L4D 2 demo... what do people think?

[danosaurus]

Just played the demo and I have to admit I wasn't all that impressed.

This is coming from a huge Valve fan, by the way.

The gameplay was nothing new, felt just like the first one with the lights turned on.

Now I know graphics are not the most important part of a game, but man Valve need to either update or replace the Source engine.

The game looks like shit.

The buildings and character models are horrible, angular last gen atrocities that would look more at home in GTA San Andreas than on a 2009 mainstream release.

Objects are blocky and have no shadows, lighting effects look dated and blurry.

The very first vista was a badly implanted endless sea with an almost blank horizon. Half Life 2 had better graphic than this.

Animations and sounds are still very good, and the guns feel about right. The characters seem a bit more interesting than the last bunch too. The music was very cool and jazzy and helped with the setting.

But all in all I found the experience pretty underwhelming and won't be forking out my cash for it.

Especially not after playing Borderlands. Aussie friends, you're not missing all that much.

Anyone love it? Hate it? Feel indifferent to it?

You focus a lot on the graphics, L4D was never about the graphics.
I thought it was great, more of the same but with improvements - nonetheless, great

 

[MiracleOfSound]

God forbid they try and do somthing new with the series.
Oh wait they have batons and knifes, that work just as good, if not worse, than hitting them with your gun.

Also who thinks "Lets make the left bumper be crouch", thats just retarded.

You might already know this but for the sake of it, control setting four. Communication in this game is obviously important and I think the control scheme was just a nudge to get the hint out the door. Especially since so many xbox live members cant afford a free mic that comes shipped with the box....

Something on topic; when I played through I expected the levels to have some alternate routes, and changing scenery. Played through twice and found a door boarded up. I felt jipped. Especially when it didn't alter my route at all. It's that bar with the jukebox. The door on the back wall was closed up. I just friggen walked around and went through the back door. Lame.

Going to buy it though, it's still a good game and the shotguns feel a lot better.

This level editor seems like such a cop-out by Valve for me.

Making an AI that moves doors and crates around is surely far less time consuming and expensive than, you know... making a full length game with lots of maps that's value for money.

The environmental ennui in L4D 1 was pretty bad. I expect it won't be much different here.

 

[om]

Hey, you know what sucks? The fact that, oh say, I live in austalia, and the GODD*MN F***ING GOVERMENT WON'T GODD*MN GIVE US L4D 2 THE C*** A** MOTHERF***ERS!!! AAAAAAAGH!!!

Okay, jokes aside, (Yes the raging screams were a joke) I really hate that I won't get L4D 2.

I know that the men and women here just wan't to do whats right, but I steel feel a bit gyped.

From what I have read, L4D 2 is gonna be fantastic, and I can't even get the demo.

 

[Kinghoza]

Meh never got around playing the demo. I'm somewhat bored with the Source engine already

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Eh, it was ok. A huge improvement from the first L4D, but definitely not worth a purchase. No clue what you're talking about with the graphics. They're not great, but worse than half life 2? seriously? besides valve's never been known for graphics, they're known for..... umm..... uhhhhh.... something.

 

[US Crash Fire]

I loved every inch of it!
As for the technical issues, remember, IT'S A DEMO!
The final version will have more polish on it.

 

[Pegghead]

I've replayed it about ten times now, I LOVE IT! But you gotta be fair OP, not only was it just a rough demo, but the gameplay vidoes from the full version look amazing, maybe you just need a new computer to fully enjoy it.

 

[Retardinator]

This level editor seems like such a cop-out by Valve for me.

Making an AI that moves doors and crates around is surely far less time consuming and expensive than, you know... making a full length game with lots of maps that's value for money.

The environmental ennui in L4D 1 was pretty bad. I expect it won't be much different here.

I actually got the impression that Valve was boasting about something they found out, rather than they put in. Being a bit of a source mapper myself, I think it's possible to alter the route in the original Left 4 Dead. :/

 

[Sallix]

I thought it was brilliant and well optimised. However Rochelle and the redneck guy i thought were crappy characters.

 

[Arcanz]

Now I know graphics are not the most important part of a game, but man Valve need to either update or replace the Source engine.

The game looks like shit.

The buildings and character models are horrible, angular last gen atrocities that would look more at home in GTA San Andreas than on a 2009 mainstream release.

Objects are blocky and have no shadows, lighting effects look dated and blurry.

Did you turn your settings up, do you even use a decent computer at all? I have all the settings at max, and it looks waaaaay better than most games that has been released recently. My computer is rather powerfull, maybe it's just that, I don't know. But for me it looked amazing, and I liked how they used the "cartoon-ish" style that TF2 has. Makes the game seems so non-violent at first glance, but when the blood and limbs are introduced. Daaaaamn ^^

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Fucking loved it. Seriously, it was great. Especially when I switched on the jukebox and heard "Re: Your Brains".

 

[Crowser]

It was really underwhelming for me. I've played the first one quite a bit with friends but never actually bought it; the one thing that ALWAYS pissed me off was that you could not play 4 player split screen. Left FOUR Dead guys, FUCKING FOUR! From the looks of it they will not be changing that in the sequel =/

Not that I am going to buy it anyway, it just seemed like the first with slightly better graphics and new maps. Not worth anyone time unless you never played the first one.

 

[Zenode]

Did anyone else feel that the pistol has been downgraded in terms of power (minus the deagle)

Some weapons felt like they took 10 hits to kill one zombie while other tore through a whole horde with one bullet.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

The buildings and character models are horrible, angular last gen atrocities that would look more at home in GTA San Andreas than on a 2009 mainstream release.

Riiiiight...

Now Saints Row 2 is a fucking piece of shitty dated graphics (and gameplay) that belongs in 2003 or something.

The Source engine might be old (even though the one used in HL2 and the one used in L4D2 are actually pretty different), but it's by no means ugly. Please set up an appointment with an optometrist ASAP.

I agree, Saints Row 2 looks like it was created from a team of devs who took a big shit into a bucket and made a game from the various detritus.

It played badly too, wih bugs everywhere and a terrible framerate, which everyone seems to have forgotten since Yahtzee said it was his game of the year.

If you refer to my previous post where I compared screenshots between L4D2 and Dead Space, I think it is clear that Valve is definately quite far behind other mainstream titles in the visual department.

The reason it seems a bigger issue to me is because Valve used to make the best looking games out there once uopn a time. Half Life 2 had the most realistic and amazing world in any game at the time of its release.

Ok, so it looks better than San Andreas. I concede that. The people in San Andreas had spatulas for hands. But the house and car in the background there are pretty damn blocky...

Well I guess that's the distinction I'm trying to make; It doesn't look as good as other big name titles, but it still isn't ugly. I guess we just have different thresholds of what we're willing to accept because I think that for what it is (not very demanding of hardware), L4D2 looks pretty good. And it's a solid engine that's been updated since HL2 and still has among the best animations and physics out there. (Particularly the "cinematic" physics/world-animation; Just watch the intro when the military bomb the bridge)

And sure, The Parish level doesn't look dark/gritty/horror, but that's just one out of five (The 'Hard Rain', carnival and mall ones all look to be way darker; Don't know about the fifth...) and it makes for something new that I welcome.

Just to make something clear though, are you playing it on a PC or a console? Because it damn sure is going to look worse on a console...

P.S: About Saints Row 2... After seeing many threads about it vs. GTA4, I was beginning to think that it was actually a pretty good game that I had missed out on so I bought it (thank god it was a Steam weekend deal at 7$) and could only laugh at how ugly they managed to make 15GB worth of content look. And even then, I was willing to look past that if it had been genuinely fun to play, but fuck no! No vehicle I've ever handled in any game ever drove as ridiculously as in that game. I'm seriously pissed to have wasted the slightest ounce of my life to that piece of crap. /rant (Sorry about that... got carried away there...)

Well to be honest the graphics in L4D don't even bother me that much either, I just pointed it out in the OP as one of a few flaws I thought the game had. There was still lots of good stuff about it too, it just didn't wow me the way Borderlands or Arkham Asylum did.

I may seem to be a little more dogmatic about this criticism because so many people are disagreeing with me about it and I'm trying to respond to them all with valid replies.

Valve's physics engine is still great, I agree. Second only perhaps to the one in Red Faction: Geurrilla (unless they are the same one? Do Valve use Havoc?)

As for Saints Row 2, I dind't even finish the main questline. Got so bored of driving around a shitty ugly city and partaking in stupid side missions so I could get the story to activate.

The only really fun missions were the shit spraying and the flaming buggy, but they were both ruined by appaling framerate drops.

Soundtrack was cool though.

 

[mambodog]

I thought it didn't look as good as the first, but I think its mainly because its during the day, so its much more obvious how boxy some parts of the level are, which wasn't nearly as noticeable in the dark (ie, the original). Also, the 'unnatural fog' used in the first one just looks plain wrong during the daytime. It makes the air look like soup. Basically, the game looked better in the dark (like some chicks, amirite? ). The post-processing effects (blur, contrast) are used well though.

My main issue with the demo, however, is that the pacing is really crap. The demo for the original L4D was paced perfectly, ending with a mini-finale and leaving you wanting more. This one ends a bit after a fairly easy gauntlet event (made easier due to the common infected making poor pathfinding choices) then just kind of peters out. I was just like.. guh? That's it?

EDIT: I just thought I should mention, it is a bit unfair to compare L4D to singleplayer shooters, as most of them load much more often, or stream content. As L4D is a multiplayer game, the content must be loaded before playing, and can't interrupt gameplay. This means that the developer has to stretch their asset budget for the whole level over a larger amount of play-space than you're average single player shooter, or small-leveled shooter (ie CSS, CoD4). As for the comparison to Dead Space, not only is that mostly small corridors, but it loads every time you open a door. That's why they take so long to open (unless you're backtracking). You couldn't do that in a multiplayer FPS (or at least, you shouldn't).

 

[chase211]

I think there is a big disconnect here between the people complaining about the graphics on PC and those forced to play it on the vomit inducing 360. Invest in a PC.

 

[Soulkiller3]

Let me see, the game forces the settings to be has high as my graphic card can run which is "out of range" of my monitor, i have tryed every config command to stop this with no luck, so seeing l2d2 is a black screen with "out of range" witten in the middle i think its pritty shit tbh .