Dying 2 do it all over again! [pt2]

* - continued...

Now to me the Left 4 Dead 2 announcement should have been fantastic news, and Valve were a company I had a lot of respect for, not least because they don't normally rush a game to market, especially a follow-up to such an influential and important title. However the alarm bells started ringing in my head. It completely seemed to me like they'd turned into more little milk-maids of the game world, grasping L4D's udders and milking it for all it's worth.

I was upset and amongst the first group of people to post on forums, criticising Valve for their new found "biz" skills. I joined an online petition for Valve to release this as a simple add-on for their game, giving us faithful players the value that they had themselves promised us many times. You see L4D was meant to have additional story parts added to it as free downloads. New weapons, new maps and possibly even new enemies to eviscerate. I felt betrayed by the only big gaming company that seemed to care about their fans. I even enlisted friends to join the petition.

You see, I was a tit. I've come to realise that even though I criticise other people for finding the negatives before the positives, I actually do it myself. My first instinct is usually a brief hint of optimism followed by a larger dose of quiet pondering to whatever bad side there could be, and then elaborating on it. Thankfully I usually then go onto a further stage of analysis that's mostly hopeful.

A year. I really thought that twelve months wasn't enough time with a single game. Other than my wife (obviously) and music, there's rarely anything that extends beyond a couple months in entertainment time. Say we pay £30 for the average game, which most people get at least fifteen hours of play from; that's £2 per hour. There's not a lot you can do for that price. Fun parks take tens of pounds every hour from you, a film costs £15 for up to two hours. Really, it's amazing value. Sure you could say the PC or XBox costs much more initially, but that's actually irrelevant as most people get their value from that in the sheer quantity of other things to do than games.

I've since watched some more clips of L4D2 and read a whole lot more. I've re-discovered my faith in Valve. They've made so many little changes that we'd be playing a slightly different game every couple of days if they were to add them all incrementally. What I would like to see mostly, are a bigger variation on the Special Infected (boss zombies) and more maps. Valve have also released the official L4D authoring tools, allowing everyone and their goldfish to build maps and change whatever they like. They've made numerous fixes and improvements to the gameplay and have basically got rid of 90% of the server browsing functions (it actually works now). Valve really do have our interests at heart, and after I realised this I took my name off the petition/group-list that is berating them on facts we don't even really know yet.

So with a renewed enthusiasm, I decided to do a little preparation to my PC for what I'm sure is going to be the game of 2009. I upgraded my graphics from something stupidly powerful, to something ridiculously powerful. I purchased a new widescreen super duper ultra high refresh monitor, and the one really over-the-top accessory that's more like a kilo of cherries on top of the cake; 3D Glasses.... They however, are a topic for another post. I'll just say "goddam!"...

I keep checking on all the new zombie films that are coming out, and there's probably five or so every month now, and actually one or two every few months that look fairly decent! It's now getting to be as big as the rest of the horror genres combined. We see AAA blockbusters released that are just glorified zombie shoots. Will Smith in I am Legend being one of the more entertaining. Yet for all these great films, I'd trade them all in for the hope that Left 4 Dead 2 doesn't disappoint.

I'm not going to talk about the game in any vague detail, as there are hundreds of other and better informed sites doing that every day. I posted this because I realised that a simple game had the power to get me more riled up than my own countries politics and current affairs. It got me more excited than any news about a favourite bands album. Games truly have become the number one form of media based entertainment. It's about time we treated them in a mature way. Not stamping our feet when we get something we weren't expecting. If we stop acting like children maybe the developers will stop giving us products for children. Maybe in fact, we can have our cake and eat it...