By Jim Rossignol on June 2nd, 2009 at 8:03 am.
The Left 4 Dead trailer doesn’t pull many punches. Fighter planes, chainsaws, dudes with holes for faces, and a whole lot of prayin’. Yeah. That’s what I call a trailer.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
The Left 4 Dead 2 Trailer
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Well. Now we know how to make a frying pan as a weapon actually look cool.
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I’m kind of surprised, but that didn’t do anything for me. The characters are, at this point, terribly generic looking, the narration’s unappealingly cliche, and the daytime zombie thing just doesn’t work for me atmospherically. I’m sure it’ll improve with more development time, but right now I think I’ll pass.
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Heh, I thought it was incredible. Completely took me by surprise as Valve haven’t said a thing on this all year. Now they’re far enough in development to show this cinematic trailer with stunning effects, level design, and character weapons.
I never thought of a sequel, only more Downloadable Content, but I see now so much more content would make the original game insanely more valuable and WAY too big to download.
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Few things come to mind after watching gameplay videos (at IGN)
- The game (graphic) looks same , even worse than original L4D
- Gameplay is more or less the same. Even most of special infected are same.
- Sound is same. Music is same (except some jazz in background)
- There is nothing – not in the gameplay , graphic or game mechanic – that calls for a need of standalone (different) client. It is basically several new maps, new infected, several new weapons and different skinned player models.
This is actually the content Valve promised as free update , all rolled in one package.
For people that own L4D there is actually not much reason to buy this…
So let say that people interested in zombie shooter all went and bought L4D.(so let say that is the entire zombie shooter public) Perhaps only 15% of those will go on and buy L4D2.
Rest 75% will feel cheated by Valve.
So Valve makes a bad selling game, and in the same time alienates 75% of its loyal customer base ?
Does this sounds logical to you?
I mean they might got greedy , but this would be insane!
No…
What we are actually seeing here is free content update.
Valve just decided to make it whole new campaign…
Even the name L4D2 – sounds really funky for a standalone game….they would have better copywriter than that
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I’m buying it!
HAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH
at you angry internet mans
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Love Valve’s videos. Production is just spot on. The “tech” music just as the title comes on is becoming fairly evocative of L4D now too, just like the signature pieces for TF2 and that lovely bass behind the Valve-in-the-head/face splash screens and HL2 (remember getting the suit again in HL2?).
But this better plug in to L4D and be low cost to L4D owners or Valve will make themselves very unpopular – which would be a shame because they are one of the few big companies that gets props from gamers in general.
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@Lobotomist
Huh? Logical would be explaining where the other 10% went…
Anyway, of course it would be better if it was free, but I have a feeling this may just be worth the money.
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I dig the daytime zombies. You kind of expect horrible things to happen at night, but seeing masses of the dead rise up and run after you on a beautiful summer day is just plain wrong.
As far as I’m concerned, the idea of beating the undead with a frying pan until candy comes out is golden.
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Lobotomist: Way to shoot your mouth off without knowing the facts.
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Bernard … thanks for pointing out the typo.
It should be 25%
But what the heck. If they go on and actually make it standalone game. Some will buy it. Yes…
But lot of people that were loyal to Valve will not. In fact lot of people that bought the Valve games on premise of “ever expanding content and patches” Will not do that anymore. So it will hurt their future games aswell.
And dont forget viral marketing.
I bought L4D and advised my friends to do the same.
Now i will refuse to buy it, and will advice everyone not to buy it as well…
Multiply this by at least half of former L4D customers…
I would be worried if i was Valve…
And all this reputation thrown away for what ?
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Lobotomist, keep in mind that almost no details have been shed up to this point. The game is just in its infancy right now.
I, for one, am extremely excited by these videos of L4D2. While it looks “the same” as L4D, that’s kind of the point. It is safe to assume that it’s an expansion pack to the original one. I doubt they’ll charge anything more than $20 for it. I mean, the chainsaw alone would be worth more for me.
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Seems like a bit early to comment on this, but if it really turns out to be L4D with new models, a couple new weapons and campaigns, I’m not going to pay full price for this.
TF2 is almost 2 years old and they are still maintaining it, I still have hopes they will be doing this for L4D, too.
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Lobo, you’re making up statistics and assuming other things (placeholders) don’t change.
If the PC audience is appalled, they still have the Xbox crowd: they’re used to paying for minor sequels every year. Their dollars bring in more money than free updates, so Valve seem to think.
L4D: 2010 edition, calling it.
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Being from the sceptered isle myself I don’t really like the idea of zombies in the deep south; the aesthetic just doesn’t appeal. Let’s see what they can do with it, but I’m unsure.
It is a bit of a sideswipe to the L4D players who made all those suggestions to improve the game in their forums though, isn’t it? For example, I read a post describing the Charger ages ago. Seems like Valve liked the idea, but just put it in 2 instead of 1.
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Firstly: ZOMBIES. DON’T. RUN. These ones run, ergo they’re not zombies, they’re mutants. Must try harder, Valve.
Secondly, the new boxart hand shoving up two fingers this time around reminds me, somewhat unfortunately, of this cunning adaptation of the original:
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/L4D2boycott
(NB to Non-UK residents – sticking up two fingers here is just as rude as the middle one everywhere else. Well, it’s more of an English practice, but still….)
@FunkyB: No, no it really isn’t any kind of sideswipe. Take a chill pill. The better Dev teams have been listening to fan feedback and making changes to their sequels for decades now. Why should Valve be any different? Are you seriously suggesting we should criticise a company who might have been caught in the act of listening to their customers???
Of all the things you can criticise Valve for, that generally isn’t one of them.
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Don’t forget that the director can now modify map layouts, weather effects, improved crescendo events, new gauntlet events, plus whatever else they’ve yet to announce
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haha, classic stuff! A boycott. I’m buying out of spite towards the angry mob.
Anyway, the IGN preview says they are still supporting L4D so quit your whining
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OK, so Valve are releasing a sequel to a game only a year after they released the first one, and this is a bad thing?
Someone is going to have to explain why more games from Valve isn’t good, I just don’t get it myself.
(Apart from the fact that this flagrant disregard of valve time is a sure sign of the end times and we should all start hoarding frying pans and chainsaws now)
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Oh no, it’s Left4Dead with new characters, story, maps, more weapons and new enemies. So that’d be like most sequels then.
I trust Valve enough to know that they’re not ones to cash-in on an idea. I’m excpecting good things from this, and I expect once the League of Angry Internet Gentlemen calms down we’ll all be rather excited for this one come November.
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So perhaps putting in all these extra’s meant so much change to the code they would basically have to rewrite such a vast % that it was easier to start again?…
Not sure what to say to those who say it looks like L4D apart – ehh yeah course it does…
Pan to the FACE – vic and bob are THE saviours of the zombie apocalypse.
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Let me start by saying: I’m buying L4D2. I had ages of fun with the first game, and I’m totally up for more of the same.
That said, what irritates me about this is the disparity with TF2.
TF2 was a £20 game, and since it’s release it’s had two (or three?) new gamemodes, a bunch of new maps (plus the stuff the community has made), and eighteen new weapons/items.
L4D was a £35 game, and it’s got one new map, two of the versus campaigns that should’ve been in at release, a new gamemode that, while kinda fun, isn’t exactly comparable in ‘newness’ to, say, Payload in TF2, and the SDK has only just become available.
Speaking as someone who likes L4D and is indifferent towards TF2, I feel a bit put out.
Edit: I’m not saying that it’s not generous of Valve to offer as much as they do for free, considering what other devs do. I’m just saying that this is out of keeping with their established behaviour. It’s… a disappointment. Like when someone you know is a great artist draws your portrait on the back of a napkin with a bic while drunk, and it looks like the back-end of a donkey.
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LOL!
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I know for a fact that exactly 1026% of L4D buyers will protest this by wearing shiny top hats.
FACT.
In other news, I liked the trailer.
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This has a whole dawn of the dead feel to it which has me sold already. And I don’t know what you’re talking about “worst graphics” Lobo, the graphics look positively shinier and bloodier in this.
They look like zombies as opposed to grey-palletted people as in the first L4D.
I LIKE! I LIKE!!!!!!!
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It’s comically ironic that the trailer ends with us being given the two finger salute. lol
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I’ve not played the first one yet. Is it any good?
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Bets that Valve will integrate the best community campaigns into L4D1 like the community TF2 maps? I’m sure L4D will still continue to be patched.
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This has really split everyone into two camps. Personally I get the feeling that Valve’s generosity has made some people more than a little ungrateful. They are entitled to make money of you know- their customers. I know plenty of people who got a lot of enjoyment out of Left 4 Dead, and I certainly feel like I got my money’s worth with that title. I’m a little dissapointed this isn’t coming in the form of downloadable content over Steam, but let they have this one guys- they deserve a little Valve-time considering all the free additions they’ve been bringing out to CS, DoD, TF2, etc over the last 5 years. Let’s just hope this isn’t a pattern they repeat often.
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Don’t forget the mass of dedicated servers they run. There’s no way the game would be playable without them, unless everybody bought their own, in which case we’d all end up paying monthly.
I’d have to say what I dislike about this most is the player base splitting we’ll see. Instead of just the bought-map/didn’t of Halo 2 we’ll find ourselves with the deserting of L4D1 ala Battlefield. I’m silently hoping they’ll change it to a paid download content.
Thankfully this is still 5 months away, cool your jets peeps :)
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@An Irritated Customer: completely agree, L4D2 doesn’t look bad at all as some say it is in this trailer (and from RPS’s write-up/podcast) but when you had Gabe Newell explicitly promising TF2-style free content (new weapons, characters, campaigns, etcetera) post-release for L4D to grow the online community then you can’t do anything else but frown when suddenly all Valve has to say now is they’re fixing matchmaking in a future update while they have been working on a full price game with new weapons, characters, campaigns, etcetera.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone could be possibly entitled to demand that L4D2 should be free (five campaigns, new setting and props and all that), but hell, the Survival Pack definitely didn’t live up to what was promised either and yeah, that nags a bit as clearly there were a lot of ways to improve and expand L4D.
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What is pity, with this announcement, is what it probably means for the actual l4d, which is abandonment.
I agree that this l4d2 looks appealing (aside from the daylight ambiance, though, not at all the previous creepy mood, we’re more in a “fun zombie kill lololol”, but i guess it can be fun too). But with doing that, it means that there will be two separate games, two separate communities.
They just released the SDK (with almost nothing inside, but they did), but why people would bother making maps for a game supposed to be left on side in like 6 months ?
My biggest concern, is this : i don’t see the point of dividing for two games. If such content was a big downloadable expansion pack, even to pay for, I would have no problem. But with making it a separate game, cutting player base in two, it’s just plain silly…
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The scout, the TF2 coach’s t-shirt, and the frying pan get a big ‘hmm’ from me, the rest gets a big ‘yay’.
I will be one of Lobo’s 23.9398742% of return customers that purchase these particular pixels.
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@ Lobotomist.
Myself and my friends chatted about this last night on vent. L4D is still broken in so many ways – server crashes, lack of rating system, lack of content.
I think it really depends on how L4D is treated after L4D2 is released; will there be any new content? Will people leave L4D and jump straight to L4D2?
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@PC Monster
No of course not. It was more a “Discuss!” than a direct statement from me. I think people are riled because they felt their suggestions were to improve v1 rather than charge for v2. Either way let’s hope that when we know more it turns out to justify a new game and not just a mod.
Or do we dare use the forbidden “expandalone”?
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@Gnoupie
“If such content was a[n]…expansion pack, even to pay for,… no problem. But…cutting player base in two, it’s just plain silly…”
Agree 100%. I’d pay for the TF2 updates if there was a way that optional payment could work. Joining the two games together would seem to make the most sense. Maybe they will.
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Well i’m pretty pissed off. I bought L4D full well knowing there was only about four hours of original content on the disc. There’s no way I would have done that for any other company than Valve, because after my experience with TF2, I was expecting them to show a lot of post-release love.
Instead it took them four months to release a couple of maps that the modding community had unlocked within days of the game being released.And now we get the sequel. I feel very short changed by my purchase.
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I hope valve use a company of heroes style shared launcher for the various l4d campaigns. So if the server is a mix of both games i can hop from one to the other, also inviting friends with both from one game to the other.
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Oops, wrong comment thread.
Trailer was OK. NOt as brilliant as the L4D intro movie, and I felt like shouting “BONK!” when I heard the bat noise. Still, some of the new event/sequence combos look good, and intesity should be as good as ever.
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Left 4 Dead: Vice City
In more ways than one, the more i think about it…
And Valve would’ve saved themselves a hell of a lot of ANGRY INTERNET MEN had they not put a ’2′ on the end and just called it ‘the deep south’ or something…
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This had piqued my interest far more than the COD 6 trailer above this post…mainly coz u can’t run and jump off of mountains hoping ur ice axes will hold….u die! but this has chainsaws!!!!!!!!
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Regardless of the many and sometimes valid outrages by the Angry Internet Man crowd I can’t help but feeling giddy about this announcement.
Left 4 Dead = most online fun I’ve had in years, perfectly balancing difficulty with team play and fun (on expert). So MORE L4D, in whatever form, is a good thing regardless of its name, origin and whatnot.
Not that I don’t hope for a discount for L4D owners or anything!
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Hoping Valve is just pulling another Sniper on us and will soon announce Another-Color Box (HL2EP3 + L4D2). Now that I would buy in a heartbeat.
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Left 4 Dead 2
Stenhousemuir 2 Cowdenbeath 1
Annan Athletic 0 Forfar 0
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@Azazel
:) HAHA! exactly
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Looks like it will be fun for like a week. L4D laster like 3 weeks. I find it really boring now.
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Oh and that Star Wars The Old Republic trailer was massively awesome
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Looks like Valve has gone alone ahead of the rest of the team and messed with the marketing boomer, and now all the zombie angry internet men are after them, too far to be saved.
Bad teamplay ruin the game, Valve, you should’ve stay close to us.
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Hermit: “I expect once the League of Angry Internet Gentlemen calms down we’ll all be rather excited for this one come November.”
Who told you of our league?! Seize him! *runs off down alley way in Renaissance Italy* Why do I know this will end badly…
I’m looking forward to this, I always thought New Orleans was a good place for a game like this. The music done jazz style is kind of funny, frying pan is hilarious, I just hope they add enough new game moments to keep it exciting, first L4D got old fairly quickly because of no variation in levels. For instance the special infected in Versus will always try to attack in the same spots because there are no other good locations – if the director can change maps now, there will be new opportunities to kill the survivors depending on how it’s set up.
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I don’t get the negativity. I got a ton of gameplay out of L4D for £17 at release. It was excellent value for money. And some of the Steam sales have been almost giving it away! The volume of content doesn’t concern me. It’s the quality and quantity of the gameplay that matters, and L4D delivered that in high volume.
I’d have paid for an expansion pack. This is even better! I’ll be picking L4D2 up at release and I’m excited to see how much further Valve can take the concept.
Valve is a business, not a charity. And they’re still gold-plated awesome.
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Is there actually any word on if L4D-2 players will be able to play the original campaigns with L4D-1 players? I can see the playerbase being really split up over this.
Also, there best be some massive discount for players that own L4D1, to make L4D2 more like an expansion pack rather than a new title. I just don’t get Valve’s logic, on the one hand they have TF2 with all of it’s free updates. On the other hand you now have L4D. I think most people are angry because of the perception that Valve have encouraged that “if you buy the game, you’ll get free content updates”.
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I think they are making the kind of game they want to make, and given how useful their AI director is for the process of level design I am not surprised that it has come this quick. I don’t get this whole alienating the fanbase thing. It sounds like an incremental new part to the series which brings in new elements and a new story. Sounds very similar to….Half Life 2 episodes……yet that would never be so callously received as this announcement has. Be happy you get another game from Valve, who has yet to make a bad title imho
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I feel sad for Valve. Probably a zillion of cool guys work there. And there are bad economic times. It probably make sense for then to release games faster, maybe more than one game at year, of different styles (not just FPS shotters).
And theres the promise to never see a “valve horse armour”. A stupid update that is paid. Multiplayer PC games need something like more maps, to mantain the community thing alive, on the console this is monetized, because the console players don’t know better. but this has been free forever on the PC.
For some reason, this has not been sell as L4D episode 2. And I wonder why. This has worked for Half-Life2, but the dynamics of a multiplayer game are much complex.
For once, theres something like a community that play online. Friends. The game need a computer, but the game also need other people with the game,.. or it will not work, the commmunity is another part of what make the game “work”, withouth the community, you would be playing with bots, that is boring, or alone in a alone server.
We have learn that releasing a 2th or 3th part of a game one year later is bad for multiplayer games. It break’s the community in two. Is almost as bad as removing half the memory of your computer. The games will still work, but less players everywhere, maybe without that friend, or that other friend. It hurts. EA has make a art of this, releasing a yearly new version, that breaks the community: 50%, 25%, 14%, 7%, …this the community is soo fragmented, is a serie of dead islands of gameplay.
And EA is in bed with Valve to release L4D on the consoles. So one wonder how much of this decissions have EA behind, how “evil corrupted advices” is taking Valve from EA. Maybe theres even f* laweyers taking this decissions, and not game dev’s professionals.
So is a bad decission for the gamers, and a good decision for EA, and maybe a good decision for Valve.
EA wins.
Gamers lose.
Valve ????.
I feel sad for Valve, because these guys rock, and deserve to have a clean channel to get my money. But If you release a multiplayer game a year after the older one, you break the community, and this is a fact, and this has been proved.
Other than that, this new L4D video is good. I could haven been better with more focus on the new characters. We know nothing of the new characters, and was about the 60% of what make L4D special.
A dumb part of me, thinks this is a “quick release” to get some XMax money from the dumb console players. It will be also relase for PC, but is just a “EA” move. Anyway, is the dumb part in me, and I am probabbly wrong here.
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From all the word of the director enhancements, the mutable maps etc, I don’t see how they could have made this a patch to the original. All the completely new code would have broken the old maps.
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Awesome trailer. Love the daytime, the Infected, the new characters, the melee weapons… Another Valve winner for sure.
I have to laugh at the whiners that accompany every announcement. Come November no one will remember them.
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yup… the bat is as bonk-y as the TF2-one :)
I just hope that the time they didn’t spend on making new noises and completely new props will be well spent….
I didn’t play the first l4d because 50$ for a net game with half the content that TF2 got which cost me 20$ is too much, so I don’t really know what to expect with the new title.
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Déjà vu!
Oh wait, that’s right.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/02/05/left-4-dead-dlc-campaigns-new-mode/
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I have faith in Valve, and I agree with Lollerskater. I won’t be surprised if later in the week Valve announce that this is just a content update being released alongside HL2:Ep3. Have faith people!!
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Plus the fact that HL2:Ep3 hasn’t even been mentioned by RPS during any of this suggests to me that they probably already know this, and have been asked by Valve to keep quiet. Wink wink :)
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What you have to remember is that L4D is eighteen million and four times more fun than TF2, and that TF2 only had SIX maps when it shipped (compared to 20 for L4D). They have said they are still planning to update L4D, so I really don’t see what anyone is whining about. I love zombies, I love valve. I will pre-order this at the earliest opportunity.
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I can’t wait until L4D2 is released so Valve can abandon it and begin work on L4D3.
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This reminds me of a studio called Monolith.
They used to make fun games like No One Lives Forever and TRON 2.0.
Then the zombies got them.
Now they make games like FEAR and Condemned. Gritty, dark stuff, ever more cliche’d and deteriorating in quality.
Let’s hope it won’t happen to Valve as well.
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I probably won’t be buying this until the inevitable steam deal. Because I’m willing to wait til Christmas for the price to drop and it to suddenly cost about as much as an expansion pack.
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@FunkyB: Have you never seen Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island?!
@Freelancepolice: I wasn’t going to buy it before but now I might just to spite these clowns too!
@Spliter: Placeholders? Like the CSS weapons in the old L4D gameplay trailers.
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They really know how to spook a person with music, a completely mawled, gnarled and fucked up face. LMAO.
I’ve seen the trailer and I’m not disappointed. I’m not crazy about the way the characters look. I feel like The zombies are special infected are gonna do a ho-down with them LOL.
J/K
Someone needs to wear a vest, somone else: a vietnan Beret, someone else: a business shirt and tie, someone else: a red hoody sweater with keds….
Ok, Ok….I’ll give them a chance…If i don’t like em I’ll help someone make a mod to place the Origional Characters in. =D.
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Here is a pic of the charcters….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Left_4_Dead_2_Cast.jpg
^_^
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Looks pretty amazing to me, granted it’s just a random trailer, but I want it :) I’m not at all put off by the short release time either, 35 dollars in the PC gaming world equals anywhere from 10 – 20 hours of play time… sometimes far less. I’m guessing most of the people here were able to put more time than that into L4D, which equates to me as “money well spent”. If I can squeeze around 10 hours of tender morsels out of a game, then it was worth the price for me. If I can get 10 hours a week out of a game(of tender morsels of course), then it’s a mighty bargain.
Also of note, Valve is not your girlfriend, she didn’t dump you. She just worked out a little, got some new clothes and still wants to commit, quit pushing her away… she loves you. Abandon? After a year and several updates? Most companies abandon you before a game has gone gold. Not to mention that they explicitly stated they have not abandoned L4D.
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For those of you still not getting it, let me try to help you. L4D2 damages L4D. Even if Valve keeps their word and continues to produce content for the original game TF2 style, a shift in the player base to a new game this quickly will result in depopulated servers and, worse, a lack of SDK user-generated content. Both of these significantly shorten the lifetime of a game that promised to be of value for a long while. Does it warrant the level of rage you’re seeing here? Of course not, but this is the internet and people like to vent. I think it most certainly DOES warrant sincere disappointment, both in Valve and in the likely fate of the original L4D.
@Jeremy
Your expectations are too low, and you’re getting ripped off. If a game doesn’t deliver at least an hour of entertainment for every dollar I put into it I consider it a failure. I’ve played games that held out for hundreds, and in a few cases thousands, of hours. Paying $35 for 10 hours of entertainment is just being a sucker IMO, and it drives the market in a bad direction.
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i) Did all the people who are going on about the price deliberately avoid the fact that, you know, there’s only about two weeks since release where the game HASN’T been deep-discounted somewhere or other?
ii) “only x hours of gameplay etc etc terrible value” — join a library! take up a sport! i for one am GLAD any time i find a game is SHORT and i thus gain TIME to do one of the MANY, MANY other things i can do with my life! (really don’t get this, as a mainstream idea about videogames — no one says “man what they really needed to do with that TV show is drag it out for another eight seasons”)
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“no one says “man what they really needed to do with that TV show is drag it out for another eight seasons””
Of course they do, hell there are whole giant campaigns to retain cancelled series. If an entertainment product is enjoyable, and hasn’t worn out its welcome, why would you want it to cease to be entertaining? Why would you need games to be short to fit in reading and sports? Just buy fewer, higher quality games that last longer.
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@Lobotomist
The most obvious improvement in graphics is the special infected models. I find it hard to believe that you didn’t notice that. They look much more detailed and better animated.
And I don’t know how you can judge from a trailer that the gameplay is no different.
Granted I’m pissed about L4D2 as well. It still looks cool though.
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Well, I was exaggerating a little for effect on the whole 10 hour claim, but we all pay more money for less entertainment. 5 movies at the theatre is more expensive than that, 5 dinners out on the town are more expensive than that, and without the ability to return to it again. Imagine that for every hour you spend playing a video game, you translate that into an hour at the theatre, you’ll be dropping hundreds of dollars(or millions since you play games for thousands of hours) to equal the amount of time we spend playing our games.
I was just trying to make the point that we tend to turn to extremes when we start judging video games, perhaps I didn’t get that across, or maybe we just have a different set of expectations. For instance, the announcement when Blizz said that Starcraft 2 was in 3 installments, everyone flipped out and cried foul. Seriously though, at most 150 bucks for 3 games that I’ll end up playing for hours and hours and hours, that’s really not that bad when we consider what else we spend our money on, and that those 3 games will be spread across 3 years.
For curiosity’s sake, what game did you play for thousands of hours? Or even hundreds.. maybe I just have a short attention span ;) Even still, those are definitely extreme examples and we can’t really expect that from all games. I would say that your 1 hour per dollar is a fairly reasonable assessment of the value we should get, unless we get 10 hours of the most fun we’ve ever had and replay it 4 times :)
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@Jeremy
Yeah, it’s a rule of thumb, not a hard-and-fast thing, and obviously quality trumps quantity.
Most of the games that run me into the hundreds of hours have been strategy games, things like Alpha Centauri, Civ 2 and 4, Europa Universalis 2 (that one was particularly long lived) and the like. The other thing that runs into this category is RPG’s. Morrowind, with its extensive user mods and whatnot, ate better than a thousand hours spread out over about 5 years, I just kept coming back to it.
Anyway, I see what you mean and don’t disagree. I’d say one has to have a different metric for different forms of entertainment, but considering how long lasting and enjoyable some games I’ve played have been I think the $1/hour rule fits a reasonable minimum expectation for most games. You were making a point (and one I don’t disagree with) and I seized on a bit of an exaggeration, but it sounds like we’re really pretty much on the same page. :)
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Maybe Valve can make a few non-linear maps, and release the game with the SDK, so other people can make a “RPG” version of L4D.
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If it looks like an expansion pack and quacks like an expansion pack…
Gabe’s just testing the waters to see if PC gamers are thick enough to fall for this sort of EA-isation of Valve.
I won’t buy an L4D expansion pack as a full price game, but let’s face it, despite your whining, and despite its being an obvious, cynical cash-grab, YOU’LL STILL BUY IT.
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Oh good point, Civ games rock my world, Baldur’s Gate 2, HL 1 and 2, any RTS, I definitely have played the heck out of those games. It seemed that when I was younger I was able to replay the same games over and over and over, kinda like my nieces re-watching the same movie 3 times in a row… I probably have played Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger like 20 times each. I think that says more about the quality of games in that era though. Too much pressure to create cutting edge tech and new ideas and gimmicks. Farcry 2 is a game I just couldn’t get on board with, I tried and tried. It felt cold and empty to me, try as I might to enjoy it.
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TwistyMcNoggins: are you saying you only played L4D for 4 hours?
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PC Monster said::
Good thing Valve calls them them Infected. Better luck next time. ;)
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Haha, someone missed the boat by about 7 years. Zombies haven’t shambled in a long time… except for Plants v. Zombies, which is fantastic.
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I played L4D for 35 hours a week for the first couple of weeks it was out. I totally got my moneys worth.
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Zombies traditionally shamble because they’re already dead and, initially, have rigor mortis and then start to decay and fall apart. Their bodies no longer constantly regenerate like ours so even just strain can pull them to bits.
The L4D infected aren’t actually dead yet, hence why shooting them permanently kills them.
Although since any kind of zombies or zombie analogues are entirely fictional, arguing about how they do or do not behave is a bit strange.
PvZ is probably closest to the truth though.
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They may not run, but they do bobsled.
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Valve probably started working on this around the time they bought the company making the original and started helping them along: this lets them build their own game for the long haul instead of reworking someone else’s.
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@ Meat Circus
Tell exactly how more content than L4D itself provided is an “expansion” and I won’t give you the MONITOR STARE(tm)
@Vinraith
If you think Ico and Shadow of the Collosus are wastes of money, because they’re short you sire are a moron.
A game shouldn’t be any longer than it’s story dictates.
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Whoops
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Arguing about Zombis / Infected on the internet, classic :-)
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I think infected are infinitely scarier. I would rather fight 100 zombies than 1 infected. Wait… let me clarify, I would rather run away from 100 zombies than 1 infected.
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On a seperate note, did anyone notice that one Valve trailer of L4D2 where the Smoker gets axed? I noticed when he exploded it was a big dark black cloud… and after about ten seconds the player turns back towards the alley and you can still see the smoke rising into the air. I think he will get back that dense cloud effect from the alpha version of L4D.
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@Psychopomp:
1) LFD”2″ has all of the things Gabe Newell said would be made available for L4D. New maps, new characters, new special infected.
Gabe lied about that.
2) L4D itself shipped with way too little content to really be a full-price release. A lot of people would have bought it with the EXPECTATION that Gabe’s promised DLC would come in short order.
3) The SDK for L4D’s only just been released, and before the community can fix L4D (because Valve doesn’t seem to be bothering), and in direct opposition to the lies that Gabe was telling last year, they’re abandoning L4D when it’s only a year old.
We now know they’re dishonestly claiming this DLC is an actual sequel, and nobody believes it. It’s a shitty, EA-style cashgrab, and we shouldn’t stand for it.
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Vinraith and Meat Circus have summed up the problems with this, and my opinions on it, more succinctly and politely than I am capable. Thank you both.
L4D2 will split the L4D community, players, level designers, mod makers, into two separate communities. They will each have a smaller immediate player-base than a single coherent product.
Further, Valve created the impression, deliberately or not, that L4D would receive at least as much support as TF2. Why would players expect anything else? Gabe Newell and Co. rant every two minutes about how successfully the TF2 formula worked. Then, given the first opportunity with their own alternative product, they don’t follow their own advice?
This isn’t about “getting my moneys worth”. Obviously I love L4D and feel it was worth what I paid for it. This is about Valve behaving and communicating dishonestly, unpredictably, and incoherently. And further about them ending support for a game whose community is just getting started.
What the hell is going on at Valve?
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*washes brand new sports car, with symbol for L4D2 on it* And that’s why I bought stock in Valve. *smiles and has diamonds in teeth*
Seriously though, perhaps it’s because I tend to find franchise games appealing this news hasn’t bothered me at all. The elements of L4D are great but it all began to feel too small after a while, it gets really predictable with the gameplay. I know some of that would be changed by further DLC but some of it was also just by design problems. For instance, the shifting level designs should have been done for the first game, the levels got tiresome fast and this will greatly increase replayability.
The new gauntlet events also are a welcome change, prevents survivors from using basically any corner to fight off any number of infected cause they keep spawning until they move further. These changes fundamentally alter the game and I doubt they would have been part of any DLC given the modifications it would require. Finally there are the things that WOULD be DLC normally, like the new special infected or weaponry.
I’m hoping they double the number of special infected types, keep the frequency about the same but give us some nasty options. Charger was on the forums before, that was a very good choice to show first. All in all, it’s a new game, and it’ll be here along with my Modern Warfare 2, an awesome holiday for sure. I can’t complain at all.
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Some of these comments are almost…. unreal. It’s like all the negatives “feed” off of each other to justify themselves. I am sooo giving valve more money. I should just send them my check every month for rent.
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The new aesthetic looks downright awful. I’m not too keen on leaving Louis, Francis, Zoey, and Bill behind for these Southern caricatures and fiddling in the horde music.
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You won’t believe what just happened to me. I went to the grocery store to buy some milk and THOSE BASTARDS CHARGED ME MONEY FOR IT!!!
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What is the world coming to when you can’t do anything for free… *looks out window, sees capitalism* Uh oh.
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I’m starting to hate Valve. They lied about revealing info on Ep3, they messed up of getting TF2 unlockables, added crazy hats shit, still no info about Portal 2, still no any info about god damn Ep3 (almost 2 years of silence already), and now at E3 they killed its fans by revealing shitty looking Left 4 Dead remake and called it Left 4 Dead 2. Total nigtmare. This is not the same Valve we know. It changed since late 2008. Thank you, but no. Go to hell, Valve. I quit on your products. Sure, i will try them, but for free – torrents and P2P rule.
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