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There are four classes in Lead and Gold, Gunslinger, Trapper, Deputy and Blaster. The Gunslinger possess only one weapon, a revolver. He is most effective at close range using his fanning ability. A technique which increases his rate of fire but reduces his accuracy. The Trapper is a sniper, armed with a Buffalo rifle which requires a reload after every shot. The Deupty carries a rifle and is most effective at medium to long range. He possess the ability to tag enemies, which marks their location. He may also remove tags from allied players. The Blaster is equipped with a double-barrelled shotgun that is lethal at close range. He also carries dynamite which can be used much like a grenade. The Trapper, Deputy and Blaster each carry a secondary weapon, a slow firing and inaccurate revolver that’s only useful when you are knocked down. Each character also has their own unique abilities called Synergy Effects.

Synergy Effects are a nice addition to the game. A Synergy Effect is a buff that is granted to you and all teammates nearby. It’s a system which encourages players to stick together and use team work. The Gunslinger increases accuracy, the Trapper increases critical hits, the Deputy increases damage and the Blaster increases defense. The Synergies do not stack so it is recommended to use different classes. Along with all of these, each class has a Healing Synergy, which automatically restores some of your own HP and that of any teammate you pass by. The strength of your Synergy Effects can be increased by leveling up. By increasing your rank, your Synergy Effect ability increases. However, all ranks you gain in a game are reset back to one once the game ends.

There are seven games modes and seven maps. Although one game mode and map are restricted to each other(the online tutorial), there is still plenty of variety in the game modes. There’s the usual deathmatch and capture the flag type game modes, along with different variations of Team A attacking certain points and objectives with Team B defending. With the games being only 5v5, the maps are adequately sized. This keeps the game flowing with lots of fighting. Depending on the damage you receive, you can either be killed or simply knocked down. You can be very easily killed while knocked down and you may still shoot using your revolver while in this state. Teammates can revive you if you get knocked down. A player from each team may carry a respawn flag which allows you to respawn on that players, this will keep you in the middle of the fighting at all times. All of this ofcourse, is if you can actually join a server.

Server browsing is a painful experience at the best of times and just down right horrific at the worst of times. You are unable to sort the servers by ping, players, game mode or map. They are simply thrown at you in a random order and in random quantities. Sometimes you get thirty servers listed, sometimes only five. You are required to continuously refresh the page for servers. This isn’t the only problem, not by a long shot. Servers are very slow to update, so expect to see misleading numbers of players per server, often I’ve joined servers listed as near full, only to have the game load and realise there’s no more than two or three people, or worse, I’m the only person in the server. The problems don’t end there, while the game does have dedicated server support, it’s a very rare occurrence that you find a dedicated server actually in use. The full servers? Player hosted servers with atrocious pings. The host simply breezes around with his ping of five, while you struggle to make it five steps with your ping above four hundred. I simply can’t understand why people choose to play on these player hosted servers instead of the low ping dedicated servers. All of this isn’t helped by the size of the player base, on average there are 50 players online at all times and at peak times, roughly 100.

I really struggled with scoring this game, I’m torn and in two minds over it. On one side, it’s a very fun game with plenty of content and some very nice features. On the other side, it’s got a torturous server browser, nonexistent developer support, tiny player base and quite frankly, a rather unintelligent player base. It appears that the game was simply thrown out the door and left to rot once complete. I really want to recommend this game but there’s a dwindling player base and a lack of support. Priced at €15, the content is certainly more than worth it, but with the tiny player base and how often you’ll struggle to join a server with a playable ping, it’s highly unlikely that you will get value for your money.

Available for purchase through Steam.

Also available on Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.

A few years ago the developer got on stage to say “fuck you” to EA at an awards ceremony, proudly denouncing big publishers. The company, since then, have done very little in terms of releasing new titles and their main platform for sales has been digital – namely steam. As such, the company has been in a spot of bother. So they decided to update their game Defcon which added achievements, which then gave it some promotion on Steam and got it sales, and with it, hard cash.

The developer went from a fully fledged indie darling to a company in dire straights. In recent times they developer had to sack most of its staff, sell it’s offices and furniture and go back to development from their bedrooms.

Valve okayed the promotion and even though it didn’t focus on DEFCON we were happy that we had achieved our core objective. This was the game-changer. When we started Introversion we’d had a string of successes and believed we were undefeatable, but it was a long time since we’d had a victory and we really needed one. Right on cue, Valve delivered. The promo exceeded all of our expectations and when combined with our low burn rate (no office or staff now) we had gone from being fearful about paying our mortgages to having a year’s operating capital in the bank.

As nice as the story is, it’s important to note that as much as Valve have saved one small developer, how many have they let die in the hallowed halls of Steam?

As a Mac user this pleases me greatly, but do beware of one caveat, the games list is not entirely populated just yet. In fact, the only proper game available right now is Portal (which is now free for the weekend). Team Fortress, Counter-Strike and other Source games will arrive as they’re able to be released for Mac, which will begin rolling out next week!

The verdict: It’s the same as Steam for Windows, basically. It is a shame he doesn’t load up any “real” games. Instead, his test is run with World of Goo – a relatively easy game for a system to chew through.

Click here for the store page. Game is 18′s, and you need a Steam account to avail of the offer.

Enjoy!

Obviously the main gimmick to this campaign is that it features the original Survivors from the first Left 4 Dead, with an obvious exception. Set after Dead Center with the Survivors still in the stock car from the shopping mall, they must work their way under a river to reach the other side, fuel up a generator to lower the bridge to get across and carry on their way.

The level design itself is reminiscent of that from the original L4D with not very open outdoor areas combined with tight indoor corridors leading everywhere. The three individual levels are quite varied, each with their own different challenges to overcome to push through, including the wedding, the sewer run and others.

The final is, rather annoyingly, another Scavenge-style affair, requiring you to fetch gas cans from across the map. However, the area in which the gas is spread around is considerably larger than the mall in Dead Center, which does offset the fact that you do have the remaining original Survivors helping you out with covering fire from above.

In all, the DLC is quite good. Nothing too amazing, but it’s also not lacking anything. The gameplay is good, but the story behind the campaign, and especially the inclusion of the original Survivors makes no sense whatsoever.

Video coverage of a run through the campaign can be seen below. Beware as it does contain spoilers for those of you who haven’t yet played the DLC.

Personally, I feel that this is Activision’s cheap attempt to garnish more sales out of Modern Warfare 2, as they are probably worried about the amount of competition they have received from DICE’s tactical shooter, Bad Company 2. I see this as Activision running with their tails between their legs trying to convert people to their game as they realise that BC2 is whooping their ass!

The three DLC packs are not discounted, however you save enough money with this deal to be able to pick up the base game and all the DLC for the same price as the full game normally costs!