Way back in 2011, when I heard that there would be a brand new DLC for Left 4 Dead 2, I was pretty excited. I had played through all the main campaigns, bought all the previous DLC add ons, and was getting a bit fed up with the same old thing.
The DLC was announced on 16th February of this year, and I downloaded it a couple of months later. I sat down gleefully, and began the title campaign of the DLC. The campaign was originally developed by the community, and then glossed over by Valve. It’s completely separate from the canon campaign, as nothing reveals it to be in any part of the storyline, which actually irritated me, as I believe that games like this, with an established plot, shouldn’t be messed with. No matter, I would carry on. So I continued, and enjoyed about three quarters of the entire campaign, some points of the game were too predictable, like when that Tank came at the same point during every play, regardless of the difficulty setting or the progress through the game, not to mention the fact that the characterisations of the Survivors were not as engaging as in the other campaigns. Other than that, the DLC’s other additions seemed to be much more popular with both myself and players that I interacted with via Xbox Live.
So, is this a new beginning for the Left 4 Dead franchise? It certainly seems to be bringing people back to the game. Although Xbox 360 Magazine rates L4D2 as 9/10 in popularity, in reality, when I mention that it’s the game that got me gaming, I get almost looked down on by my peers, gaming or otherwise, because they feel that the other, more ‘mainstream’ games, or older games such as AC, Halo, Mass Effect… the list seems to be pretty endless. Yes, I’ve recently gotten into other games on Xbox, in fact, this year’s Eurogamer Expo opened my eyes to the gaming opportunities now open to this rookie gamer, but L4D2 will always be my first love. Even so, despite this, I believe that people are slowly, but surely, coming back to the game. Speaking with a lot of people of varying ages online, I have come to the conclusion that the Cold Stream DLC is bringing both old and new gamers into the world of zombie mayhem. At least on Xbox live, where the game has been shunned a little recently, especially compared to the PC version.
However, the faithful players like myself were disappointed with the amount of Microsoft Points that we had to fork out for in order to get the DLC, and believed that, with the standard of what the DLC had involved, that at most 200 points would have been worthy, even no points at all, and treated as a game update. On the other hand, the community and Valve did attempt to bring us the DLC for free, but unfortunately had to charge the price given. There were rumours of another community made DLC that may hit Xbox Live mentioned briefly on the L4D wiki, as well as the Cabin in the Woods tie-in which collapsed with MGM, the company behind the film.
I’m interested to see if they’ll make a L4D3, this is heightened due to the fact that despite the arrival of the Cold Stream DLC, I think people are now looking for something more to the game than playing the same campaigns back to back, have all the achievements for both L4D games, and are a tad bit fed up with all the Mutations now they’ve played them all to death (bad pun here!). Players are probably praying deep down for another game to be released, in an interview for Eurogamer Chet Faliszek said “Maybe, sometime down the road.”
In all, despite the sudden increase of popularity for L4D2, with the release of the new editions of the main games of Xbox coming out in the next month or so, such as ACIII, Halo 4 and Black Ops II among others, the popularity will probably return to as it once was pre-Cold Stream. It’s a shame, as it’s a great community, I’ve made some of my best Xbox live friends through the game, but, as they say, nothing lasts forever.
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