Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Left 4 Dead 2 Coming Soon....Yay?



Er. Far be it for me to question the wisdom and motives of the gaming company that gave us Portal...but doesn't it seem a little early for a sequel to Left 4 Dead? I really thought we'd be seeing more additional content for the original game, but apparently Valve will be pushing out a sequel by November of this year. It seems that it'll be more or less the same game, with four post-apocalypse survivors battling zombie hordes and special infected. It's doubtful many improvements will be made to the gameplay given the short turnaround time, which makes one question why they'd make people buy a new game when they could have just released new levels for the original (oh right, mad cash).

Oh well! The trailer is as cool and atmospheric as we've come to expect any Valve property to be, and promises at least one new feature: chainsaws! VRRM! Oh yeah, that things got the smoker's name all over it.

What do zombies have to do with Hurricane Katrina? The answer after the jump...

Also of note; a new cast that breaks down all sorts of video game barriers by including not one, BUT TWO black characters on the main team! How will all the racist gamertrash on XboxLive be able to go on living? Still only one girl, of course, let's not go crazy.

For my money (and they will get my money), Valve's most unsettling choice is staging the game in Louisiana, giving their apocalypse story obvious parallels to Hurricane Katrina. The trailer alone appears to be directly evoking the real-life disaster; "I ain't gonna die waiting for salvation", says one of our heroes, and the ravaged streets of what appear to New Orleans should be familiar to anyone who turned on their TV in the September of 2005. What exactly is Valve doing here? Exploiting a tragedy for cheap dramatic effect, or will they actually achieve something meaningful by placing a gamer in the shoes of a person trapped in their hometown by a disaster no one will save them from? Valve's writing team has certainly proven their skills at taking their audience to unexpected places, but I'm concerned the Katrina tragedy is just going to end up as window dressing on an awesome kill-the-zombie game. Here's hoping I'm way off base.

Via GayGamer
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1 comment:

Degan said...

Hurm... yeah, its a bit disturbing... but either way, hearing that music again gets me excited! If only i knew someone with an xbox that didn't have the red ring of death i could get my l4d fix... hmm....

11:03 AM

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