Just a tiny snippet of almost-news before bed. Valve have slipped out the information (via IGN) that joining Left 4 Dead 2’s arsenal of melee weapons is a cricket bat. The awfully British sports-stick will be yet another way to brutally smash zombies out of your path. Having previously played with both the axe and the frying pan, I can assure you that the melee combat is something pretty special. With the freshly regioned bodies of the Horde, taking aim before lashing out brings gruesome rewards. While no one’s seen the cricket racquet in action, it seems safe to assume that aiming at legs is going to produce something dreadful. As for faces – there’s a hint in the pic above. Click on it to see the full version available on IGN’s site, with a fat IGN logo on it to ruin your desktop. (In case you’re wondering about the lack of cricket puns here, Orlando Parfitt used them all up in IGN’s story, leaving a global drought for all other sites.) Read all our Left 4 Dead 2 coverage here.
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@ Vinraith
There’s a one word answer to your last question… Xbox
It makes better technical and financial sense for Valve to release L4D2 as a separate game on the 360 That’s partly because of the way that Microsoft charges developers for patches and DLC, and also because Microsoft limits achievements for add-on DLC.
The 360 version of the survival pack had no new achievements because you can’t have them in free DLC for example.
Of course releasing as a separate game shafts the PC version because they want to keep the two SKU’s with essentially the same content.
I agree that L4D2 would have been much better as a proper add-on expansion to the first game. It’s a shame that Valve have sold out to the console market, as so many other PC developers have these days.
However as long as L4D1 and L4D2 have some degree of interoperability, so you can play both games from a single lobby/browser – something valve have said they’re working on – then I’ll be happy.
I was excited for L4D. Cricket bats make me more excited. Seems plausible enough given they have dropped other zombie movie references in, right?
And, ps, if you reckon it’s too expensive for the sequel no-one’s making you buy it. Seriously. No one at all.
I keep forgetting the name of the Australian guy at Valve. Robin Walker?
Regardless, I’d say this was his doing. Yes, it’s the Ashes
How can most of you not see this as a faked up screenshot? It will not be in the game.
Go Australia!
@GekkoX says:>>
@Lobotomist:
It’s still a true comment.
You simple can’t please everyone and if you try, you’ll just end up screwing things up more (see the TF2 item drop update).
I guess people just aren’t use to valve releasing games this fast, since L4D sequal is being released faster than say a Half life 2 episode.<<
While in essence its true. Its still no way to treat your customers. Basically saying you are all greedy spoiled , while we are mother Theresa.
It might be true that Orange Box was deal of year. And it might be true that TF2 had ton of free upgrades.
But Valve did make profit, and we did pay.
So they are not giving us 20$ for 10$. Its arrogance to even put it that way.
Its no wonder Valve put the L4D2 move , if these type of PR people are running the show now.
Losing respect is worse than losing (short term) profit
[Shaun of the Dead quote]
That zombie should have gone for a duck there, as it is he’s been hoiked to cow corner and left in a bit of a spin.
@ Pace:
Yes it’s obviously mocked up, but why would that suggest that it wasn’t Valve’s doing? It’s clearly a silly piece of PR they’ve knocked together for the start of the Ashes.
Will there be cornettos too?
Robin Walker’s not allowed back for letting that picture out of the shop.
Well.. this open space for more randomization. Imagine if the game ship with textures (just the logo) for *all* cricket teams, and the game randomize it just before the game start.
Wait.. I have read what I have writte. No problem, I am going to punish myself for this. Sorry!.
People still holding a torch (Badumptshh) for the Valve that spurned them eh? And I think I can guess what sort of complaints would be made if they put $20 in a box and charged $10 for it – And/Or, that it should be more than $20, that there isn’t enough units in stock for us to buy.
If this is charged at £35/$50 then I doubt I’ll buy it because honestly, maybe it is a bit too soon for a sequel where I’m not sure just how different the gameplay is going to be. I’ll probably wait for it to hit a weekend deal or otherwise go down in price, unless perhaps the positive buzz is absolutely massive.
I don’t like cricket.
I love it
It has a cricket bat? Well, that makes it completely different. I guess I’ll pay 50€ for this expansion after all!
@Lobotomist
how melodramatic. Do you realise the point he is making? Everyone views what something is worth differently and you can’t please everyone. I’m not sure why some people view valve as the “enemy” based purely on speculation and the fact a quickly produced sequel is on its way. I’m hard pressed to find another developer that produces post-game content and smash hit titles as well as these fellas do.
Just for the record I don’t plan to buy L4D2, while I enjoyed L4D, I know that its replayability (for me) is fairly low. I might pick it up when its on sale. End of story for me, I’m not holding a grudge or something else childish.
Oh my! Excitement overspill!
As long as one of the characters is Bob Fossil and his taunt is the Dreadlock Holiday dance i’m sold.
“I once joked that we could put $20 in a box and charge $10 for it, and someone’s going to complain.”
Indeed. It’s a douche move to make that statement public. Valve surely made at least half a billion from gamers goodwill over the past decade (I don’t know the exact numbers since they refuse to tell them).
“Hahahaha, our fans think we’re ripping them off! STFU, fans!”
“I once joked that we could put $20 in a box and charge $10 for it, and someone’s going to complain.”
I thought that was quite funny actually, as was the Hard Casual take on it…
http://www.hardcasual.net/2009/06/12/beloved-game-company-punished-for-announcing-the-release-of-another-great-game/
“This was slimy comment , insulting to gamers that are very people buying your game , and once praised Valve.”
Er, no; it’s an insult to the minority of Angry Men who get outraged over the most minor things. I mean, remember the people who went crazy over Valve charging £30 for three games – probably the same people who’ve dropped $50 on a single console game.
P.
Perhaps its the “minority angry men” that got offended by Valve. But just before L4D2 announcement – everyone was praising them.
Now you have lot that are praising Valve, and minority that hates them. And with reason too.
And that minority is like rust, corrupting away towards the core. Until Valve good reputation is all but history.
Good reputation is worth more than single game sales
I believe you have drawn an incorrect conclusion from your arguments there. If the majority of gamers still praise Valve then why should they worry about their reputation?
Catering to a minority of people rather than the majority would seem to be an extremely decision.
*extremely unwise
Whats the matter David? Never taken a shortcut before?
People who are happy don’t tend to make as much noise. Lets put it that way.
Oh god, it’s now impossible to talk about l4D without all the blah blah blah.
This is just adding to it.
I’ll get my coat………
This update causes geat anxiety for me since I play L4D with randoms. I’m afraid that I’ll end up having to pick up the cricket bat and everyone will laugh because I’m using it wrong and they are from a cricket playing country. I don’t know anything about cricket; I thought it involved darts. I went to wikipedia once and looked it up. After a few minutes I left all red in the face. I hope no one noticed.
Don’t worry Clovis, just hit people with it!
There should totally be a cricket mod for L4D2 now, unless you cant hold it properly, and you could use the scout ball! THIS IDEA IS BRILLIANT!
It always amuses me when people accuse companies of selling out.
Brilliant.
In other news, that pitcure is now my desktop background, as a guy in and england cap knocking out an Australian Zombie crickwet fan just in time for the Ashes is awesome… :o)
HOW DARE THEY ASSOCIATE L4D2 WITH THE GLORIOUS GODSENT GAME OF CRICKET
I AM WRITING TO MY MP
AND KEVIN PIETERSON
And that minority is like rust, corrupting away towards the core.
Until Valves hearts are filled with BLACK OILY PUSS, filling the world with darkness and loathing and dark despair. And melodrama.
His hand position on the bat is just appaling, you’d not make a school team with a grip like that!
Haha. :D
Good , one.
Still. I wouldnt be so quick to disregard the minority.
I could give you at least ten examples of games that failed because of bad reputation…
And other way around
I use to be game dev, now I am not anymore. But I know “my public”. There are a horde of gamers that *only play sports games*. Followed by a small horde of people that play race cars games.
For some reason ( and I love it!, since I HATE sports!) most games release sport-less. That is a bad idea. Is kinda easy to release games with a “soccer” or other style sport. Much like a CTF mode, but less gamey and more sportlike.
Sports work like this:
– Absolutelly generic, not personalization enabled, everyone look like everyone else. Red vs Blue.
– No personalization of traits. All people equally strong and fast. The game will be win by the more skilled, not the one with the best gear/stuff/toon.
– Absolutelly generic and cristal clean map. A green square will do.
– A score board.
– A time limit.
– Make easy to /screenshot the final result scoreboard.
You follow this, and add some system to one team to score, and the other team to stop it, and you have created a sport.
I don’t think L4D2 will include any of this. Maybe a area with zombie hoolygans, but thats is.
@Lobotomist: Way to over react. :S
“So they are not giving us 20$ for 10$. Its arrogance to even put it that way.”
Well, they are, basically. Exactly how much have you received from TF2? We’ve received quite a few updates now, all free, and you’d probably have to pay for them if it was any other gaming company.
They’re actually telling the truth, but you can’t see it because of your Chris-Crocker-esque rage directed at Valve.
There are a lot less people who have hated Valve when L4D2 was announced. People are beginning to move on and realise that this is another great game made by the company they love.
Frankly, I think there was a lot more uproar when they announced TF2 wouldn’t have grenades.
“And that minority is like rust, corrupting away towards the core. Until Valve good reputation is all but history.
Good reputation is worth more than single game sales”
I think EA will have to disagree with you there. But you’re just overreacting. If everyone hated Valve, would we be playing their games? Are -you- still playing their games?
The ““I once joked that we could put $20 in a box and charge $10 for it” comment isn’t that rude if you considered there was a large amount of complaint raised at the Orange Box for including HL2/HL2:EP1 even with gift option.
Apparently people felt better if they weren’t included at all (but the price left the same) because they felt they were “paying again for the same game” – despite what great a deal Orange Box was/is.
I’m looking forward to bowling the Infected hordes a googly by twatting them in the noggin with a cricket bat. I approve of this.
Puffins; right, Valve could have done it too, it just seems like an odd thing for an American company to release, it was almost certainly done by an Englishman. (though yes of course there are probably some Brits working there.) Also, IGN didn’t reference where they got the image from, just that Valve released it. How? When? Why? But who knows, maybe that’s just the way they do things. Just seems a bit odd.
I honestly don’t get the big deal around the whole L4D2 thing, except maybe for people hacked off because they thought they bought more than they did with L4D.
Here are the facts:
- As a consumer (for a luxury/non-essential product such as a game) it is YOUR responsibility to decide if you want to buy something or not and it is your choice whether a price is worth paying or not.
- Once you’ve purchased an item that is it, you’re not entitled to anything extra beyond that (unless the product is contracted to offer extra things down the line).
- If you buy something and it later drops in price, then that is tough – If you paid X for it then you must have decided it was worth that. If you buy games for full retail unsure or knowing that it’s not worth the value (but it might be later), then you’ve no one to blame but yourself.
Finally and most importantly
Valve have stated that the support and even free updates for L4D will NOT end with the release of L4D2.
Personally, when L4D came out I was expecting £20 ($35 or so at the time), a online only 4 player co-op game with no story or plot.
It came out at £30 and you know what I did? Waited.
Simple as that, I waited until I could get it cheaper either via retail or as it happened, a sale on steam for £17. It was worth 17 to me so I paid it, because of that I don’t feel I was ripped off one bit.
The nature of L4D meant that if you were only going to play each map once and never again then you would never, ever get value from full retail.
I’ve Played L4D for 100 hours and 56 minutes – not bad for 17 Quid.
The bottom line is, if when L4D2 comes out and you think it’s just a reskin with some new weapons and not worth the price of a full game, then wait. If you can’t wait for a sale, to pick it up at a price you are willing to pay, then tough you pay full whack. If you want to be an early adopter you have to pay the higher premium, simple as that.
@Rosti: “I don’t like cricket-”
…And that’s why I don’t like cricket.
The “just don’t buy it” crowd seems to honestly not get that an improperly intergrated L4D2 kills both the mod community and the player base for a game I already bought. I’m not worried about L4D2 in the slightest from the standpoint of buying it, I frankly think it looks terrible, but I most definitely care how it impacts L4D1.
@Clive dunn = you miss understand mate. He’s not hitting a . .. cricket ball ? I dunno what those things are called. Any how, he isn’t batting or racketing or anti-bowling or whatever you guys call it, he’s hitting a zombe across the face. In this case his grip on the bat is perfect ;) Then again his left hand seems a little high, maybe you’re right.
Well said Starky. But there is one thing you missed, Amazon (and I think Play) were selling L4D for £18 on pre-order so there was absolutely no need to wait. Anyone who spent £30+ should really have done a little research before plonking down their cash. I’m hoping that there will be places selling the sequel at this sort of price, but if not I will do as you and be patient.
This isn’t simply a reskin and some maps. We are getting 5 new campaigns (hopefully all playable in VS from the start this time), 4 new characters each with brand new voicing (the quantity of speech in the original was huge, I expect it will be the same again), new zombie types, new damage system, new types of map events (e.g. gauntlets), a new tier of weapons, masses of new melee weapons, inflammable ammo (welcome home flaming hunter damage) and these are just the so far announced changes. Sounds like enough for a new game rather than DLC.
And yes, this is obviously photo-shopped. I don’t think they will be including zombies wearing Aussie cricket shirts and cricket helmets, and a guy with an English cap on. Now that would be incongruous to the Southern U.S setting far more than a random cricket bat. The bat itself looks like a model.
Vinraith:
Haven’t Valve said that L4D2 will be fully backwards compatible with anything made for L4D? I’m pretty sure they have but not 100%.
So anything anyone makes for L4D will work in number 2, so it’s not really splitting the mod community. They can do both, though I suspect anything using L4D2 assets won’t work on L4D, but given the rebuild of the game engine, but the same has been true for all the HL games, you make a mod using HL ep2 assets and unless someone owns it they can’t play it using HL2 alone.
Besides, I’ve always been under the impression that Valve didn’t have a mod community per game, just one big mod community for the entire source engine.
As for splitting the player base, I think that’s a bit rubbish also, given that the player base exists through steam friends or external sites and those communities will be utterly unaffected.
The only thing I’d like to see from it is that if you own both, it lets you launch the old campaigns from within L4D2.
I’d love it if it was fully backwards compatible. Intergrated fully.
Kind of like a standalone expansion.
In the end though, so L4D2 might just be massive DLC (or as I said above more a standalone expansion) with a content value equal or higher than the original L4D – if you don’t think that is worth £30, or $50 or whatever full retail is where you live, wait, wait and you’ll find it cheap eventually.
Personally I probably won’t buy it until it drops to around £15, maybe 20 if it gets good reviews and feedback.
Vandeley, Yeah I missed that, but then I never pre-order anything, I never take that gamble – now Valve may be near perfect (I’ve loved pretty much everything they’ve made) but even then I’d not blindly purchase it.
Okay the truth is less to do with the gamble and more to do with that I’m cheap and almost never pay full retail for any game.
@Starky
“I’d love it if it was fully backwards compatible. Intergrated fully.”
Me too. If it is, I have no further complaints, since as I said I’ve no intention of buying it anyway.
“Kind of like a standalone expansion.”
Which is what it should have been in the first place. All this acrimony could have been avoided if they’d announced it as such.
Shit. I think I missed the bit where Valve said they would force you to buy the sequel.
Now I am pissed.
Grrrrrrr r r r.
there is really no difference between a stand alone expansion and a sequal. Calling it a stand alone expanison just lets them get away without adding a whole lot to the newer version (Saw the 40 DOW games or Company of Heros) Since these games contain new campaigns and new units armies ect they could just as easily be called sequals as stand alone expansions. It’s all just a naming game, the content is no diffrent. This game is going to feature things from the previous game but have totally new characters and campaigns, making it a sequal.
@Serondal
Calling it a sequel implies replacing the original game rather than adding to it, and that implication is responsible for a large percentage of the hostility to L4D2’s announcement. If it turns out that Valve makes the whole thing compatible and integrated that’s great, but calling it a sequel strongly implied otherwise and generated a (in that case) totally unnecessary PR shitstorm.
What the hell is a “cricket racquet”?