[Mongoose]

Pressing the install button is hard.

Srsly.  My clicking finger cramps so easily.

[NGTM-1R]

Pressing the install button is hard.

Anyway, when are you studs usually playing?

We just got done, actually. On weekdays it's usually about now if we want to get done before dinnertime. Or break for dinner.

[NGTM-1R]

The twin pistols are several times more effective then the twin PDWs for some reason.

I mean seriously, 45-50 kills a mission, three-five rounds to kill with the pistols. 7 kills a mission, 20 rounds to kill with the PDWs. That's...not right.

[BloodEagle]

PDWs are less ammo-efficient than the twin pistols, but the twin pistols can't take down 20+ aliens in under three seconds.

[NGTM-1R]

PDWs are less ammo-efficient than the twin pistols, but the twin pistols can't take down 20+ aliens in under three seconds.

I'm fairly sure the PDWs can't either. They take more rounds to kill a single target. I was just testing that on Easy. Pistols are amazing crowd-clearers; I did most of Residental alone with them after everyone else loldied in the ducts.

[qazwsx]

aye, I've noticed that the PDWs will leave you short of ammo extremely quickly, and for a game in which no-one wants to take an ammo crate, that's a pretty useless weapon,

[BloodEagle]

I'll do another test later, but I distinctly recall being able to clear a zerg rush, by myself, with one PDW clip.

aye, I've noticed that the PDWs will leave you short of ammo extremely quickly, and for a game in which no-one wants to take an ammo crate, that's a pretty useless weapon,

You definitely don't want to take them as your only weapon, especially on the longer missions.

-----------

Funny Story:

It was the bridge level, and we'd made it all the way to the end.  The ship descended, and we were crossing.  Then one of my "allies" sidestepped off it it.

Apparently you can fall to your death, on that level.

[NGTM-1R]

Funny Story:

It was the bridge level, and we'd made it all the way to the end.  The ship descended, and we were crossing.  Then one of my "allies" sidestepped off it it.

Apparently you can fall to your death, on that level.

I had to jump off the cliff because I was bugged and the level wouldn't end once. Fortunately, it was the only level with a cliff to jump off of.

[Polpolion]

Pressing the install button is hard.

Anyway, when are you studs usually playing?

We just got done, actually. On weekdays it's usually about now if we want to get done before dinnertime. Or break for dinner.

Dang. If Polpolion is ever online when you have a game, invite him.

[mxlm]

Fortunately, it was the only level with a cliff to jump off of.

Actually, it's not. That level where you have shoot a barrel to make a bridge? You can fall off the bridge.

Also, am I reading you correctly? All your buddies loldied on easy?

[NGTM-1R]

Also, am I reading you correctly? All your buddies loldied on easy?

Seperate anecdotes should have been seperate. The Pistols bit was on Normal and I'd run out of healing gun juice when everyone else picked up a parasite at once.

The Easy testing was me beating up the offline practice set for the express purpose of testing relative lethality.

[Mongoose]

Okay, so I did go through the "work" of downloading this and trying it out, and my experience with an offline run-through of a single mission was...interesting.  It's probably because I've been playing Shadowgrounds over the past week, but there were a few disparate features between the two that were giving me trouble.  For one, the realistic reloading was absolutely killing me, as every shooter I've ever played requires you to mash down the R button continuously. I was really missing some sort of flashlight function beyond the disposable flares; from a plausibility standpoint, it doesn't make much sense that something like that wouldn't be in there.  The squad control setup was just complex enough that I was bothered by the lack of an in-depth tutorial (I had the same complaint about TF2 until Valve finally implemented one in a recent update), and I sort of fumbled my way through the mission.  I was also unclear about whether there was supposed to be some sort of overriding backstory to the game, which would be a plus.  It was reasonably fun, though, and I'd probably be interested in at least giving multiplayer a shot.

Also, I was surprised to exit back to the desktop and find a "Virtual memory too low" warning in my taskbar, especially considering that I have 4 GB of physical RAM between my motherboard and video card.  Maybe this anemic power supply is causing issues after all.

[BloodEagle]

You unlock the flashlight way down the line.

And good luck finding a game where you can take the time to read those messages.

[NGTM-1R]

There is a backstory for the campaign, and you can read it if you have a slow or considerate host (or you play single-player via the dev console to switch levels). The character backstories and commentary in in-game logs hint at an overarching backstory (and there's more of that than there is for L4D), the broad strokes of which I present here:

The Swarm are probably just short of sentient, and they are fairly old foes for humanity by the time the game starts. An intial Swarm onslaught destroyed a lot of human colonies, mainly because inadequate precautions were taken to contain them. They do not appear to have independent spaceflight. The current policy is one of the containment. Certain corporations continue to try and pull a Weyland-Yutani like in the Aliens-verse, and to combat that the IAF has regulators and inspectors with very broad powers.

Unfortunately, the regulators don't always catch things in time. You're here to clean up after someone's mistakes.

[Ghostavo]

Just managed to finish the last part of Timor Station on hard, solo after all of my team died from infection. 

Speaking of Timor Station, anyone else feels horrified by doors? I died once because a flying bug pushed me into a falling door.

Regarding pistols vs PDWs, while the pistols have double the damage per shot, the PDW has almost x4 the ammo per clip. So I don't see why PDWs are somehow bad. As long as you don't press continuous fire you'll be ok.

[NGTM-1R]

I dunno man, I was dominating the game on Cargo Elevator with pistols. 67 kills vs. 30-something each for the two guns with miniguns.

Maybe I'm just really awesome with pistols. I dunno. You definitely expend your ammo too quickly to finish a later mission without reloads packing PDWs.

[mxlm]

What difficulty were you playing on?

[NGTM-1R]

What difficulty were you playing on?

Normal. I'm fairly sure a lot of it had to do with my being a smarter player; none of them brought a sentry for the elevator and I only had tripmines to deploy since I had just promoted and I'm the medic. The two big zerg rushes of the level, just as you pass through the opening and in the labs were split between me and the tech with pistols. They really do work well as crowd-clearers.

[BloodEagle]

Personally, I'm amazed at how poorly some of the random people play the game.  Like a technician taking along a sentry turret on Landing Bay.  Or running up the middle of the bridge level.  Or not taking flamethrowers on the residential level.  :/

Or trying Timbor Station without a medic. 

----

DISCOVERY:

On the first un/weldable door at the bridge level, if you stand all the way in the alley, enemies will fail to notice your existence.

[Mongoose]

Personally, I'm amazed at how poorly some of the random people play the game.  Like a technician taking along a sentry turret on Landing Bay.  Or running up the middle of the bridge level.  Or not taking flamethrowers on the residential level.  :/

Or trying Timbor Station without a medic. 

Maybe they're like me and don't know what the hell they're doing yet because there's no comprehensive tutorial.