Rant 575 / I Forgot To Type In A Title Until After I Published The Rant

After a long time in L4D2, I've finally realized that though all weapons have their place in the game, the truth is that this is a misleading concept.

Since I'm bored (no games everywhere atm), I'll just go through all the weapons in L4D2.


First, the pistols, ALL of them. The best thing you can do with them is to throw them away and get a melee weapon. Why?

1) You already have a ranged weapon as your primary weapon.

2) The best is either you get a magnum (shown above) which is slow but accurate or you get dual pistols that have horrible accuracy but 30 rounds per load. Due to the first point, these are actually moot. Get a baseball bat. It wipes out everything on your screen when the horde swarms over you.

3) There's a certain rhythm to push and melee (right click and left click) that you can use that basically makes you untouchable at close range until you begin to tire and your push gets a cooldown timer. No pistol can do that.

Pistols are useless. Dump them. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to reload while a teammate is disabled and no one else is able to help him but you, your team sucks. 4 of you sticking together should not result in this at all. When it does happen, just reload and let him suffer till you're done pushing rounds into your gun, or use your melee weapon if possible.


Second, melee weapons! My favourite weapon type because it is the best against everything but Tanks and Smokers. Yes, even against Spitters despite the pool of acid that appears when they die. Just melee them and jump away immediately and you can get away without getting hurt.

I'll even melee the Boomers if there's a corner I can back into close by.

Here are the weapons placed in levels according to my personal experience with them:

Best melee weapon:

The nightstick because it's the fastest of all melee weapons.

First runner-up:


The katana and machete because they are only a tiny bit slower.

Everything else not mentioned above are the same - better than pistols. All melee weapons do the same damage to everything, so only the speed matters.



The Chainsaw has its own category, which is separate from Everything Else. I avoid it because it takes too long to set up. In other words, when you switch from your gun to the chainsaw, it takes a lot of time before you can use it. Worse is that it has limited fuel and there's no guarantee you will find another melee weapon before you finish it.

To use a Chainsaw properly, you will have to use it as your primary weapon due to its long setup time. This means you MUST be leading the team because it's too dangerous to be used frequently when a teammate is in front of you. And again, limited fuel means you will run out quickly.







The Pump and the Chrome Shotguns are the worst guns in the game. As powerful as they are, they have a long cooldown between each shot and can only hold 8 rounds at a time, meaning you have to reload constantly.

They suck at mid to long-range, and at close range all the melee weapons can beat them. The only time where they are better than an axe is when you encounter Boomers or Tanks since these are huge targets that you don't want to get into melee range with.

But like I said before, I'd rather get a crowbar than any of these shotguns since they're better in most situations and my teammates can cover the Boomers and Tanks.

If you insist on using these, then this would be one of the few situations in which pistols are a better option than melee weapons in order to kill at mid-range.









The Combat and Tactical Shotguns are a major improvement over the previous shotguns. These two are supposed to be slightly different in that the Combat Shotgun has a smaller spread but IMO they both feel the same.

These guns are actually slightly effective at mid-range, which is kind of useful at times but personally I still dislike shotguns because they're prone to hitting my teammates when I try to cover their backs. However the roar of the Tactical Shotgun does one give a sense of power when firing.

A magnum (and no other pistol) is a good choice as a secondary weapon for these shotguns since you can snipe with it.





The Silenced Submachine Gun and the Submachine Gun are the basic machine guns in L4D2. I always go for them because they are too accurate to ignore compared with the other starting weapons, ie the worst guns in the game.

The difference in damage and accuracy is minimal but the Silenced SMG does not attract attention when you hit the zombies from afar. However, both suck when you're fighting a horde of common infected aka normal zombies. In such a situation, you need melee weapons to take over.

These two are great at the beginning for helping your buddies since they're accurate enough to not hit them when you fire at the zombies close to them.







This is the Combat Rifle. Its main selling point is that it's the most accurate when you're moving, ie it's the best for shooting on the go. Damage isn't as good as the AK47 and accuracy while standing isn't as good as the M16. Probably the best rifle for the final map in the Parish campaign in which you had to run across the bridge, if you're the spraying type.

Greatest disadvantage is its max ammo capacity. Since it fires 3 rounds per tap and has 60 rounds per magazine, that makes only 20 shots per reload. To make it worse, you only carry another 360 rounds so that's 6 reloads or 7 magazines total. Ammo conservation is the most important thing to remember when using this gun. Every shot must count.





The M16 is the most accurate rifle in the game outside of the sniper rifle category. Its killing power may be crap compared to the Combat Rifle and the AK but you can semi-snipe with it and spray at the same time.

This is the best rifle for Headshot-Only mode. In other situations, I prefer a sniper rifle if I wanted to snipe or an AK47 when playing in Realism Mode.





This is the famous AK47. All first-person shooters set in the present times must have this Russian gun. It's probably the best Russian invention after vodka, and is easily recognizable by its brown wooden parts.

Like in reality, it has better damage than the M16 but worse accuracy. While the AK47 can kill a normal zombie with one bullet in Normal difficulty, it has difficulty in long-range combat situations.

When I'm in the mood for spraying, I prefer this to the M16 just because things just die when I fire. However, it gets annoying when I can't help a buddy who is somewhat far away from me.

Speaking of spraying, the AK47 is not meant to be used as a machine gun. You do not hold your fire button and let the bullets fly. The accuracy of this gun deteriorates horribly as you spray, so it's best to crouch and fire one bullet at a time with taps.








The Hunting Rifle is the inferior version of the Sniper Rifle. Best accuracy together with the Sniper Rifle but half the magazine size. It also kills common zombies with one shot plus it can kill multiple zombies in a line.

Not only does it pierce through zombies but it can do the same to teammates too. However this is not recommended since it can seriously injure your friends on Advanced and Expert difficulties.

Not to forget, it has the Scope mode in which you look through the rifle scope to greatly increase your accuracy. However I've never bothered to use it mainly because I wasn't aware of it until recently, and that in turn was because I don't have a Mouse3 button (mousewheel click). Even after I learnt of it, I still disliked it because it made me blind to too much of my surroundings.



The Sniper Rifle is my favourite weapon in L4D2, as I have said before long ago. It's basically the same as the Hunting Rifle except it's got a 30-round magazine. With this gun and a decent hand-eye coordination, you're basically a killing machine at mid and long-range.

This gun is great for killing zombie hordes that are running towards you from a distance, which happens fairly frequently especially in final maps. In addition, it makes it possible to kill all special infected other than the Tank before they can hit your team.

The biggest con of this gun is that you can't fire while moving. You always have to crouch before firing to get the maximum accuracy so on maps like the bridge-crossing one in the Parish, it's only good for killing special infected and covering any team members who are straggling behind.

With some experience and enough open space, you can actually hold off a small wave of zombies without resorting to your melee weapon.

Also has the Scope mode but like the Hunting Rifle, I just crouch and fire without it.




The M60 machine gun has only 150 rounds and no reload. Despite of this, it is still a pretty good weapon due to its killing power. High firing rate and and fantastic damage makes this gun extremely powerful in most situations.

This gun is like the AK47 but even more powerful. It's great at mid and short-range and kind of decent at long-range.

Ammo conservation is of utmost importance when using this gun. Avoid using more than 1 round per common infected as much as possible since it only takes 1 to make them explode. When facing a horde of them, snipe till they get close enough to hit you, then either spray or switch to melee. Crouching is a must when you want to save ammo by raising accuracy.







The most powerful weapon in the game, the Grenade Launcher. If you thought killing 3 zombies per shot with that Sniper Rifle was an achievement, that's actually nothing compared to killing an entire horde of 15+ zombies with 1 shot from the GL.

Due to its massively destructive nature, it's a very clumsy weapon. You cannot help your buddies with this weapon except in the more dire situations because it most likely WILL hurt that buddy you're trying to help as well.

The Grenade Launcher takes some getting used to due to its trajectory. You have to use it for some time to get a feel of its curve. If you aren't good with this, avoid it like the plague on Advanced and Expert. You'll be a bigger threat to your team than a frickin Tank if you take it.

It's not merely because of the friendly fire you will cause but also because of the Witches you may accidentally disturb. Witches disable you with one hit on Advanced and kill you outright on Expert.












I'm getting the impression that my course cohort may be small and most of the other students are going to be working adults. Anyway I found an interesting news article in the documents folder in the students portal which was from the Chinese morning paper on the 12th of April. It discussed the poor environment that professional translators in Singapore find themselves in due to a misconception: that Singaporeans believe that anyone who can speak two languages can be a translator.

Here's why that isn't right:

李成业也以亲身经历说明“会双语”，并不代表就能做翻译。

他说，几年前有个中国代表团到本地一家公司参观考察。这家公司派了个懂得双语的高级职员负责翻译工作，这名高级职员把“I now invite you to see for yourselves the latest production equipment of our company”通译成“我现在请各位去参观本公司的最新生产设备，给你们见识见识！”

参观后回返的路上，代表团团长告诉李成业：“幸亏我们听说过新加坡人一般华文水平不高，要不然当翻译说‘给你们见识见识’，我们还以为被看不起，当做乡巴佬。”

In addition to the languages, a translator needs to know the cultures and have knowledge of a wide variety of general topics. Of course, this doesn't apply to our daily lives where only basic stuff are translated, but the above faux pas is a pretty strong reason why companies can't just get anyone to translate for them.

In fact, the article often compared translation with playing the piano. Heck, they can compare it with any musical instrument for that matter. Just because you can read musical scores and know which note each string produces on a guitar doesn't automatically make you the next Santana.

With the same example interpreted differently, this is what the head of my programme said：“本地虽然是双语环境，可是大部分人都是英文较好，而中文相对很弱，这样是做不好翻译的。这好比弹钢琴，只有左右手都一样娴熟，才能弹出动人的乐曲。”

Oh shit, I'm going to need to read more Chinese papers and start on Chinese books. That article alone took me half an hour to read and understand thoroughly.






Speaking of this, I just realized a significant portion of UniSIM is really spread around Singapore. For example, I have to collect my course materials in Ngee Ann Poly and according to various websites, many classes take place outside of the UniSIM campus.

Bleh. No choice. What do?












Reader's Digest sent me another stack of letters regarding their sweepstakes again. As usual, it's full of explosive words and colours that make it appear as if I've already won. In fact, a large part of those letters were about the arrangements for after my winning the sweepstakes, like whether I want to go to the gala dinner in a limo and whether I prefer to take my winnings in one lump sum or in instalments spread over several years.

Like before, one of the most attention-grabbing features is the fake car key that's supposed to open the door to the car I'm "going to" win.

All I need to do to get over 10 tickets for the lottery is to reply with the YES labels. It's THAT easy!

Not quite, actually. There's this tiny problem printed in fonts just as tiny on the YES!!!!! envelope which is that I have to subscribe to a year of RD magazines for a low, low price of $59.

It's true that it's cheap - I pay over $70 a year for my NGM subscription. But I'm just not interested in the stories they have in RD. So now I have lots of waste paper for spitting bones on during my meals and this metal key that I'm sure I can find a use for.

Before I threw them aside, I found that there was the NO envelope with which I could still enter the sweepstakes without subscribing. The catch is that I won't get the car and the laptop. Not a problem. So I'm sending it to them with all the required parts of the letters. Not expecting to win but I've got nothing to lose by sending the NO envelope.

I'm sure some people really spend a lot of time to plan these letters. They sounded so personal and sincere! Here's an example, copied exactly:


I am particularly pleased to prepare these special benefits for you today, as we know you were once a Privileged Subscriber. However, we were surprised to find one of our EXCEPTIONAL MERIT customers not enjoying our signature magazine - Reader's Digest - at the current time. Therefore, in order to win you back, I'm happy to extend to you this exclusive invitation to enjoy a year of great reading at a fantastic saving: it's like receiving SIX MONTHS ABSOLUTELY FREE!



Feel the false warmth? It's basically implying that they found that I was not subscribing and were doing all that for me alone. Like I would fall for that. LOL!