Half-Masked

by Alex Hill

Left 4 Dead 2 may be the most toxic experience you can get from a video game. It is unfit for human consumption, without a doubt the worst example of this medium in the last ten years. It has the most game-killing glitches, and the worst design-choices born from innate contempt for its audience. Worse than anything I’ve ever seen. Worse than Hotel Mario. Worse than “Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties”. Worse than that root canal I had where the freezing wore off halfway, and the television in the same room featured Kelly and Regis interviewing Larry the Cable Guy.

I’m not entirely convinced it deserves a rating, because that would suggest merit. One could say that a game this addicting must surely have something redeeming. Heroin is addictive too. I guess this game is better than being addicted to heroin, but I’m really reaching here.

But, you know, it’s a lot gorier now. Because that’s what’s important.

But this game should not be scorned; it should be pitied. I know this now. Valve, apparently fraught with grief from the economic woes, made this game in desperation. As many acts of evil generally are.

These people need my help, not a fiery wall of words. Instead of being my usual Negative Nancy self, I’ve decided to lend this aching group of once-artists a hand with their next project. What follows is a list of suggestions for the eventual Left 4 Dead 3.

Split into four categories: Survivors, Infected, Levels and Design, and three suggestions each.

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SURVIVORS:

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• -For Left 4 Dead 3,  try to design characters that have any sort of appeal or complexity, are acted by professional voice actors, and aren’t a gaggle of retarded, squinty-eyed mole rats. Why you didn’t just go with the Midnight Riders is beyond me.
• -Make the A.I. team-mates follow you within a distance of four miles. (I understand you wanted to avoid team-damage from the new Spitter attack, but even on the highest difficulty setting the acid damage is minimal at best. Meanwhile, it is impossible for any of my companions to save me from a Smoker, Charger, Hunter or Jockey because they are too far away to help me in time. By attempting to fix what would be a minor annoyance, you just amplified a rage-inducing problem from the first game.)
• -Try to find a way to encourage team-mates to pick up med-kits. Do I even have to say this? I feel stupid even bringing this up, this is such amateur stuff. This was only a problem in one campaign of the original game, and it is now a consistent, infuriating problem.

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INFECTED:

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• -You know how a timer is in play, counting down to a horde of zombies that comes out of nowhere just to bug the player? CUT THAT SHIT OUT. Or at least, don’t make it happen every two minutes. It is not fun. It is annoying. It doesn’t even make sense, because nothing is actually setting them off or attracting them to the player in the context of the stage, like an alarm or something.  And worse still, it kills the immersion. Instead of appreciating the levels or the situation, I’m rushing through every stage because I don’t want to put up with this mood-destroying Michael Bay nonsense more than I have to.
• -DON’T PUT IN FOUR GODDAMN ENEMIES THAT WE CAN’T DEFEND AGAINST ON OUR OWN YOU MORONS! Let me shoot the Hunter with my pistol, let me struggle to free myself from the Smoker, anything. A good game encourages teamwork. A shitty game FORCES it!
• -Do something about how much damage common infected dish out.
  -On “Easy” mode, they do 1 point of damage.
  -2 on “Normal”.
  -5 on “Advanced”.
  -And 20 on “Expert”… G’buh??? Either they’re not doing enough damage on Advanced, or they’re doing too much damage on Expert. Or both. It’s like choosing between three different versions of “Super Duper Easy Mode” and “RAGE-QUIT”. There is such a thing as a happy medium, you guys.

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LEVELS:

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• -Never do a “rolling crescendo” ever again. Ever. No, fuck you, it doesn’t work in this type of game. It would if you were faster or moved at the same speed as zombies, or if being hit by a zombie didn’t stop you in your tracks and block your progress. Adrenaline doesn’t work.
• -Maybe have some sort of balance in how often rescue closets, med kits or defibrillators are given out. Some stages have you tripping over the damn things, immediately followed by two stages without any, even on separate play-throughs and on Easy.
• -If you’re going to make the new maps longer than the fucking Lord of the Rings trilogy, include checkpoints or an auto/save system. Starting all the way back at the Safe Room is what invented Rage-Quitting. Don’t tell me the levels aren’t long enough for checkpoints. The original Super Mario Bros. had checkpoints, and that game can be beaten in less time than the first level of Swamp Fever. Some of the levels are longer than this review. This is the year two-thousand-and–nine, for crying out loud! Not including checkpoints in a game like this is arbitrary and inexcusable.

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DESIGN:

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• -Let us pick ourselves off the ground if incapacitated. But make it so that it’s a lot quicker and less risky for a friend to help you up, which is the entire point of the game. Being “wiped out” when all four of the survivors are merely horizontal does not make your game fun, it makes me hope Gabe Newell’s kids get eaten by a GRUE. I don’t often fantasize about game developer’s children dying horribly. I don’t even know if he has kids, or what a GRUE even looks like. He seems like a nice enough guy, but those are the thoughts I have when I am repeatedly mugged like that.
• -Give your playtesters more than a few months to actually make your game function the way it should. This is why people boycotted your game, Gabe. It was foolish to think that any game developer, let alone Valve could release a decent product without taking the time to make sure it isn’t a festival of shit. That you guys are taking your sweet time with Half-Life Episode 3 is actually comforting to me. It says you still give a damn about at least one of your properties.
• -Make sure the A.I. Director actually does what it’s supposed to, instead of the exact opposite. You know how it’s supposed to help the player a little if they’re having trouble, and make the game more challenging for those who are breezing through? Both Left 4 Dead games do the opposite. If you’re out of ammo and medkits and lost two party members, the game makes you fight a Tank, two Chargers, two Smokers, a Boomer and a Spitter. And a horde. That is a thing that actually happened to me.That is your fault, Valve. You know damn well what I have to work with here.

To those who say that I should play with friends all of the time, always as a solution: not everyone is in the mood to play shit. Everything is better with friends, but sooner or later, you’re going to be stuck with bots. The critics who praise the multiplayer and ignore the single-player content are frauds. They are only reviewing half of the product. A game needs to be able to stand on its own merits. Fixing all of these things I’ve listed wouldn’t make the next Left 4 Dead the best game of all time, but it would stop it from being the absolute worst for a change. I don’t know why I’m alone in thinking this game deserves to be more than shovelware.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.