Is Left 4 Dead 2 Too Soon? Maybe It Just Needs A Little Rock Band 2 Treatment!
This June, gaming news has been a blur. The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), also known as the largest gaming convention in the world, came and went. Among the huge stories that came about in the conference was a shocking announcement for Left 4 Dead 2 – coming this year on November 17.
We all remember Left 4 Dead 1 like it was yesterday. In fact, it was yesterday – November 18, 2008 to be exact. Left 4 Dead is an amazing cooperative multiplayer game against the Zombie horde (referred to in-game as infected, not actually zombies). Yours truly have spent many a late nights (and early mornings) playing L4D1 on my Xbox 360 with my friends, and for a short time during a free weekend, on the PC. (There is no PS3 version of most Valve games because the PS3 architecture is too complicated. Source.)
Left 4 Dead has been immensely popular to a ton of people and a huge pop culture following has shown up with interesting cosplay, shwag, fanart, and various other rabid fandom culture paraphernalia.
Which makes this announcement even more shocking. Left 4 Dead 2 seems like it will usher in a new era too soon. While everybody still holds their 4 survivors near and dear to their hearts. Valve came out trying to rip away those beloved characters from you and replace them with new ones. It does seem quite early for a sequel – And too early to stop supporting L4D1. Its highly unusual for Valve to stop supporting its games post-release though, so either they’ll support both or what gives?
Some fans have not taken kindly to the announcement and have gone petition public with their grievances. Valve has then come out with a response citing that people will understand their reasons for making a full blown sequel and possibly separating the fanbase from L4D1 players and L4D2 players. I for one, will be very sad if I see half of my friends playing L4D1 and half of them playing L4D2, both sending me invites to their game.
Based from that same response though, it seems that Valve, as the great software programmers that they are, (they brought us the last bastion of PC gaming, Steam) is trying to come up with a solution of possible inter-operability. Which is great, and reminds me of Rock Band 1 and 2.
Rock Band 1 was a great game, and Rock Band 2 was even better. The great minds at Harmonix Systems came up with a great way to import all your songs from RB1 to 2 in a quick-and-easy $5 importing process. Not only that, all the songs you’ve downloaded for both games are playable on the other. This gives tremendous amounts of replayability for the games, especially for Rock Band 2 (which gets the bulk of all your RB1 songs anyway). What this means is you only need to have the RB2 disc in to play all the songs from across all the games you have.
My idea for Left 4 Dead 2 is almost similar. What if L4D2 allow you to import L4D1 and allow you to play against owners of both games without needing to switch games? Assuming you own both games, switching between them would be a hassle nobody would ever want to go through. If L4D2 allowed you to play on both games at once, (provided you prove ownership of both games) then both L4D1 players and L4D2 players won’t lose their respective coop friends. The only real limitation here would be that the owners of L4D1 wouldn’t be able to play L4D2 unless they buy it, which is pretty much assumed. The great part here is that the L4D2 community wouldn’t be split from the L4D1 community – and that would make us all a lot more zombie-ready when the real apocalypse happens in 2014.
