I hate sequels
Guest writer Ian Edhouse talks about Valve Software and the sequel to their 2008 hit Left 4 Dead.
I’m Valve’s bitch. It’s OK, I’m cool with it – after the initial shock when one of their gang bent me over in the showers and did what came naturally (it was Team Fortress 2, but I didn’t catch the name until later), I got used to the benefits. Sure I have to install their Steam software on my PC, and purchase digital content at higher than market price with no resale value, but I get the most well-crafted and well-supported games of this generation – and, hey, at least I don’t have to put the disc in the drive, right? Right?
So last year, when I found out about a new co-operative online game from the Valve boys and their new pals Turtle Rock Studios, I was excited to say the least. I mean, I’d briefly hung out with the Counter-Strike gang, but they already had too many gimps under their wing, so the opportunity to branch out from TF2 into Left 4 Dead’s horde-infested alleyways was enticing. The game seemed to be just around the corner for longer than necessary, but Valve kept me sweet with periodic hype – the game would feature a procedurally-driven A.I. ‘Director’, which would generate fresh new and exciting experiences every time it was played. It would be built on the concept of a small group of players supporting each other (bitch as I am, I don’t appreciate being reminded of it every 20 seconds by the mic-spamming homophobes online gaming communities attract) and would run on an enhanced Source engine. I was content – I could hang out with TF2 for the time being and then jump ship when my new Sugar Daddy was released.
When it finally was, the reviews were… cautionary. Reviewers noted a dearth of content backing up the impressive technology, and warned that, polished and immersive as the experience was, it was short. Very short. Like, 4 missions short. Not that this stopped me (and hordes of others) from diving in head-first, of course. So it was short – so what? I suppose I knew, somewhere, in the back of my mind, what was going on, but I ignored my niggling concerns and reassured myself that Valve would look out for me. They always had, I mean, Team Fortress was being supported up the arse, so to speak, and besides, the A.I. Director would keep things fresh across the maps by mixing things up, changing things around and putting the second pistol on a different car bonnet every now and then, right? It was a full-price game with limited content, this I knew, but the experience was going to be about matey replayability, not single-player grind – an FPS Mario Kart for the Halo generation, if you like.
So I bought 4 copies. Yeah, like I said, me and Valve, we have a special relationship. I bought one for me, one for my girlfriend, and another for a mate so we could play it as intended with another pimped-out pal of mine who’d already invested. I even bought a copy for the 360 so I could play it with as many people as possible. Things were great – OK, I was pretty much working to support Gabe Newell, I’d started to not recognise my girlfriend without her grey beard and beret, and I was deep in the red to Xbox Live but, God, I mean, if you’ve never played it… I can’t describe the buzz it gives you… the way that the second pistol would be on a different car every now and again, or, sometimes, the same car… it takes your breath away. Besides, I had no worries – they’d given me that ‘Survivor’ mode for free, hadn’t they? I mean, I never played it – it’s pointless. But it was free, so that at least showed Valve’s willingness to support my investment, right?
Wrong. Turns out Valve had their eyes on fresh meat all along, and Left 4 Dead 2 is coming out this week – only one year after the release of the original. What gets me is, they didn’t even call – I had to find out from a live twitter feed from reporters attending the Microsoft speech at E3. OK, so by now there’ve been numerous reports on the game from various sources (including from representatives of the rather vocal ‘boycott L4D’ group on Steam) but I’m hurt, Gabe, I genuinely am.
So, setting the prison rape analogy aside, for me this whole thing has been one of those moments – like when that Nokia ringtone pissed all over the corpse of Gene Roddenberry in the opening scenes of the recent Star Trek film – when souls like myself, forced, day-in and day-out to defend our much-derided cultural preferences at work and at home, are presented with a stark reminder that for all our bleating to the contrary, we are not appreciators of art, we are consumers of product.
I wish I could tell you that I’ll fight the good fight and leave the next instalment alone, but this is no fairy-tale world – I’m going to lube up my wallet for a fresh buggering just as soon as I finish this. I mean, from what I’m reading, the A.I. Director in the new game is able to control the game’s environment in new and exciting ways… my mind boggles as to where the second pistol will end up, this time.
Ian Edhouse is reloading.