By Alec Meer on February 16th, 2010 at 12:25 am.
Whoops, we missed this last week – frenziedly frenetic footage of the upcoming L4D2-meets-L4D1 DLC The Passing. Alas, team L4D don’t show up in these videos, Valve’s Chet Faliszek claiming they still want to keep a lid on exactly how that’s going to work, but at least it’s a chance to eyeball some of the new uncommon Common Infected (including one that tries to run away but drops health packs when you kill it – sounds like Golden Axe’s imp thingies) and the shape and mood of one of the levels. The finale of the second video looks appropriately claustrophobic and OH GOD GET IT OFF ME, so no doubt L4D2 believers will not be left unhappy on the obscene violence front. What of the non-believers, still licking their wounds about the sequel-too-soon outrage? Well, right at the end of the second video, Chet lets slip that we’re due a comic that explains the current fate of the first game’s survivors, and, and! new DLC for L4D1. Too little too late, some will cry, but hey- it’s still something, sometime.
16/02/2010 at 00:39 [dandan] says:
Man, I just love Left 4 Dead. Both of them. Love.
16/02/2010 at 00:46 zakkmiester says:
Good god, he’s talking about the new gun, but he just keeps using the crowbar!
16/02/2010 at 12:11 Malibu Stacey says:
I guess you missed the part where he says it has a limited ammo supply & can’t be refilled at ammo dumps as per the grenade launcher.
16/02/2010 at 00:49 Pantsman says:
At this point there is nothing that could possibly please a certain contingent of players as to new content for the original game.
Ah well, haters gonna hate. What matters is that they’re finally delivering on their promises.
16/02/2010 at 00:52 CMaster says:
Nice to see that there is going to be ongoing L4D1 content. Be interesting to see how substantial it is, but good news notheless.
16/02/2010 at 12:33 Malibu Stacey says:
FYI this is L4D2 content. The L4D survivors are going to show up in this campaign but it’s DLC for the second game not the first.
16/02/2010 at 12:34 CMaster says:
I’m aware of that. However, if you read the article
“and, and! new DLC for L4D1.”
That’s what I’m reacting too.
16/02/2010 at 01:13 Vinraith says:
What of the non-believers,
I can only speak for myself and the friends I used to play the game with, but we’ve moved on to far greener pastures.
16/02/2010 at 01:16 Real Horrorshow says:
Let’s hope the L4D1 DLC is something a little more worthy of Valve’s name than 2-stage campaign I can’t even remember the name of because it was so forgettable.
16/02/2010 at 01:25 skinlo says:
Crash Course I think.
Wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be, people just wanted more, thats all.
16/02/2010 at 02:08 Tom says:
L4D1/2 rules!!!! Roll on some DLC.
16/02/2010 at 02:11 Hybrid says:
Looking good! And that was only 1 map!
16/02/2010 at 02:31 GT3000 says:
Why are demonstrators such tools?
16/02/2010 at 06:23 joseph says:
+1million.
All I could think the whole time is what a douchebag he sounded like. Pretty sure it was Chet?
He sounded like he was trying to act like a “hardcore” l4d player, like he’d watched competitive games and was trying to be like the kids playing them so he could appeal to them… it was sickening.
(I’m sure anyone with half a brain can see that if he really is decent, then me posting this is not an insult. He’d know he sounded like a douchebag.)
16/02/2010 at 07:45 poop says:
most game developers are either nerds with pretty much no public speaking skills or nerds with who are really used to feeling smart all the time so they sort of blather meaningless bullshit when they talk about a game.
16/02/2010 at 02:36 Ricc says:
Somewhat (un)related:
Turtle Rock Studios (the original creators of L4D) are back! And have a new website:
http://www.turtlerockstudios.com/
They seem to be working on a Western game…. ?
Sorry, I just found out and wanted to share. ;)
16/02/2010 at 02:49 K says:
LIES! Chet is awesome!
16/02/2010 at 04:23 DarkNoghri says:
“including one that tries to run away but drops health packs when you kill it”
Woohoo, if there’s one thing the survivors needed it was more health items.
:(
16/02/2010 at 12:13 Malibu Stacey says:
Did I miss the new uncommon common in the video or did he just not find one to show us?
17/02/2010 at 00:02 DarkNoghri says:
I think I only watched the first video (all the way through?), but I don’t recall seeing one.
Still, the LAST thing the survivors need is more health items. They’re already dripping out their ears.
16/02/2010 at 04:47 Martin Kingsley says:
Golden Axe! \o/
16/02/2010 at 05:46 The Dark One says:
That Turtle Rock thing is interesting. I was under the impression that they’d been completely absorbed into Valve’s Bellevue offices.
16/02/2010 at 06:21 Shadowcat says:
To paraphrase: “We’re not going to show you anything with the L4D survivors, because we want to keep that whole side of things under wraps. For the moment, all I can tell you is exactly when they show up, and what happens after that.”
I’ll admit that Valve do pretty good on the secrecy side of things for the most part, but obviously that ability doesn’t extend to all of their employees…
16/02/2010 at 06:56 Lobotomist says:
Is it just my impression or was L4D2 much smaller financial success than L4D1 ?
I mean when L4D came out people were talking about it for months. Fan art was made about the characters, machinima, cosplay… you name it.
I never seen one fan art about new survivors ?
In any case Valve got what they deserved.
16/02/2010 at 07:31 poop says:
actually L4d2 was the most sucessful game valve has ever made, the slighty (really, slightly, check all the usual places for fanart) reduced fan crazyness is probably a biproduct of the close releases
16/02/2010 at 09:38 arqueturus says:
I’ve got to say, it’s certainly played far less than L4D was in my circle of Steam friends. Almost as if it’s died on it’s arse. It’s also hard to find dedicated servers in Europe when we do play.
It’s very much a better game than the first but I think from a replay POV (although clearly not a sales one if what someone said above) I think it was released just too soon after the first.
16/02/2010 at 10:50 Lilliput King says:
In any case Valve got what they deserved.
You mean higher sales and a more successful game?
Unlike you to be so altruistic, Lobotomist.
16/02/2010 at 13:00 Lobotomist says:
L4D2 is most sucesfull game Valve ever made ? Reallllyyyy ? More successful than TF2, HL, HL2, CS
Can you please provide link to this fine news ?
L4D never went down from list of top selling Steam games until L4D2 was released. While L4D2 is out even though it was only couple of months.
Couple this with massive 25 million dollars marketing campaign investment (aside from development costs…wait! There were none, cause its actually re skinned L4D). I wonder if it even turned profit.
But hey. I dont blame valve. Because L4D is actually Microsoft game.
16/02/2010 at 14:03 SirDorius says:
You can see that L4D2 was much better financially, but the stats from are also interesting because you can see that
1. L4D2 has more players than L4D
2. CS is like the most played game in the universe (what a surprise)
3. Even IF L4D2 was more succesful than say TF2 or CS (unlikely) it has a much smaller active fanbase. Basically L4D1/2 is Valve’s cash cow, but the people who bought it care less about it than other games
16/02/2010 at 21:21 hoff says:
In fact, games are measured in “first weekend sales” a lot nowadays. In other words, they are measured in hype and marketing.
Over the years, I’m confident that HL actually was a more profitable product for Valve. Actually, I think that Steam as a publishing service, is making more money than their own games and they do not even have to worry about the sales from them. And 2 years from now, L4D will be nothing but a nice memory while everybody gets up in arms over Counter-Strike 2 being too similar to CSS while being the best-selling title in Valve’s history and how Episode 3 and Portal 2 are the best sequels Valve has ever made and everybody is looking forward to “Cipher” the new Valve shooter Valve announced in which you will play a cyborg in a “Fifth Element” style futuristic city… (Yea, I have Valve’s program mapped out for years to come. And they better make it a reality, or else!)
16/02/2010 at 08:37 robrob says:
Calling it now: the original cast turn up… as zombies! Pow!
16/02/2010 at 12:15 Monchberter says:
I’d find this rather funny
16/02/2010 at 09:27 Richard Beer says:
L4D2 really bugs me. I love it but, for some reason, I’m finding it so much harder to get a decent game than with L4D. It honestly feels like hardly anyone’s playing the damn thing. Sometimes I can be waiting in a lobby for 10 minutes with the occasional person joining and leaving again, even at peak hours. The whole lobby system has become a joke.
16/02/2010 at 12:30 Malibu Stacey says:
VALVe changed the lobby system recently so people get directed to “fuller” lobbies (as in ones with 6 or 7 players will get people joining over ones with 1 or 2) so joining someone else’s lobby instead of trying to fill your own might have better results. Also it’s unfortunate but most people only seem to want to play Dead Center. Dark Carnival & The Parish do get players too but the other 2 campaigns seem to be almost totally ignored for Versus.
Getting a full game isn’t a problem I find. Not having between 20 to 40 different people on the opposite team in an average versus campaign is the problem (yes I have counted lots of games, wrote an app to do it for me using console dumps). It’s gotten to the point that we try to screw around & get less points just to keep the scores roughly even or the opposition leading until the finale to try & counter the constant rage quitting.
Campaign on expert or Survival is actually more fun than Versus these days due to the rage quitters. I wish VALVe would implement some sort of player blacklist like they did for TF2 servers (see http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=2338 if you’ve no idea how it works) to match the ragers up with each other & let people who want to play a proper game enjoy it.
16/02/2010 at 09:53 Doctor Doc says:
It’s painful to see how even the developer can’t play with a console controller. Kids, it’s not reversed controllers you want, it’s a PC!
16/02/2010 at 12:09 Malibu Stacey says:
I thought it was pretty ironic that the weapons are far more accurate by default on the XBox 360 version than the PC version. All the guns played like they had laser sights on them. One can only assume this is to compensate for analog stick aim vs mouse aim on the PC.
16/02/2010 at 21:21 Fatchap says:
Agreed, why would you hamstring yourself by using a controller if you have access to a PC?
17/02/2010 at 12:45 Malibu Stacey says:
FYi that footage is from the Xbox 360 version hence he’s using an XBox 360 controller. He explains that all the post-release incremental fixes in the PC version haven’t been ported over to the XBox 360 version yet but will be when the DLC is released hence why it seems easier to do things like melee kill the tank etc.
16/02/2010 at 10:21 Stense says:
Can’t wait. Both games are superb in my opinion.
That gauntlet in the dark at the end of the second video looks like it will be pretty tense.
16/02/2010 at 12:31 JB says:
Yeah, that run at the end looked a lot of fun. Must get my L4D on tonight…
16/02/2010 at 11:55 Hidden_7 says:
Oh man, exaaactly. I was recently playing L4D2 on my buddy’s 360 and it’s amazing the level of help they need to give you to make it fair. There’s a button to do a quick one eighty, and the auto aim is astonishing. Press fire and watch your aim snap to nearby zombies. I actually had better accuracy than I usually do simply because the game did it for me.
16/02/2010 at 12:45 DXN says:
@Malibu Stacey:
Swamp Fever is a little weak compared to the other campaigns — it’s just not varied enough. Hard Rain sort of has the same problem, but people really underestimate how great it is for VS — the height differences, the weather, and just the general architecture (sugar mill!) make for some great possibilities for the infected.
16/02/2010 at 13:34 Vandelay says:
@DXN
True, Hard Rain should be one of the best VS campaigns. Unfortunately, Valve decided to almost completely remove the water slow down for the Survivors, so most of the levels are exceptionally easy to just sprint through. It is quite easy to sprint through on Campaign mode, once you get past level 2, due to Infected AI not knowing how to use the water to their advantage, but Versus makes it even easier. Hard Rain 4 is the most notable for this. The Witches being exceptionally hard to agro, also makes things a too easy for Survivors. Both of those combined remove everything that makes it a unique and fun campaign.
All I ask from Valve is to remove health kits from the level, outside the safe room, and put water slow down back in the relevant levels. It would make Versus so much more fun.
Oh, and a slight buff to the Jockey would be good too. Don’t increase his damage, just make a change that would improve the ability he already has, like increase knock back on Survivors around his victim or remove the outline of the Survivor he riding. Also, I would like to see the Smoker tongue not break when shot. Make it so the Survivors have to either shoot the smoker himself or punt his victim. At the moment, it is just to easy to free someone from the tongue at almost any range and angle by just shooting them loose.
As for this DLC, looks like it could be good. The level certainly seemed to be a good length and I did like the look of the final gauntlet moment, even if the Bile Bomb did make it exceptionally easy for them.
I’m not sure about the new Uncommon though. Dropping more health kits just seems like a recipe for making things more frustrating for Infected in Versus. If the Fallen Survivor removed them from the level or if he was the only way to get them then maybe it would work, but as Chet found a couple of health kits during that walkthrough I’m not hopeful that this is the case.
I’ll say it again, just remove health kits from Versus.
And defibs.
16/02/2010 at 14:31 PHeMoX says:
“Well, right at the end of the second video, Chet lets slip that we’re due a comic that explains the current fate of the first game’s survivors, and, and! new DLC for L4D1. Too little too late, some will cry, but hey- it’s still something, sometime.”
‘Still something’ my ass, they should have updated L4D1 a whole lot more than they did. In fact people paying for the sequel are pretty much nuts as it’s very much the same game in most ways.
I’m not saying it’s not fun to play (for about 15 minutes), but it’s ridiculous that they released the sequel this quickly. Oh, and part 1 still feels like unfinished crap when it comes to it’s gameplay. From the couple of times I’ve played L4D2 now, it’s easy to see Valve really did not do a good job at all knowing what Left 4 Dead 1 is.
Mind you, zombie-shooter or not you will have to pay at least 50 bucks for that crap!
In my opinion they should forget entirely about Left 4 Dead 1,2..3,4,5 etc. and focus on Half-Life 3 and Episode 3 of Half-life 2. Especially because the engine has become outdated.
16/02/2010 at 16:00 GetOutOfHereStalker says:
hi
17/02/2010 at 07:13 ManaTree says:
bye
16/02/2010 at 14:38 Richeh says:
Chet.
Lol.
16/02/2010 at 19:02 monnbrun says:
Every time I hear Chet talk all I can think of is OMM. COME BACK OMM!
16/02/2010 at 21:23 hoff says:
I’m still waiting for that DLC in which you get to play the Midnight Riders. It has to come… Why else should they spend so much time in developing those characters?
17/02/2010 at 07:14 ManaTree says:
This! And more music from them. Would be excellent. I’m not really expecting it, though. So it’d be a nice surprise. ;)
17/02/2010 at 13:20 Vandelay says:
Think they said that there will be more music from them in this DLC (in fact, is it not this video where he plays the jukebox?) They also say that they will be releasing songs on Rock Band too.
There must be a DLC with them as playable characters. The fact that there is four of them makes it so obvious. Either that or it will be them in L4D3…
06/03/2010 at 05:36 Eshayz says:
Wow… this guy manages to make the NPC’s look good. Rochelle’s ripping up, she even starts the events for him… gg buddy.