When I first heard the news I was torn between 'I paid full price for a beta???' and 'Wow, an expansion pack! Finally real content for L4D.' When I heard that it was going to be a full game I was pretty pissed off.
Now that my initial anger has worn off, it's time to be a bit more rational about the news of the L4D sequel. After thinking about it (and looking at my stats in the game), I got my moneys worth out of L4D 10 times over and I will continue to play it more in future once I'm a bit less bored of it and more community made maps become available.
I think another member of the boycott group hit the nail on the head about why a lot of people are so mad about this. It's not really so much about content because we pay more for less all the time. Who do you know that bought the Orange Box even though you had half the games in it? I did. We buy the Half Life sequels and don't make a peep (while crying for more) because that's how the game was marketed to us.
For me, I just don't like the look of L4D2, the new characters or the horrible 'horn and fiddle' crescendo music. Even if the new game was released as a paid DLC or as an expansion pack, I don't think I'd get it right off the hop based on what I've seen so far. If I bought it at all I'd probably just wait until it went on sale so I don't feel like I was ****ed in the *** like I did with L4D when the updates and SDK release dates just kept getting pushed back, month after month. Not to mention that L4D2 doesn't really have the same 'Holy ****! I need that game!' factor L4D had for me.
It's too much like the original without the character continuity like in other sequels. Would you have bought Tomb Raider 2, 3, 5, 100, 1000 without Lara Croft jiggling around in it? I doubt it. Or HALO without Master Chief? Unlikely. You get to know the characters and even though fictional, they become like a friend that you can kick some zombie, alien, mummy, etc *** with. The new L4D characters are either boring/stupid hicks or cheesy caricatures of the worst possible types of people
Unlikely in-game dialog:
Player 1: “I wanna be the fat black guy!!!”
Player 2: “NOOOOO!!! I want to!!!! You can be the scrawny cracker that sounds like he was dropped on his head as a baby!”
Player 3: “Piss on you, I'm going to be the sleaze-ball in the Miami Vice suit that's too big for him”
Player 4: “I LOVE playing the whiny black chick!”
Uh... Yeah, right...
If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the game play videos on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNHwr6fpAC8&feature=channel
As for the new 'stuff', yeah, there's some neat ****. But I haven't seen anything that looks like it couldn't be implemented in the current game. I'm sure within weeks of L4D2 being released the mod community will be porting those items into L4D without too much difficulty. Maybe Valve will do that so we don't have to.
As for myself, I'll wait and see what Valve comes up with to appease it's customers. Regardless of how soon a sequel is released, I wouldn't pay full price for a game unless they put a new game engine in it and made it substantially different than the first one, which they haven't. So I'm perfectly happy that they plan to release more content for L4D because it's unlikely I'll play the new game unless they make it backwards compatible to the existing one and rethink the new characters.
I won't get too far into the point about the music, decide for yourself. Watch the videos, yell me if the 'horn and fiddle' crescendo music has you climbing the walls and trying to claw at your ears after a few minutes.
