![]() ![]() It just so happens that the two companies had formed an amicable working relationship since 2003 thanks to Turtle Rock's contributions on Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source. ![]() In reality, L4D is Turtle Rock's baby: The concept, the visuals, the gameplay, and the character designs are all the brainchildren of studio heads Chris Ashton, Michael Booth, and Phil Robb. Valve still owns the IP rights to this day, and we've had to endure "Valve can't count to three" jokes for over a decade now. Throughout the marketing of both games, the only instances where you'd even see or hear Turtle Rock Studios mentioned came from pre-release coverage from journalism outlets, so if you believed that L4D was a wholly Valve-original property this whole time, we can't blame you. L4D2 is absolutely still worth playing today, even if you felt like you got your fill years ago. Even the campaigns from the first game (complete with playing as the first cast of survivors) were all properly adopted into the second game's engine over time, making a total of 14 total official campaigns. ![]() (Also a testament to the wealth of mods and custom campaigns created by the community.) The Versus mode, where two teams of four alternate between controlling the survivors and the Special Infected, also found an extremely devoted competitive audience. The fact that an average of 20,000 players are still playing the Steam version of L4D2 nearly 12 years after release is a testament to just how well the developers executed on their vision of a co-op shooter experience that is always thrilling, long after mastering it. The addition of "The Passing" campaign about six months in also featured some highly-enjoyable interactions between the first game's cast (minus Bill) and the new crew. Nick doesn't exactly have the most pleasant personality, but he was never meant to his abrasiveness creates perfect opportunities for his more righteous teammates to clap back at him, before they go right back to dealing with the horde of zombies trying to chew their faces off. The new survivors-Coach, Ellis, Nick, and Rochelle-took a little longer to grow on players, but over the years, the charm of their reluctant camaraderie became undeniable. Left 4 Dead 2 brought several welcome refinements: a wider variety of weapon options, new alternatives for grenades and healing items, common infected equipped with perks like fire invulnerability or bullet-proof armor, new Special Infected designed specifically to counteract the effectiveness of holding out with your back to a corner, and finales that required constantly gaining ground or completing side objectives to spice things up. Those who had faith and didn't mind paying another $60, however, were rewarded with a package that was just holistically bigger and better. It's all water under the bridge at this point, but in 2009, the era of "games as platforms" had only just begun, so the mere existence of a numbered sequel could be interpreted as anti-consumer. The reception went one of two ways: You were either pleasantly surprised that a full game's worth of content and extra features were secretly in the works all this time, or you felt betrayed that all of the content you were promised for the game you already bought was now being locked behind a $60 paywall under the guise of a sequel. The announcement trailer showed some key differences-a daytime setting, a new cast of survivors, melee weapons-but the core experience looked unmistakably the same. In a move very uncharacteristic of Valve, however, a full-fledged sequel to L4D was announced the very next year, and with a release date of exactly one year after the original. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |