Well, griefing, in one form or another, is to be expected in any coop (or
team vs. team) game. I already have a stable community of friends on Steam,
and I usually play with them. However I was rather lucky with L4D - I got
kicked out only once while playing an infected because I was "da n00b"
(which was true, BTW ^_^)

Just be sure not to be recognized first :^D

Exactly why I do not play MP games.  I should not have preordered this
game.  No more preorders for me!

-pw

I haven't witnessed this happening yet in L4D, but I wanted to comment
on team play in co-op in general.

In COD:WorldAtWar, co-op mode is very dependent on team play.  To the
point where if you have even one guy who wants to run off too far from
the other players, it can become very frustrating to the others
(because you have to constantly run over to him to heal him when he
gets put down).  Team play is probably more important in this game
than any other I've witnessed.

Some folks are just not accustomed to playing as a team.  They are
used to single-player gaming, or maybe mutli-player games where you
can play as a lone wolf or as a team without a lot of consequence one
way or another.

In COD:W it is a sink or swim proposition.  If one of you dies, its
back to the last checkpoint.  Nobody will get pissed if you're working
as a team but die anyway, but people will get outraged if you're
lone-wolfing, being intentionally oblivious to what your team mates
are doing, and not even trying to pull your own weight.

To some extent, Left4Dead is like that as well.. its designed for lots
of teamwork and cameraderie even if the penalties for lone-wolfing are
not as steep as COD:W.  I'm not saying this applies to you in any way
in the scenario you described, obviously I wasn't there, but I wanted
to point it out because the new breed of co-op games with emphasis on
teamwork seems to be a concept that takes some longer than others.

Playing well as a team takes practice for those not used to it but it
definately forces you to play differently.  Some might feel teamwork
takes some of the fun out of mindless fragfests and such, but in the
end it can be extremely rewarding (much more so than lone-wolf
oriented games).

When first learning a game it also helps to be humble.. accept your
own goofs and apologize for them, announce your own noobmanship when
applicable and politely ask for patience.

I don't think the ones at Gamespot and also Maximum PC made this too
clear (at least to my retard brain!). I based my purchase on those
two.

I just reread the Gamespot review.  It makes no mention of:

1) That it's multiplayer only (quite a bit was spent on the single
player campaigns)

2) That there is NO save feature

3) That there is NO Manual

Heads should roll over that.  I will never trust a review of theirs
again.

I hope that's true. I'm feeling rather disappointed and not a little
cheated to be honest. For some reason I feel as if I paid for a full
game but only received a demo.

I've got a heap of games to play as well. I just started "Legendary"
yesterday. It's rather like "Requiem: Avenging Angel" in many ways.
It's a better game than "Turning Point: Fall of Liberty" but like that
game there's no support for FSAA which is really annoying and hugely
lazy on the part of the developers.

I still have Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Crysis Warhead, Stalker: Clear Sky,
Code of Honour: Conspiracy Island and Dead Space to play. Although I
am about half way through the latter, I have become incredibly bored
with it. I'm using the same weapon that I used at the start, meeting
the same type of enemies and solving the same kind of puzzles since
level 2 and quite frankly, it's become dull and predictable. I may
well end up never finishing it.

For me, Dead Space is the most overrated game of 2008. It's not a bad
game, but it's the not the classic that I was expecting having read
all of the reviews.