Confederacy of Crunches

After multiple frustrating attempts, I unlocked this achievement in Left 4 Dead 2. The requirement is that the player must go through an entire campaign only utilizing the various melee weapons at his disposal; that means no bile bombs, pistols, shotguns, or anything with a ranged attack.

While that sounds simple enough, there’s a hitch that kept getting me. When a player is incapacitated, he brings out his pistol to defend himself while waiting for someone to help him back up. The pistol comes out regardless of whether or not the player is using a melee weapon or not. One minor slip up and the achievement is lost. And if you’re in the middle of fighting when you become incapped, it’s almost impossible to not accidently click the mouse one more time and fire the gun.

But today I played with Britt and some random experienced players and together the entire Dead Center campaign was scarily easy. Achievement unlocked!

L4D2 Game Update For February 5th 2010

While we wait for The Passing to come out, the minor updates continue rolling out. This is my first update since purchasing the game (which shows how recently I bought the game), and it’s good to see Valve doesn’t just look after Team Fortress 2.

This update mainly concerned map fixes and the AI/Bots of both the Survivors and the Player Zombies (in Survival and related modes). There’s not really much in here that interested me or that I could really go into, apart from a minor buff the Tank received. Melee weapons have been reduced against the Tank to about half of it’s original effectiveness. I’m hoping this doesn’t make earning the achievement too hard.

You can see the rest of the changes here.

Taking down a Tank

Taking down a Tank can be difficult even on the easier game settings, so thinking of facing one on advanced or expert is terrifying for me. However, there is ways to get over this hurdle with the least amount of hurt possible.

One such way, which I’m quite fond of, involves a molotov cocktail and a whole heap of running. When the Tank is sighted, throw the cocktail at him and light him on fire. Once he’s ignited, MOVE! Run in the direction of the start point, jumping over stairs and stuff. Unlike games like Team Fortress 2, enemies in this game stay lit on fire and take damage until they finally die. Tank’s and other infected also work via the AI Director, and will traverse the terrain sometimes awkwardly; climbing things players easily leap across. Using this, you can usually outrun the Tank and survive until he dies, with little to no damage done to your team.

This is how you also get the easily obtained Towering Inferno achievement (earned by simply lighting a Tank on fire), if you hadn’t already. You can thank me later, or now in the comments. Also, if you have your own tactics for taking down a tank, feel free to share them in the comments.

“Were you raised in a barn?!”

For the first post in this section of the site, I figured I’d throw out there a simple but often overlooked tip.

Close. The. Goddam. Door.

Simple, right? Infected are unable to open doors, so making sure you close them all behind you can stop a stray infected surprising you, or especially a Smoker, as they tend to sneak up behind your team a lot. In the case of running away from a Tank, closing a door can buy you a second of extra time, as he has to break it down before continuing the chase. The extra time bought can often be a lifesaver…if you have the moment to close the door anyway.

Man vs Tank

I unlocked the Man vs Tank achievement in Left 4 Dead for taking out a tank by myself without any help from teammates, so I’m clearly hardcore. Sure, it was on easy. Sure, the Tank AI glitched and was stuck in one spot. Sure, this meant I was able to shoot it with just a pistol in order to ensure I unlock Akimbo Assassin as well. But I still managed to do it.
Details? Fine. I was playing the Blood Harvest campaign, and we were on top of one of the train carriages under a big stone bridge. The tank spawned in that area, and tried to get on top of the carriage. However, he got wedged under the bridge where he could see us enough that the AI wanted to charge for us instead of find another route, but because of the height of the bridge he couldn’t quite hoist himself up onto the train. This led to me being able to take him out with just a pistol and win at life. I was afraid the bots would jump in to help, but the tank was just out of their aim, so they just stood there and waited for me to do the job. Awesome.