in spring/summer. Common sense would dictate that two thousand years ago, a child born in the winter in the middle east would probably die. Christmas would have originally been celebrated in the middle of the year. But why, you may ask, do we celebrate it in December, on the 25th? Well, it was because the christians decided to do something very sneaky, they decided to cash in on a much more popular PAGAN festival, one known as Yule (and many other names)

Yule falls on the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, which by the Gregorian Calender, is the 21st of December. Some traditions of Yule included:

• Bringing an evergreen tree into the home so that the life it has through the cold winter months may be passed onto to the household
• Decorating the tree so that the tree nymphs won't be upset for being disturbed.
• Placing candles on the tree to keep said nymphs warm
• Stringing up mistletoe and ivy in honour of the Horned God (the male aspect of the bi-gendered god/goddess, NOT THE DEVIL). The Horned God rules over autumn/winter, then dies and is reborn as the Goddess for spring/summer.
• Honouring the image of the Robin as a messenger of the Horned God
• Taking the last log from the fire and keeping it for next year so there will always be fire wood, a 'Yule Log' you might say.

These all sound mighty familiar don't they? That's because 99% of 'Christ'mas is taken from Yule. I am not for one second arguing for a paganisation or secularisation of xmas, I don't mind christians thinking it's all their idea. What I do mind though is people making christmas ALL ABOUT CHRISTIANITY. I was in the bullring, watching some bangra dancers performing for a children's charity. They weren't doing it for christmas, they were taking advantage of the christmas shopping. But I heard one bigot say "Christmas is about Christians" and this got me so angry. Also on facebook, I've seen groups called "Lets put the Chirst back into Christmas" I for one thought that Christmas was about peace, love and good will to ALL men, whether they're black, white, yellow, christian, Hindu, Pagan, Wicca, Muslim or atheist. Yes, maybe other faiths are to blame for getting 'offended' at 'christian' imagery (Quick list of all the typical christian imagery:

• Star (kinda, stars are also an import pagan imagery as there is the winter star, believed to be the sign of the Horned God)
• Nativity Scene (in all fairness, biggest inaccuracy about xmas, as the bible never says Jesus was born in a stable or anywhere near animals.
• Even the 'angel' on the tree is originally a fairy, a poppet of a tree nymph.

So really, it's more that people are just trying to homogenise everything and the knee jerk reaction is to become bigoted. It's two terrible extremes and I wish everyone would SHUT THE FUCK UP and maybe just go for second "Well, thanks pagans for giving us the christmas we have today"