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Comments: 231 +- Games: Left 4 Dead 2 Announced For November on Monday June 01 2009, @06:59PM
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hansamurai writes "Left 4 Dead 2 has been announced at E3, and a trailer for the game has surfaced. It will be released November 17, 2009, just a year after the first game. Gameplay changes include a new focus on melee weapons, especially the iconic anti-zombie weapon, the chainsaw. The cast of characters is brand new, but the plot appears to take place during the same zombie outbreak."
The game is being developed for the PC and Xbox 360, and Valve says it will make use of a new version of their AI engine, which has the ability to "procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players' performance." Rock, Paper, Shotgun got the chance to do a hands-on preview, providing details about the gameplay and confirming that "it's a coherent new imagining of the game, this time bigger, smarter, and far more elaborate. Oh, and gloriously more gory."
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Sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)
My current PC runs Left 4 Dead only somewhat acceptably, and I was hoping that I could wait till 2010 to buy a new PC.
Sigh... Valve just killed that plan. :/
Re:Sigh... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Tell me about it. I wish they'd drop L4D and the TF2 updates and concentrate on wrapping up Half Life 2: Episode 3. Anything else is just a distraction.
Re:Sigh... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm assuming they have different teams for different games, and I'm equally sure the half-life team is, in fact, concentrating on wrapping up the half life 2 series.
Plus, in my opinion, TF2 outshines HL2 and the episodes, even though they were amazing themselves.
Parent
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Re:Sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly usable? Did you even play it? I had a blast with a group of buddies.. did all the campaigns in one day. I still play every other day with various steam groups. Valve has done a good job addressing map hacks and other wierdness you run into online. The only thing Valve didn't do right with L4D is releasing only 4 campaigns and 2 of which weren't usable in versus mode.
Parent
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So? Its not like any games are released without bugs, and valve fixed that really quickly. Now try again.
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Sorry to reply to myself, but I suppose I should tell you what my PC is, to preempt the console fanboys' cries of "LOL If you bought a 360 that wouldn't happen!" I think Valve does an excellent job of making their games run on all kinds of hardware, but my PC is almost 6 years old, with no hardware upgrades in the past 3 years:
Pentium 4 3.2, Nvidia 6600GT-AGP, 1GB DDR400 RAM.
I play Left 4 Dead at 1024x768, most settings at Low, and although my average frame rate is usually above 30, it dips below that mark
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I think his first post counted as drooling over the latest release.
Re:Sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Left4Dead, polished a bit more, is perfect as is.
I don't care about melee weps, beyond this: I want melee to work when a zombie is stuck in a wall or the floor.
Nothing sucks more than a zombie hiding under a table, knawing on your leg, taking you from 70 to 20 health in a few seconds. Worse yet, the table interferes with projectile angles, so shooting the zombie is difficult(not just point and click), on top of meleeing it being impossible.
Oh, and those trash cans. Seriously. It's not proper that a trash can rolling up against my leg completely immobilizes me and prevents me from jumping. If I press forward, and a trash can is trying to roll me to the left, I should move forward; not sit there stuttering while the trash can passes through my legs, then once it has passed through I can proceed.
Better AI? That sounds great, but the zombies were already plenty smart(or stupid; depends how you want to look at it). Special infected AI was pretty weak, but totally acceptable in singleplayer and co-op. Not so good if your allies leave in a versus match, so you're stuck with the AI...
The bots though? Damn they're stupid. Either give me some commands that they respond to("Come here", "Get in the corner", "Melee the zombies back while I shoot.") or make them smarter than bricks. Though to be fair, it's not the engine's fault. I know someone that wrote a modified AI script(tweaks known and hidden cvars for singleplayer and local hosting), and it really was impressive what the bots could do; they hide in closets, cover each other very well; usually one player crouches and melees while the others shoot over his shoulder. They don't waste medkits when they hit 49 health, but they always make sure one player is in the green if possible. Oh yeah, and they almost never get caught by tanks; they're good enough to beat expert mode with an all-bot team!
But that just proves that the engine is already solid/perfect; the game just needs more polish...
One last note - I'm sad they're implementing chainsaws. I'd be happier if they had unworking chainsaws that you could pick up, toss, but not actually use to cut things up. Every zombie game has chainsaws; it's so stereotypical. But I would laugh at finding chainsaws all over the place that can't be used, or have already been used. Maybe you can drop them on the zombies, or toss them down stairs/halls to kill/trip a bunch of zombies. ;)
Or the chainsaw could be defensive. Carrying it around reduces damage taken from attacks from behind. Just do something original!
Parent
What about HL2 Episode 3? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing Left 4 Dead, but I was really hoping we'd finally get an update on Half Life 2: Episode 3. Left 4 Dead gets a sequel after one year, but we have to wait three years (presumably) for Episode 3?
Re:What about HL2 Episode 3? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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A number of Valve North staffers work on L4D.
Xbox 360? Sigh...Once Again Gimped (Score:3, Insightful)
So once again PC owners get screwed by the shitty Xbox 360 and its 7gig disc format and outdated graphics hardware.
PC gamers are who made Valve what they are today.
Make a real PC game Valve, then figure out what you have to do or hire to downgrade it for the stupid little Xbox.
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So, what do you find lacking from L4D then? Just because the game exists on the 360 it doesn't necessitate the PC version be worse, or that a lack of such guarantees it would be better.
Re:Xbox 360? Sigh...Once Again Gimped (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the fact that we're getting a "sequel" instead of an expansion pack goes to show that console versions screw everyone over.
Parent
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That was exactly my thought. Some changes in the engine, addition of new special infected, and some new characters would in the past have been simply some new DLC. Microsoft's policies limiting unpaid DLC to a tiny amount over the life of the game had to have factored into this.
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Not true. A lot of Valve North people ended up working on Left 4 Dead (I remember a couple of devs I was in contact with being pulled off of fixing ATI-related bugs to be put onto L4D for release).
stopped playing because valve keeps nerfing (Score:3, Interesting)
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I recently gave up on L4D because Valve has broken the ability to play Versus mode on advanced difficulty
IIRC, wasn't that changed while the game was still in beta? Personally, I think that it's better this way anyway, because in Versus mode the main challenge is supposed to be the Special Infected (controlled by players) anyway, not the Horde. If you want a tougher Versus game, a tight-knit team of opponents should suffice.
Melee cooldown also pissed me off quite a bit, it's gotta be off for Advanced.
It makes it so you can't just melee-spam your way through a mob of horde. As a player I agree it's annoying, but it's annoying in the same way that being out of breath while you're running
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They're rolling out the new matchmaker system in the next few days, I heard.
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I recently gave up on L4D because Valve has broken the ability to play Versus mode on advanced difficulty
IIRC, wasn't that changed while the game was still in beta? Personally, I think that it's better this way anyway, because in Versus mode the main challenge is supposed to be the Special Infected (controlled by players) anyway, not the Horde. If you want a tougher Versus game, a tight-knit team of opponents should suffice.
They brought Advanced Versus back after they broke it the first time, it broke most recently with the update that gave us Survival mode. It's not just the quantity of commons, but increased damage from everything, including FF and fire, that made it more challenging.
Melee cooldown also pissed me off quite a bit, it's gotta be off for Advanced.
It makes it so you can't just melee-spam your way through a mob of horde. As a player I agree it's annoying, but it's annoying in the same way that being out of breath while you're running is annoying. I can see why they did it; it makes it so you have to shoot your way through a mob, or even better for the Teamplay aspect of the game, get teammates to kill the Horde that's mobbing you at the moment.
Agreed, for normal difficulty, which is all valve seems to care about.
And while I'm ranting, the lobby system sucks.
It doesn't work perfectly, but I can see why they wanted it that way; you can either join a random game with random strangers, or you can find a group of friends to play with. Left 4 Dead isn't the type of game where you want a traditional game-server model, which is best for Deathmatch and CTF, or similar styles derived from those. Instead, you want everyone to start at the same time, like in an RTS. A lobby is the best model for that.
I like the idea, but it's really really buggy.
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It doesn't work perfectly, but I can see why they wanted it that way; you can either join a random game with random strangers, or you can find a group of friends to play with.
It's a nice idea, but Halo 2 did it right, years ago. It's disappointing that Valve's implementation of basically the same idea is so bad.
In Halo, you can join a party with your friends, and then when you start a game, the system matches you up with enough players to fill the game. If you have 4 people in your party and you want an 8 player game, you might get matched up with another 4 person party, or two 2 person parties, or a 3 person party and an individual, etc. -- the system knows who's looking for a
Title (Score:5, Funny)
This sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I'm concerned, Valve just got downgraded from premium status in my book. This game is a mistake.
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Re:This sucks (Score:4, Informative)
It was released in beta a couple weeks ago. If you own the game, go to the "Tools" tab in Steam, and it should be there. In another few weeks, they said they'll be releasing the ability for the game to handle 3rd-party maps/campaigns.
Parent
Re:This sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Basically Valve broke their promise from last year and is now officially a greedy developer. If they intended to have Left4Dead be a technology preview all along, they should've gone and called this paid beta-testing as the Prologue version, like Gran Turismo 5.
"Valve intends to support hotly anticipated zombie survival shooter Left 4 Dead post-release with new characters, new maps, new achievements and new weapons in order to grow the community, Gabe Newell has revealed.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com at Leipzig Games Convention, the Valve co-founder and managing director said the developer intended to follow a similar downloadable content policy as it has with Team Fortress 2.
Newell said that Valve's support of the game post-launch will be essential for growing the community.
He said: "One of the things that we're doing is we seem to be in a transition between games as a package product and games more of a service. So if you look at Team Fortress 2, one of things that's really helped grow the community is the continuous updates, where we release new maps, new character classes, new unlockables, new weapons. And we tell the stories about the characters, like the meet the sniper, or meet the sandwich. And that ongoing delivery of content really seems to grow the community."
source: http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/left_4_dead/news/valve_details_post_left_4_dead_launch_plans.html [videogamer.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep, this is a very uncool move from Valve. I mean look at the ton of content TF2 has gotten for free. Now L4D has had the one big update, and now the sequel is coming, which as it stands appears to be standalone.
When the original game cost $50, Valve are taking the piss. Very VERY uncool. If Valve genuinely do throw this out as a full price sequel, I will never buy another Valve title again.
They screwed my friends and I over once before with the bots for Counterstrike, removing them from CS 1.6 so they cou
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Agreed (although the L4D SDK is out--it's a "beta", but it works fine). I'm hoping that this ends up being an expansion pack (at expansion pack prices) rather than a full new game.
Re:This sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
I cannot disagree with you more. Seriously, for how much time I've played the game and how much enjoyment I've received from the game I have gotten my money's worth multiple times. The article I read specifically states that this does not mean that support for l4d is going away. It also stated that it is a possibility that l4d would be included with l4d2. Something else I'm completely fine with, I would simply give my copy of l4d away to someone who was unsure if they wanted to buy the game.
Looks to be plenty of new content, 5 campaigns, new infected, new behaviors from old special infected, melee weapons, expanded alteration game play driven by the ai (maps will vary from play to play).
If you think it sucks don't buy the game. I will gladly shell out the money when the game is released (fully expecting it to sell for half the price 6 months later).
Parent
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that it is a possibility that l4d would be included with l4d2
If they had been watching TF2's post-game support, L4D2 would be included with l4d.
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Agreed. I said many times that I'd be happy to spend $10 on a DLC for L4D that included a new "movie" plus some extra weapons/infected/etc... If they want to bundle five such packages into a single game, then I'll be happy to buy it.
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I agree -- L4D has still not reached what I consider to be $50 worth of content. Especially if you compare it to other games like Half-Life 2 and the Orange Box, both of which went for $50.
And after all this time it is still buggy, full of map exploits, and incredibly difficult to get a good game going unless you plan one out with 8 friends. It seemed to have been left in the dust, and I guess now we all know why.
Given these issues, I'm really not feeling like paying for a L4D 2. Valve was the only game
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Dynamic Lighting (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think he's asking more about seeing the areas lit up by the other players' flashlights. It's something I've heard a few players talk about. I can see where my flashlight hits, but not where other flashlights hit. I suspect that it's a computationally difficult thing to perform.
Whats so great about that game. (Score:2)
I have been too busy working the last year so I have not had time for anything else than xbl games. But I just borrowed this game last week and it didn't seem so great to me. Perhaps because I only can play single player mode. (hate multiplayer since it costs money, I know noone who play games and I don't want to waste my spare time with random idiots on xbl :D)
It seems that many games these days focus on multiplayer and that's all great if you are into that sort of thing but not for casual gamer like me w
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L4D is designed for the PC. Playing it on the moronbox is not going to be anywhere near as fun.
Multiplayer is free on the PC, too.
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Hint: you can output a PC to a 54" TV, too. And even use a controller, if you're too retarded to function with a keyboard and mouse.
Man up and write a letter. (Score:4, Informative)
Gabe Newell (gaben@valvesoftware.com) reads all his mail. If you are upset about the failure to treat L4D as more than a tech demo, send him an email discussing your concerns. At the least, he'll respond, and who knows? It might help.
Be polite, be reasoned, and make sure to explain why you're upset. At the risk of making it sound form-letterish, I'd quote what he said as mentioned by this article:
http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/left_4_dead/news/valve_details_post_left_4_dead_launch_plans.html [videogamer.com]
And the scores are... (Score:5, Funny)
Left - 4
Dead - 2
Chelsea - 2
Everton - 1
TF2 Scout Included (Score:4, Funny)
More maps, this time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Old 'Nawlins (Score:3, Informative)
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I think they should update both games to current L4D2 technology. Then sell L4D1 and L4D2 as both a standalone and expansion. City of Heroes and City of Villains did this successfully.
Buy 1 of them and pay the price of a standalone game. Buy the 2nd game as an expansion to the first. Then L4D1 players can enjoy the updated tech in the same maps they've been playing and be happy to receive the update they were promised. In order to get more content along with the update, they would be happy to pay expansion
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"This time we actually released a full game. HAHA to all you suckers that bought the first one. Wankers."
It sucks when the sports titles do it at but at least there is some justification there.