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Your thoughts on Left 4 Dead 1 and 2

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Hey hey. I've asked what people think about a lot of games. I have a feeling this is one of the more popular games I've asked about.

So if you haven't heard Left 4 Dead is a Valve game that has 4 co-op players stuck in a zombie apocalypse with only guns to save people. There are campaigns with any number of levels in them. I'm 5 hours into Left 4 Dead 1 (but I have #2) and I've played solo play, online co-op and so on. There are thousands of zombies that do random things. There are a few special zombies like smokers, boomers and tanks.

Having said all of that, the game is just boring to me. Like I would rather be playing Half Life 1, 2, Team Fortress 2, Doom or some other FPS. So what's the Doomunity's opinion?

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It's a pretty good game, I play it every so often. It's not really something I'd sinks hours at a time into it, but it's enjoyable when it lasts 1~2 hours for a campaign.

Also, there's almost no point to having Left 4 Dead 1 save for some mods that haven't (and won't) be ported over. Left 4 Dead 2 runs smoother, has more special zombies, more campaigns (including all the L4D1 ones), melee weapons, and overall is way more fun.

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I have no real interest in it honestly. Kinda seems like another game that's cashing in on the whole "Zombies R Sweet!!1!1" craze, but beyond that offers very little that would hold my attention. Not bashing it, but it just isn't my cup of tea.

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Vordakk said:

I have no real interest in it honestly. Kinda seems like another game that's cashing in on the whole "Zombies R Sweet!!1!1" craze, but beyond that offers very little that would hold my attention. Not bashing it, but it just isn't my cup of tea.

I'm so fucking tired of zombies. I don't know how, but our generation topped the amount of zombie garbage they produced in the eighties.

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Since L4D2 finally now has all of the original campaigns and a whole hell of a lot of really really good user made ones, I can say without a doubt that it has been one of my favorite games in the past couple years.

I like almost everything about it except the hardcore 'vs community' and they are avoidable easily enough.

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I haven't played the first one, so I can't say anything about it. I did get it for free from Steam's holiday giftapaloozamajig, though.

Left 4 Dead 2 I couldn't get very far on single player because it got a bit boring. It's really fucking fun on multiplayer, though, and I recommend it to anyone. I even hate the whole zombie craze, but this game was genuinely fun.

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I found L4D2 to be a lot of fun, especially if you had good teammates. I haven't played it in some time though, I should really get back into it. Same with TF2.

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Left for Dead is just pinky demons with sprite replacements and fast monsters turned on.

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Seems to me that you have to play them online for a while to "get" them, as they're otherwise quite a short, slightly random 1-2 player offline experience (on your XBox360, for example). I was never very good at them, but I'm assuming that's because I never played them for very long.

As I'm not a big online player, they'd not really be worth owning for me, although I'd imagine the PC versions have pretty good longevity.

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I quite liked Left for Dead 2, it had an addictive nature to it (at least in my case). The only thing that truly bugged me was the tiresome "spawn zombie ambush" every 30 feet. It does get compensated by the special zombie types, but the one problem about these is that they only ever spawn on their own. There are the rare occasions where they come in twos, but over time even with the "director" AI it's all a tad too predictable.

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Playing them Coop with real friends on TS or Skype is how you play L4D. Otherwise you should not bother.

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I've bought the first one after hearing about it for months, expecting to play it for 2-3 hours doing stuff singleplayer and leave it forever ; but then friends joined me and in the end I've sunk hundreds of hours into the two games.

It had all the basics for an enjoyable shooter experience to me: movement-based gameplay (projectiles and melee rather than hitscan), good use of 3D space, powerful feeling weapons, responsive controls. What sold it to me was partly the atmosphere, it's all "show, not tell" and lets you make up the best story with your own imagination, and partly the co-op mechanics, so intuitive and commented through the characters speaking up you don't even need to use voice chat at all (which ties into immersion ; for me, nothing shatters atmosphere as much as someone starting to talk about yesterday's football game, or playing drill sergeant like this is a chore to get done).

With friends, it's just so easy to get into it, and few moments have felt as visceral as hearing the tank tune starting to play when we were in a bad spot, or racing to the rescue vehicle right as we were being overwhelmed, getting separated, losing one man, going back for him, getting him back or having another going down, or even having one of us bastards hop up in the chopper and leave everyone else behind, throwing a molotov cocktail on the path...

There's a fair amount of custom maps available, most of them admittedly poor but sticking to the higher rated ones generally offers a decent experience.

The versus mode is quite fun, as long as you ignore the good fourth or third of the community that can't hack it in more competitive games and choose to try to play pro in a casual game. Getting, with teamwork, that perfect ambush on the survivors is, again, one of these moments I've found fairly unique. Playing the tank is also a blast. That said, I haven't really played the game for a good year or so and I wouldn't know what goes on now. A good survivor team was pretty much indestructible, as they can all play as solo players whereas infected have to work as a team to get anything done ; if the overall skill level has increased since 2010, it might make things fairly boring without friends.

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I've never played L4D2, and don't want to either because I live in Australia and our version is utter crap due to the fact that Valve were asked to censor it until it was essentially like running around and shooting stuffed bears with zombie masks on (that also disappear before they even hit the ground)... :/

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The first one is great. I've put about 300 hours into it. I really had no reason to buy the second.

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Found them both extremely fun. Single player you pretty much cut out of the package because running around with three preprogammed bots just cuts the experience in half. Online is absolutely where its at.

I switched to LFD2 if not only just to see what was new in it (plus the fact I had a 50$ Best Buy gift card). While it feels more like an expansion than a direct sequel, the new campaigns and additions still made up for it. Gameplay is also a bit different, since there are 3 new zombie special classes who all do different things.

I must find out if I can play LFD2 on my new machine

caco_killer said:

I take it theses games are best played with friends? I've tried playing them solo and I just got bored of it.

Not even. Just join with random people online. The bad ones leave early and the good ones stay through until the end.

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The first time I played online I was left behind... but the NPC characters hang out with the worst player. The next few times I tended to lead the pack.

I also try to heal people with my medipack but I can't. Uggg... I figure it would be right mouse click instead of left.

Also since I've been playing Half Life 2 for the first time and its episodes, I feel like a lot of what's in HL2 is in L4D. The situations, the atmosphere, the textures, the sounds (which have been the same since 1999). That's probably not a bad thing, but it just reminds me I'd rather play with headcrab zombies that the sounds they make are terrifying and the atmosphere is better in a crazy sort of way.

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Stroggos said:

I've never played L4D2, and don't want to either because I live in Australia and our version is utter crap due to the fact that Valve were asked to censor it until it was essentially like running around and shooting stuffed bears with zombie masks on (that also disappear before they even hit the ground)... :/

Isn't there some sort of way to download the uncensored version, or otherwise bypass the censorship?

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Sodaholic said:

Isn't there some sort of way to download the uncensored version, or otherwise bypass the censorship?


Not legally because it requires Steam which would check all of that stuff... I assume.

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caco_killer said:

I take it theses games are best played with friends? I've tried playing them solo and I just got bored of it.

It's a coop multiplayer game at heart with bad singleplayer with bots. It is a multiplayer game and was designed and should be played as such.

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You know... for the Australian version they could replace guns with bubble guns that light up zombies and turn them to normal people who just run away or cower and hide. I would say a ghost buster lazer, but eh that would be too cool.

ok i'm gonna do a playthrough of L4D1 just to be done with it and go to L4D2 hoping that will be a better game.

>>>

1 hour in I beat No Mercy for the first time. Died 2x.
90 minutes in and I beat the 2nd campaign whatever it is. Died 0x. Got lost...
150 minutes and I've beaten Death Toll. I think that's it for me today.

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Left 4 Dead (original) was/is one of the best team-based objective FPS games I've ever played. I played it competitive for a year or so, and had a lot of fun. It's still (co-op Expert with four friends dicking around) one of my favorite pass times.


The second one cut out all the atmosphere, game balance, a lot of tactics, and stylism of the original game. Just another game that Valve bought the rights to and molested. It's at least playable at a competitive level with some very very large mods, but not too enjoyable.

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40oz said:

Left for Dead is just pinky demons with sprite replacements and fast monsters turned on.


Haha. Not quite, but still funny.

eargosedown said:

The second one cut out all the atmosphere, game balance, a lot of tactics, and stylism of the original game. Just another game that Valve bought the rights to and molested. It's at least playable at a competitive level with some very very large mods, but not too enjoyable.


Heh my friends thought I was crazy for liking the first one more for these reasons. I wish it'd come out on PSN.

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Unidoom plays the everloving shit out of L4D2. Here's the scoop. L4D2 is the much better vs. game. L4D1 I'll agree has much better atmosphere and characters, but the dynamics of the new monsters and the balancing are much better and more interesting in L4D2. Versus mode is complete and utter broken shit in L4D1. And now, 2 includes pretty much all of the content from 1, plus more. I'll agree, if I'm just doing campaign coop, I tend to prefer the first game, but the second has all of its content and generally blows it out of the water with all the work Valve has done with it.

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I've now played through all the campaigns except for the Sacrifice. Usually when I die it is making it to the evac vehicle at the end.

The level designs are brilliantly chaotic. I kept thinking how this should be repackaged where there are no zombies but real people and call it 'Angry Mob.' Angry mob at the mall, airport, train station, high school and so on. I have a feeling thats why people love zombies... to kill other people.

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Left 4 Dead 2 is pretty much a huge "fuck you" from start to finish. I'll explain.

A four-man co-op campaign on The Passing, Normal difficulty. The hordes do not stop, ever, even after the "crescendo" has technically ended and the music is back to normal. By the time the four of us make it to the finale where you're supposed to fill up the generator with gas cans, somehow the 15th and final gas can winds up on the roof of a very tall building where nobody can get it. We try lobbing molotovs up there to break it...and it doesn't break. Eventually, the game spawns three tanks, a charger, and a spitter, and the four of us basically die instantly.

This is the kind of stuff I'd expect out of the game if we were on Hard or Expert, but no, we're on Normal, which is only one step above the easiest setting.

That's the event that caused me to ragequit so hard that I uninstalled the game. I can't even justify the $7.50 I spent on it.

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