By Nathan Grayson on June 18th, 2012 at 8:30 pm.
Well, this is odd. We’ve known about an upcoming Payday: The Heist-Left 4 Dead crossover for about a month now, and – as is often the case with these things – it materialized earlier today via YouTube’s eyebeaming ethers. “”Have you ever wondered how the Left 4 Dead series began?” the video’s description asked, forcing me to realize that I’ve never actually wondered that. “It started with a heist!” Intrigued, the Internet looked on as Payday’s band of mask-loving hooligans shot its way through a very un-zombified version of Left 4 Dead’s Mercy Hospital. And then the trailer disappeared.
Happily, Eurogamer managed to upload a roll to its own Internet-powered projector machine, so you can still watch the trailer and remember it as it was before its mysterious disappearance. Perhaps Valve and Overkill (now known collectively as Valverkill) stole it. From themselves. This may just be a heist caper for the ages. I, however, will work tirelessly to get to the bottom of it: Oh look, here’s the answer. It’s just a Left 4 Dead cameo (character and hospital setting) in a Payday map.
Hooray! Sort of, eh?
18/06/2012 at 20:37 ZIGS says:
I like how everything Valve-related gets everyone super excited and then it’s actually incredibly underwhelming
18/06/2012 at 20:40 faillord_adam says:
The Gaben effect?
18/06/2012 at 20:42 Terragot says:
I keep this on me at all times as a reminder : http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5ofwokfmi1r3kv1oo1_1280.png
18/06/2012 at 21:04 Galcius says:
LMAO. Seriously Epic.
18/06/2012 at 21:11 Terragot says:
Disclaimer: I love Gaben.
19/06/2012 at 07:35 frenz0rz says:
Excellent, saved for future reminders.
18/06/2012 at 20:45 gunny1993 says:
Because free content is always something to get excited about
18/06/2012 at 21:48 ReV_VAdAUL says:
Similarly if you find yourself getting too excited about Valve listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdeY1v6jC7Q
18/06/2012 at 20:45 RobF says:
Doesn’t look to fix any of the problems I had with Payday so I guess I’m still out.
18/06/2012 at 20:46 jonfitt says:
I really want Payday to somehow go F2P. Not because I resent paying, but because I’ve been repeatedly burned with small-time multiplayer games having population problems. That was my primary reason for not buying this game, nothing to do with the game’s quality, I just want something I know I’m going to be able to play in 6 months.
Lead & Gold, and Shattered Horizon spring to mind.
Monday night Combat wasn’t too bad, but having SMNC be F2P was a very wise move.
My hope is that their Valvification will somehow result in that change.
18/06/2012 at 20:54 Juan Carlo says:
Why would you want to play Payday for 6 months?
It’s a good game, but it only has enough content for a month or so. It’s why its population is so small despite selling fairly well. Once you hit the level cap (and even long before that) there isn’t much else to do.
It really should have had a competitive play mode. That would have extended its life somewhat.
18/06/2012 at 20:56 Ringwraith says:
It’s a co-op game at heart, so it’s best played with friends really.
18/06/2012 at 21:25 dE says:
And it’s only ever playable with friends.
Don’t even try public, the community is a very very kick happy place.
18/06/2012 at 21:04 Makaze says:
Agreed, the servers tend to be rather bare and so it’s hard to find a game at times.
I also feel like the F2P model works well to drive companies with a good core product to constantly develop more content for it in order to keep new players rolling in and keep existing players. More guns, more maps, more equipment, more enemies, etc. All of those things can be done a bit at a time and released to entice cash purchases and retain players. Of course they should also be unlockable with in-game play, I adamantly refuse to play games that just sell stuff.
18/06/2012 at 21:51 Post-Internet Syndrome says:
I’ve only ever played it with friends and am not interested in even trying pubs. For me, being able to play coop games like this with randoms is a bonus, not a primary feature.
19/06/2012 at 01:00 liquidsoap89 says:
Add Plain Sight to that list of sadness.
19/06/2012 at 01:55 jonfitt says:
I nearly did! But excluded it because it was an atypical multiplayer game. Dogfighter was also from the same era and underpopulated.
18/06/2012 at 20:54 Neurotic says:
I wish they’d stop dicking about and do another L4D. Prequel, sequel, whatever, JUST BRING IT, BABY!
18/06/2012 at 21:52 Post-Internet Syndrome says:
I’d guess this is mostly Overkill dicking about rather than valve though. I seriously doubt this is stealing significant man-hours from Valve.
18/06/2012 at 21:51 sharkh20 says:
I was excited for Payday and then after playing it was quite disappointed. Every heist turns into kill the waves of police and fbi that are breaking through windows. What happened to actually doing the heist correctly. All I could think the entire time was, “these people are terrible at there jobs.”
19/06/2012 at 01:24 Cooper says:
Quite. Hardly a propr heist in the whole game…
19/06/2012 at 01:35 Sinomatic says:
If you were excited for Payday how could you expect anything other than each heist being waves of cops and fbi? That was always the whole basis of the game. It was blatant in the trailers that came before release (not to mention the reviews). It was essentially L4D with armed opponents, complete with hordes and specials.
I have a hard time understanding people’s disappointment with games when their expectations were nothing to do with how the game was presented in the first place.
19/06/2012 at 01:47 Maniacal says:
Yeah, I am very glad I never wasted any of my own money on it and received it as a gift instead (a friend bought a 4 pack, poor guy) . Very mediocre/average game.
18/06/2012 at 22:03 epmode says:
Obviously, this reveal and unreveal is the start of an elaborate new ARG for the upcoming release of Half-Life 3.
18/06/2012 at 23:17 Roshin says:
I’m not going to lie. I expected more from this crossover than recycling a L4D map into Payday. I’m hoping there’s a bit more to it than this.
18/06/2012 at 23:25 Issus says:
I’ve got to say that I’d be extremely disappointed if this was a legit crossover, canon and all.
I never got the impression that the infection started at Mercy, more that it was a hospital that couldn’t cope and was overrun by people who had been bitten and subsequently turned.
On another note, I was never that enamoured with payday, myself and three friends played one mission for over an hour and a half and never finished it. It was the one where you have to escort a guy up a hill against waves of enemies, and then when you get to the top you have to escort them BACK DOWN. At that point we think that the guy we were escorting had glitched since he refused to move, but by the time we gave up and let the police finish us, we’d killed 995 of New York’s finest…
19/06/2012 at 01:00 RobF says:
Pretty much the same point I gave up on it too.
18/06/2012 at 23:51 int says:
Is it me or does Zoey have too many hands?
18/06/2012 at 23:52 westyfield says:
Yeah, her right hand has too many fingers.
19/06/2012 at 00:37 MrTambourineMan says:
Man, that’s some serious “the last supper” shit that artist pulled there.
19/06/2012 at 03:57 Lemming says:
Not sure why the hype on this went into the stratosphere. That didn’t happen with the HL2 buggy being in Renegade Ops, did it?