So I’ve not done anything for the longest time probably since I started BREWTALITY.NET through all of it’s incarnations.  I’m still alive.   I’m playing Left 4 Dead 2 and Modern Warfare 2 at the moment.  Held back on MW2 because of the non-dedicated servers but after playing it I have to say it’s a LOT of fun and may end up superseding L4D2 (gasp!!).  L4D2 is a lot of fun as well so I’m hoping that mixing the two will give a longer time for it but time away from MW2 means you fall behind and get worse than you already are, and in my case that’s bad! lol  I’m not the best at it and tonight I didn’t especially like the guy (cheesy shooter movie?) wielding 2 sub machine guns but it’s still fun.  Spec Ops was especially fun after a few hours tonight, hope to do some more of that soon!

As for the dedicated servers on MW2, I’m not noticing much issue so far, although I’m not a daily player or spend all my free time gaming.  The fact that there are people already with prestige makes me wonder, can someone really do that in a few weeks unless they’re playing constantly?  I guess I know some that do it in WoW so anything is possible.  It is nice that people are “supposedly” earning their achievements unlike the debacle that World at War was.  I admit I played on some of the servers that had an ungodly amount of points for a kill, etc. but it grows old but so does having games like MW that casual gamers got the hell beat out of them because they didn’t play daily.  The nice thing with MW2 is they have perks for casual gamers who aren’t great (AKA me! heh).

Anyway, I need to do something with screenshots since I have 100’s that I’ve not uploaded including stuff from these two great games.  I have a crap load on my xFire profile which I’m finding is more and more useful as a gaming social site even though a lot of gamers don’t use it.  It keeps all my shots in their 1920×1200 glory so that’s a bonus and does the uploads in game rather than having to do anything with them here and spending precious space.  Still using FRAPS tho and have that subscription.   If you’re not into xFire, you should at least check it out.  Cheap product for a lot of usefulness… Videos, Frame Rates  & Screenshots.

Check out the xFire Screenshot page.

You can view this at Steam as well.

The Left 4 Dead Survival Pack is now available for the PC and Xbox 360, free of charge to all owners of the game. The full change list for the PC release is below. In addition, both the retail and Steam versions of the game (PC and 360) are now available for a special price. Check Steam and local retailers for pricing details. For more information about L4D, please visit www.l4d.com

Survival Mode

• New gameplay Mode
• 16 maps including Last Stand
• Leaderboards
• 7 new achievements

Versus Changes

• 2 new versus campaigns
• Fixed a case where versus team score would continue to be recalculated after the score panel was displayed
• Fixed an issue with recalculating the versus score health bonus for a player when they are rescued from being incapacitated
• Fixed being able to start a swing as an infected, then teleport to the survivors and have the claw swing hit a survivor
• Fixed a case where teleporting to the survivors would not reset the ability timer
• Fixed an exploit where you could load the chamber of a weapon with bullets by holding down the melee key
• Fixed a case where it was not possible to join a game while it was in a finale
• Fixed a rare case where listen servers would speed up the game over time
• Removed convars related to melee fatigue
• Fixed a case where infected players would get a respawn time on their initial spawn into a map

Server Changes

• Made ms_force_dedicated_server not require cheats
• Add a message when queuing a heartbeat
• Simplified setting of game mode
• Removed convars director_no_human_zombies and director_holdout_mode
• Added mp_gamemode [coop,versus,survival]

General
Added lobby join and leave messages

Versus Mode Changes

• Tank melee attack can now hit multiple Survivors in one swing
• Fixed Tank punch being able to hit targets behind walls
• Fixes to ‘Tank parking’. The Tank will now run back and attack the Survivors if he becomes AI due to two players expiring the frustration meter
• Fixed a case where a Tank frustration meter could run out right as he was in his death animation and he would come back to life
• Fixed a case where the Tank was moving too slowly while crouching and being shot
• Tanks now have the possibility of spawning in a slightly different position for the first and second teams (more…)

So I’m making up for lost time? For those of you (a lot of times like me) that don’t read news updates, this one came across L4D on  January 14th.  This as an awesome early update before they do the DLC/SDK update and should REALLY help the infected.  I’ve not played yet (I’m more exited to tell the world than play, I guess! ). It continues to show that Valve actually values players and their input.  Something the big boys (cough…Activision & EA) could learn a thing or 2 from.

Anyway, here’s a list of the fixes if you missed the update news…  (more…)

If you haven’t picked up the game yet, what are you waiting for?  Hop over to Amazon and grab Left 4 Dead [for the PC] or [for the Xbox 360] today!

I updated the gallery, you can check it out here.

Also, here’s a few of my favorites and the “movie” posters:

I’ve been pretty neglectful around here the past month and a half, mostly playing Left 4 Dead and keeping busy with other things.

Anyway, Valve has announced that the SDK is coming very soon as well as downloadable content and the other 2 maps for vs.  While I really want to play Dead Air and Death Toll in vs, I’m really excited to see the SDK coming soon!  This opens the door to user created content and some excellent mods that are already being worked on and just waiting for the SDK release including Dead Before Dawn from Darth_Brush.

A lot of the information can be found over at L4DMods as well as Left4Dead411.

Check out this video regarding the progress on the upcoming Valve release:

Here’s Darth_Brush’s intro to Dead Before Dawn