As for the new(ish) versus maps, I think they’re ok. At least it’s no No Mercy 4, where you can’t do jack shit as a hunter or smoker for 90% of the map. :-( Playing the finale of dead air as the tank is actually pretty sweet with all those luggage carts lying around. Tank smash!

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee135/emdeehay/l4d_sv_lighthouse0026.jpg

But we had a really good spot and plenty of ammo at the ~15 minute mark, so I think we still could have lasted ~30mins total even with tanks. Will have to try it again sometime.

Also, yeah, totally altered tactics, like using corners and shooting the zombies! The YouTube videos will no doubt be amazing. But seriously, the strategies we used to get 70 mins were none other than expected. From the other levels I’ve got >10 mins on so far it’s been pretty similar, too.

The major differences I’ve noticed are that tanks have less HP and hunters have a longer knock-back of 2 seconds on survivors surrounding their pounced target.

So you don’t have to move when tanks come (they’re dead before they reach you) and you have to either spread out a bit so that you’re not all in range of hunter knock-back, or make sure all hunters are also dead before they reach you, which can get tough after 7 mins depending on the map and where you’re holding up in it.

I have yet to try it out on the PC, but on the 360 Survival mode is just a waste of time. Bronze is doable, Silver maybe, but Gold seems out of the question. The bigger problem is that the difficulty curve is too steep and the sense of achievement miniscule at best when compared to beating an entire campaign gloriously culminating in a finale.

Survival has none of the pacing of Campaign mode and it also removes a lot of the surprise element. The fact is you know you’re going to be swarmed with zombies and special infected constantly, with as many as 3 Smokers snatching away team members at the same time. There’s no surprise for when you get a Tank or get snatched by a Smoker, it’s to be expected, you can almost set your watch by it. Survival removes the AI Director, the best feature of the entire game, and the biggest reason why the Campaign and Versus can enjoy such longevity.

Another issue is that the game world is reduced to something small and static. Inevitably ’sweet spots’ in those arenas will be found, and from there on it’s simply a case of committing to a regimented plan by sticking in the same spot and repeating the same actions with the aim of increasing your successfulness. That is stale, repetitive and predictable gameplay, and that’s why I don’t rate Survival mode at all.

I can see why Survival was conceived. You can’t always commit to an hour or more playing through a campaign, so it’s supposed to fill a hole in the L4D experience by providing a quick, dip-in, dip-out game mode. While on paper it does this, I don’t think it works to the game’s strengths, and is almost wayward in comparison to the monumental design of the rest of the game.

I also don’t think Dead Air or Death Toll are geared up for the Special Infected in Versus, but it’s nice to have something different to play even if they haven’t been re-optimised with this in mind.

Note:
My experiences are solely from the 360 version at this point, and from the other comments in this thread and from having mostly played the PC version prior to this patch, I know that mouse aiming would make Survival a lot more survivable. But I don’t think this undermines my main point that the game lacks gameplay in the longterm. The further you want to push your score, the more monotonous you have to be. Monotony is the diametric opposite of what the AI Director so joyfully and uniquely provides, and the AI Director is what makes L4D so damn good in the first place.

Also, as for game settings I think there should be an option to turn off the ’see your team mates through walls feature”. That alone would drastically change campaign play and add to the scary factor when folks get separated.

Survival, the only way to win, is not to play.

My initial foray into Survival is best described with a story of my first game.

My friends had just been offed by a smoker, and two hunters when a tank climbed up next to me and swung at me (3:40).

My first reaction, oddly, was to jump, on the theory it would simply send me away from the tank. And away from tank, obviously, means good. So I sail up onto a tiny roof, surrounded by zombies (3:45). My gun was out of ammo, so I pistoled the grounp around me, then melee’d the wave jumping up (3:50). I reload the pistols, as I had forgotten to change to my primary, and took down another wave (3:55, 10 health.) Then it was just a huge mass of them swarming me, and me alternately firing/meleeing them off. 3:56, 8 health. 3:57, 4 health. 3:59, 2 health… 4:00:02, I died.

This MASSIVE cheer breaks out over my headset and my friends are just screaming in joy.

So yes, I enjoy survival.

Survival mode is fun but I wish there were defined breaks once in a while. Maybe like Stonewall in Tales of Valor.

Stonewall with zombies. That would have made ToV worth the money.

Survival is just superb though. Run through a dozen times in the time it takes for a campaign so cocking up doesnt matter too much and just adds to the fun. The lighthouse map isnt that great imo though. Mainly because you’re bound to get hit off the map by one of the tanks which ruins it for me personally.

Don’t melee constantly. If you’re doing that, you deserve to die. You can mow down a mob by rapid-firing your pistols into their heads, melee of the remaining few zombies and reload and the same time, and rinse and repeat. It’s really that simple.

Oh, and if you don’t like getting blasted into space by tanks: Don’t let them do it. Don’t let them chase you that way. If all 4 survivors blast him, he dies pretty quickly.