The L4D2 boycott leaders were flown to Valve to supposedly see that L4D2 is worthy of being a full sequel and not just additional content. They said they agreed the game was nice and well polished but they weren’t giving in. I applaud their decision. The original L4D was supposed to get many more updates than it actually received. Releasing them in a sequel even if it does include things that weren’t possible in L4D doesn’t make up for the half finished title they released.
One of my major complaints now is that when I try to play L4D there are only a handful of lobbies available. Like literally only 3-4 games to choose from. You can’t even play all of the maps anymore because not enough people are playing/creating lobbies.
Alright, I FINALLY got Left 4 Dead. This is in spite of all the complaints about L4D2 being made up of all the “content updates” that were promised for L4D. I just decided it was worth trying out especially because I picked it up cheap during a discount weekend on Steam. Anyway, on to the actual review.
The first thing I noticed was the lack of weapon selection. I thought maybe you would find new things as you went or something but I guess I was wrong. You do get some “upgrades” but they are basically the same weapons with faster reload/rounds per second, etc. This was really disappointing.
Graphically the game blows me away though. I love the dismemberment of zombies and the excellent job they did with the lighting. This is truly the first showcasing of a “movie video game” in my opinion. If they had gone all out this might have revolutionized a new genre.
Anyway, overall I think it was worth the purchase even with L4D2 coming out so soon. I’m amazed people complain so much when this is still a very complete game. I imagine it’s because it’s Valve so people always expect more from them or something.
It looks like Valve has added hats and miscellaneous items to the game that you can equip your character with. Although these don’t have any stats yet I’m curious if they’ll try to make TF2 more like an MMORPG where you can progress or somehow earn items with stats to upgrade various classes.
This would be hard to pull off though considering the original marketing of the game which doesn’t appeal much to MMO fans. A small amount of it might be bearable though if the items were easy to unlock in terms of time commitment. I sure hope they don’t keep a random drop system though with stat items.
