Zombies ultimately remained in Left 4 Dead, but Faliszek reckons that Newell's feedback helped give its zombies their own unique flavor. "This is something he taught me over time - I am slow - but you always need to step back and question any of the givens of a project because it is really easy to get lost in the work and the desire to get things done that sometimes you lose sight - is this the right thing to be getting done?" If something is in the game - why? Why is it that way? Have you thought about it? Have you considered other things? What are your options? Why did you choose this? He clarified that "Gabe never really 'pushed away' as much as he just pushed on the idea. We reached out to Faliszek to dig deeper into the game's formative years and Newell's part in them. The story here is little more than a patina and there is no meaningful emotional or dramatic arc or progression to the experience.Faliszek recalls meeting with Newell over the game's box art, which was initially "reminiscent of the Band of Brothers profile shot." Because everything has been stripped out except various sorts of zombies, weapons and your teammates, the game can feel monotonous without other human inhabitants. That forced interdependence is the strongest element in Left 4 Dead 2’s design and, conversely, it is a big reason the single-player campaign can feel like a tiresome slog. Do you hold onto it in case you get ambushed around the next corner or do you use it immediately to heal a teammate who is near death? Left 4 Dead is one of the few series in which even novices will recognize that it is in their own interest to heal the teammate: it often doesn’t matter how you are doing personally if your buddy is going to be unable to cover your back down the block. Except at the very highest levels of competition, what is generally being tested in most online shooters is your personal skill at finding the enemies and killing them, rather than your ability to function in a squad.įor instance, let’s say you find a healing kit and your own health is currently fine. In most online games (the Modern Warfare games in the Call of Duty series are good examples), close teamwork is certainly rewarded but not quite required. But almost none of them require close coordination as strictly as the Left 4 Dead series. Of course there are plenty of online shooters that feature team-based multiplayer modes. Sticking together and watching out for one another are the only ways to survive as the pustulent freaks attack from every angle. The entire mood of the series is dominated by the feeling that you and your three teammates (controlled by the software if you choose to play it solo, offline) are a few of the only human survivors being tossed about by the whitecaps on a vast sea of zombiedom. Put simply: in Left 4 Dead 2, if you rush off into the zombie horde by yourself, Rambo-style, you will die. Emphasizes may be too weak a word, though. Valve, the game’s developer and publisher (Electronic Arts has provided marketing and distribution support), knows at least as much about multiplayer online shooters as any other developer, and that expertise is reflected in how strongly the Left 4 Dead series emphasizes teamwork. No, as you cross the American South from the Georgia coast to New Orleans, your job is simply to survive, get to the next safe house and pump some hot lead into anything that tries to stop you, which is to say just about everything that moves.Įxcept your teammates, of course. There is no exploration of the competing motivations of the good guys and baddies. There is no pretense that you are actually going to stop the zombie infestation (technically, in the game’s lore, an outbreak of a mutant strain of rabies) or defeat some evil mastermind behind the pandemic. Like the original Left 4 Dead, this new game is in many ways a throwback to the early days of first-person shooters. It does, however, mimic its predecessor, last year’s well-received Left 4 Dead, as a finely calibrated, pure test of teamwork, spatial awareness, reflexes, eye-hand coordination and, perhaps most important, the ability to stay cool under duress (if facing a dozen zombies who are trying to julienne you qualifies as duress). This is not a game that will draw you into a rich consideration of the eternal philosophical quandaries of life. This is not a game for chin-scratching puzzle conquest. This is not a game for character development. If that’s the case, Left 4 Dead 2 is exactly the game you’ve been looking for. When someone starts talking about a sequel, the last thing you usually want to hear is “more of the same.” That is, unless your idea of a good time is mowing down thousands of preternaturally fast, agile and of course ravenous undead as you and three friends try to escape the zombie apocalypse.
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