{"id":3578,"date":"2009-06-05T10:21:51","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T14:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=3578"},"modified":"2009-06-05T11:48:48","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T15:48:48","slug":"stolen-pixels-96-left-4-dumb-part-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=3578","title":{"rendered":"Stolen Pixels #96: Left 4 Dumb, Part 14"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kill it! Kill it with fire!<\/a><\/p>\n

Played a little Left 4 Dead last night. The last two weeks of spastic Team Fortress 2 seem to have blunted my L4D skills. At one point I ran into a teammate and thought, “AH! A SPY!” (In TF2, teammates are ethereal, while spies-posing-as-teammates are solid. In L4D, teammates are solid-ish. You sort of shove through them like they were made of water.) <\/p>\n

Yes, I heard about Left 4 Dead 2<\/a>. Yes, I heard about the controversy<\/a>. I’m actually not too worked up about it. Yes, I’d rather they just released more content for the original game, but after logging 100 hours on L4D I can’t really call the thing “lacking in content” with a straight face. <\/p>\n

Listening to the developer commentary, I can see how this sequel came about. The original game was made with the specific goal in mind of cutting down on development times. The AI director turned weeks of work into hours, letting them focus on making content. A sequel in a year is the fruit of that innovation.<\/p>\n

This is a first for me: Whether or not I get L4D2 at launch or not will depend very much on what my friends do. There is no point in paying full price for the game just to play single player. (Or worse, play with the unwashed masses.) <\/p>\n

There are a lot of concerns about the game. The L4D community isn’t all that big to begin with, and to have the player base riven by a sequel might very well drop both titles below the critical threshold needed to quickly acquire and populate games. <\/p>\n

But allow me to stipulate: No matter how good Left 4 Dead 2 may be, we’re not going to forget about Half-Life 2: Episode 3, Valve. This doesn’t even earn you a reprieve. The community is waiting, arms folded, scowling and tapping their feet while you dribble out a stream of stuff for Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2. We are not so easily distracted. Every day you delay sees the erosion of goodwill and the intensification of expectations. That usually doesn’t end well<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kill it! Kill it with fire! Played a little Left 4 Dead last night. The last two weeks of spastic Team Fortress 2 seem to have blunted my L4D skills. At one point I ran into a teammate and thought, “AH! A SPY!” (In TF2, teammates are ethereal, while spies-posing-as-teammates are solid. In L4D, teammates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}