Hands On: Left 4 Dead 2
From one Valve fanboy to another: Things are probably going to be OK.
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From one Valve fanboy to another: Things are probably going to be OK.
Read Full Article
Hands On: Left 4 Dead 2
- Thread starter Jordan Deam
- Start date
From what I've seen, it looks pretty good. The addition of melee weapons was a great idea too, I was suprised that they weren't in the first one.
I just hope that this game will 'last' more than a year before another sequel is put out, if they are going to be doing a third in the series.
I just hope that this game will 'last' more than a year before another sequel is put out, if they are going to be doing a third in the series.
I'm still concerned.
Valve have put over L4D as "a failed experiment". This is already setting up a Duke Nukem/Peter Molyneux effect for the sequel. (Similar to what happened with Everquest/Everquest 2 [EQ is by far the better game/EQ2 is just prettier])
The idea about the South and the fiddles are bonuses for me. It's just that Valve really works with simplistic ideas in complicated gameplay (See Team Fortress 2)
Now, imagine Team Fortress 2 in a dark gritty environment with buyable weapons and cutscenes. It's really not TF2 anymore, is it?
To those of us scarred by movie tie-ins, sequelitis and post-release patches, it's the timing - more than anything else - that puts us on edge.
Valve have put over L4D as "a failed experiment". This is already setting up a Duke Nukem/Peter Molyneux effect for the sequel. (Similar to what happened with Everquest/Everquest 2 [EQ is by far the better game/EQ2 is just prettier])
The idea about the South and the fiddles are bonuses for me. It's just that Valve really works with simplistic ideas in complicated gameplay (See Team Fortress 2)
Now, imagine Team Fortress 2 in a dark gritty environment with buyable weapons and cutscenes. It's really not TF2 anymore, is it?
To those of us scarred by movie tie-ins, sequelitis and post-release patches, it's the timing - more than anything else - that puts us on edge.
Now I can't judge untill I play the game, but it looks like a TF2 match (well not a normal one) rather than a L4D game.
I think Valve just really needed to put some work into the presentation of this, which is odd from a company usually so good at creating positive buzz around a new game I thought they would have spent at least 5 minutes thinking to themselves how the community might react to news of a sequel that had a video attached which was effectively L4D with the same characters/weapons but dressed differently and the same-ish locales but in daylight, the only new thing they really showed were melee weapons and that isn't enough to justify a sequel in many gamers minds.
But I personally cannot think for the life of me why they chose to make it a sequel, now I don't expect Valve to hand this out for free as it seems like they've put a lot of work into it. However with an expansion pack the response would probably have been almost universally positive (if they also showed some of the other stuff they added), because with an expansion pack your player base feels that you're committed to adding new content even if it incurs a $20 cost or some such. With a sequel they feel like you're leaving them in the dust, no matter how many plans you've made to the contrary. And in the end, when you're in a store and you see L4D and L4D2 side by side, you're going to read the back and they will both say: 4 campaigns, versus mode, survival mode, 15+ weapons, lots of zombies and 4 surivors. Which doesn't make a compelling enough difference to make people pay for a sequel.
Valve make it an expansion pack...
But I personally cannot think for the life of me why they chose to make it a sequel, now I don't expect Valve to hand this out for free as it seems like they've put a lot of work into it. However with an expansion pack the response would probably have been almost universally positive (if they also showed some of the other stuff they added), because with an expansion pack your player base feels that you're committed to adding new content even if it incurs a $20 cost or some such. With a sequel they feel like you're leaving them in the dust, no matter how many plans you've made to the contrary. And in the end, when you're in a store and you see L4D and L4D2 side by side, you're going to read the back and they will both say: 4 campaigns, versus mode, survival mode, 15+ weapons, lots of zombies and 4 surivors. Which doesn't make a compelling enough difference to make people pay for a sequel.
Valve make it an expansion pack...
I’m pretty sure Ill be avoiding this game, it seriously takes the piss one of the few games I bought full price last year was left 4 dead, I loved it to start with but 4 maps can only keep you entertained for so long.
The promise of lots of free updates and new content kept me hopeful though but it seems they have decided that it would be better business to just sell the extra content as a whole new game, I’m not begrudging them a profit but there is no way I am spending £40 on another 5 maps, just so they can release left 4 dead 3 next year.
Fool me once and all that.
The promise of lots of free updates and new content kept me hopeful though but it seems they have decided that it would be better business to just sell the extra content as a whole new game, I’m not begrudging them a profit but there is no way I am spending £40 on another 5 maps, just so they can release left 4 dead 3 next year.
Fool me once and all that.
I'm a little disheartened at how quickly the sequal is coming out, but lets not pretend the 4 maps for l4d are going to be it when the SDK gets released.scarbunny said:
Who knows how long it will take the lfd2 SDK to come out, we do know the valve makes things easy to mod though. During that time all the fans will be mapping for the original. The first one isn't going to lose popularity for a long time, regardless of a sequal being released.
Fan maps are great, but why should it be down to fans to create content for a game that didnt have enough to begin with and has been replaced by a sequal with just about enough content for an expansion pack?Dys said:
Also what about the people with it on the Xbox? they wont be getting the SDK and free fan maps from waht I can tell. They're still waiting for any of the TF2 updates!
Any way Im sure it will all work out in the end, but seen as I am boycotting Steam in general for being a piece of crap it wont bother me too much.
I'm really not too sure what to think of L4D2, whilst I didn't find the original as ground breaking as people made it out to be I am still not looking forward to a sequel that includes all of the aspects that, because of their absence, put me off L4D. I understand that a company that is making DLC is not earning any money from it (well, Valve at least considering that other companies sell it) and therefore need to make sequels but I feel cheated when I paid for a game that was, in reality, half a game or otherwise a test game to see what people liked/disliked and wanted/didn't want.
Despite Valve being loved by the majority of the community I have sat here questioning some of the decisions that they've made over the past few years. For example the omission of the Black Box, I still have my 'gifts' of HL2 and HL2:E1 because I simply cannot get rid of them. I've turned to numerous friends and they simply don't want them, even for free. Anyone who was ever going to play HL2 and E1 has already bought them.
Despite Valve being loved by the majority of the community I have sat here questioning some of the decisions that they've made over the past few years. For example the omission of the Black Box, I still have my 'gifts' of HL2 and HL2:E1 because I simply cannot get rid of them. I've turned to numerous friends and they simply don't want them, even for free. Anyone who was ever going to play HL2 and E1 has already bought them.
Sounds cool, and i'm sure that it will all turn out well in the end. However I have one issue with this game (two if you count that it's not out for PS3) the Zombie survival guide tells us that incendiary weapons only turn deadly zombies into flaming deadly zombies. Much worse.
This makes me happy. L4D pushed the wrong buttons for me in a zombie survival game. Limited weapons and unrealistic animations (too fast/MASSIVE clipping) just break it for me. I also didn't find the actual shooting to be all that fun in comparison to... any of their other shooters.
Seeing them flesh out the gameplay/engine and strategic options by adding more and better weapons (my biggest issue) makes me happy and willing to give the game a second chance. As far as the people complaining about wanting extra content, have you really not gotten your money's worth with the original game? Really? Yeah it might suck when you want more, but I'd rather them work on something better if they have a choice.
Also, unrelated to Valve, but where the hell is my Mirror's Edge map pack? Jerks.
Seeing them flesh out the gameplay/engine and strategic options by adding more and better weapons (my biggest issue) makes me happy and willing to give the game a second chance. As far as the people complaining about wanting extra content, have you really not gotten your money's worth with the original game? Really? Yeah it might suck when you want more, but I'd rather them work on something better if they have a choice.
Also, unrelated to Valve, but where the hell is my Mirror's Edge map pack? Jerks.
What I don't understand is that they can make another Left 4 Dead 2 game in less than a year, yet it takes them more than 2 years for HL2: Ep3, which is more of an expansion, and that doesn't even have an actual release!
Does this make sense to anyone else?
I wonder if MS had something to do with it...
Does this make sense to anyone else?
I wonder if MS had something to do with it...
From what I've seen, this is a legitimate follow-up with enough new content to warrant an entirely new game. As much as I want to cry "sequel farming," it's definitely not the case here. But it does sort of make you wonder why Left 4 Dead was released in the state it was when the developer could have created a much more polished and feature-complete version with just another year.Eagle Est1986 said:
It would have been better as a free DLC, but that's just whining because I would love all video games to be free. Realistically, it would have been better as an expansion/add on, or paid DLC. Would have been exactly the same in terms of content they have to make, it just would have had a few players merely a little uneasy, until they then released some free DLC, and then no one would have any right to complain. Considering there track record, I honestly cannot blame them for charging for new content. For a change. And I can't blame them for wanting to tweak and improve the existing game into something better. We should encourage it. L4D 2 is going to be Valves proverbial dropping a pop fly followed by a triple play. Yeah, how they approached this new content could use improvement, but there only human, and you can be quite confident that after a bit of fumbling, there going to release something great. Ive yet to see a reason why I should not think this.
Word has it that they released it because they were short on funding. But this is Valve we're talking about here, surely they, of all people, couldn't be short on cash? Maybe I'm just naive.Jordan Deam said: