Left 4 Dead Fans Ravenously Angry About L4D2

It’s pretty rare that the gaming community gets angry at a well-known and respected development team for announcing a sequel to one of their most well-liked games. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening in response to the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2, the upcoming sequel to the team-based zombie-pocalypse shooter. Normally, you would think that people would relish in the news of five new campaigns, new weapons, new types of infected and a revamped AI director system… but a significant portion of the Left 4 Dead community is downright pissed off.

The biggest gripe for many is that the game is coming out just a year after the original, and in the meantime the original L4D has seen scarcely any of the free downloadable content that Valve said they were going to release. Since the sequel is going to be a full sequel (rather than sort of expansion), the price tag is that of a full standalone game. The detractors in the community doesn’t seem to think that the game offers enough new content to sport a full price, and furthermore that releasing the game will split the community and ultimately hurt both games, not to mention making the chances of seeing more downloadable content for the first game even lower. Beyond that, there are some more… subjective gripes about the sequel, such as the choices for music, some scenarios taking place during the day time in brightly lit areas, and just the whole “southern style” being a turn off.

Valve has yet to respond to these issues, and it’s important to remember that even with forum posts counting in the thousands, it’s ultimately just a drop in the bucket. Valve noted at E3 that they’ve sold over 2.5 million copies of the game – and that’s not even including downloads of the game through Steam. A lot of people may hold out and boycott Left 4 Dead 2, but it wouldn’t be surprising for the sequel to outsell the original. The $60 price tag is pretty hefty… but then again Left 4 Dead is a hell of a lot of fun, so who’s counting?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *