Valve is responsible for some of my favorite titles of this decade. They made the brilliant Half Life, which shot them sky high, and thanks to a lot of community support, and some great mods, they were able to stay lucrative and milked the first game of the franchise as much as they could.
And milking a franchise is perfectly fine as long as there’s reasonable quality control *cough*Lucas Arts*cough*Kotor2*cough*
After many years of wait and speculation, Half Life 2 is released with a breathtaking engine that tries to mimic real physics. What followed Half Life 2 was an episodic adventure. Valve decided to proceed try out episodic releases in order to maintain a steadier revenue income.
The first of these episodes was successful, but the reception was only lukewarm, while the second episode, which came with the incredibly fun Team Fortress sequel and the innovative Portal, is considered one, if not the best, game bundle I can think of.
They seemed to do no wrong, but then came…
L4D is a fine game. I have it, I enjoy playing it every now and then. But I think that any price close to the normal game retail price is a ripoff. I bought the game a few months after it had come out, during one of those limited-time promotions, I think I payed $15 for it.
After I played all the maps, I had this dry feeling in my mouth. I have never bought a Valve game where I felt like I didn’t get my money’s worth. Yet I was feeling that, and I payed less than half of what the original customers did. Why was that so?
Left 4 Dead, and all the other modern Zombie shooters made way for a new type of “horror game”. Instead of struggling for ammunitions and walking around mansions, the new generation is all about large numbers of Zombies, that don’t walk or drag themselves toward you, but instead run.
The concept seems incredibly fun, 4 players shooting their way through zombies that run at them as if they were African athletes (ie: very fast), and also some special types of zombies that gave the gameplay a twist.
So in practical terms what we really got were 5 maps, some interesting AI programming that tried to make the experience challenging, regardless of your skill level. As soon as I ran past the levels once, and tried to do it again the day afterwards, the experience already felt a bit dry.
After the first time a horde of zombies attacked, you felt like you’d seen them all. And all the zombies are ridiculously weak. You can play the game in the hardest difficulty mode, and despite the ridiculous amount of damage you’ll take from the special zombies (the “infected”), the normal ones still hit like pussies.
It just doesn’t feel like a horror survival game. Sure, the same can be said for Resident Evil 5, but after you become adept at the game, and start tackling the harder difficulty settings, your #1 concern throughout the whole playthrough is surviving the infected. The rest of the zombies are just cannon fodder and can easily be tackled by even the most inexperienced team. It’s when infected show up that true skill shines.
Thankfully Valve released a patch that put a new twist on things, and brought back my interest in the game. Two teams of 4 could now play on opposite sides, as survivors and infected. What a fun concept!
It didn’t take long for people playing this mode to realize that as long as they ran as fast as they could they could make it through the level without giving the Infected team much of a chance. I only realized this when I joined an ongoing game, and the first thing that was told to me over the microphone was “grab the uzi, follow us as fast as you can”. And the whole level was spent running faster than the zombie team could keep up with us.
I remember looking back more than once and seeing the poor guy stuck with a boomer struggling to keep up with our rhythm. It felt stupid and flawed, and since then I can’t remember a single time I enjoyed myself with the game after that.
And now, a measly year months after it came out, Valve releases a sequel, which is already a success. While the truly worthwhile sequels they’re cooking up, like Half Life 2: Episode 3 and Portal 2 remain MIA.
I have no doubt in my mind Valve is working on the sequels I’m truly waiting for, but I think that they will in very few numbers and between very long years. Though I heard from my not-so-distant future-self that Left 4 Dead 6 which will come out in November 2013 will be awesome and allow you to play as a Kangaroo with boxing gloves against Nazi zombies. Oh, wait…
