Working Title 01.08.09: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Left 4 Dead

Posted by Jordan Williams on 01.08.2009

Not only is it a really catchy song but it can actually be used to talk about video games as well! So how can we make Left 4 Dead better (...and faster...and harder...and stronger)? How about we find out?

Welcome back to the #1 Column to get it's ass HANDED to him in L4D by Toddo and his band of Badassess. So this weekend I decided to try to crash a game of L4D Versus with Toddo, since he had his Band of Badassess with him I had to play on the opposing team. A team that sucked...fucking hard. Anyway my first act of business was to just pester Toddo as much as possible that included purposely targeting him whenever I was a Hunter or a Smoker and then bee lining right for him whenever I was a Boomer. It didn't do a lot of good (although I single handedly almost killed him and his other friend) because the rest of my team was functionally retarded. Anyway, Toddo...you'll bow down to me one day...you and your BoB, too.


Moving along, I got a funny email from someone who wished to remain anonymous. Apparently they have been reading Working Title since they very start and they just aren't happy with the direction it's going in. They miss the 'series' format I used to have where I would stick to one topic for a month while discussing various games that fit it. The funny thing is that I miss it, too. Sure, having to do rants is great and all but believe it or not it's not all that easy to think up a rant all the time. There are many columns I've written over the last year that I literally made up as I went along.

So this week I'm going back to basics. I'm doing a new series in which I'll detail games are big hits, but things that could be done better in sequels. The next four issues will tackle certain aspects of the game and how they were fine in the original, but could be better in the future releases.

And since this song is playing on iTunes right now and I'm currently watching someone play this game...hell, I figure it'd make for a good column name and issue.


Working Title: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Left 4 Dead



As the name (and song) entail, I'm going to be talking about how Valve could make a sequel of Left 4 Dead (or in Valve's case, tons of DLC) Harder, Better, Faster, and Stronger. Of course, it should be pretty self explanatory but for those who might not catch it right away...

Harder: This is going to talk about how the came could be more challenging, and if the game was already challenging enough, how they could make it even MORE challenging to the hardcore players out there. Less health? More damage to the player? It'll be covered here.

Better: Pretty much how it sounds. What are those flaws that could've been left out of the original and made BETTER in the sequel? Didn't like the fact that you had to find a save point and couldn't save whenever you wanted? What about the annoying button layout? We can fix that.



Faster: Now this one might not make sense, but Faster doesn't actually refer to the speed of the game. This will be referring to how fast the game gets supported as WELL as speed of play. Sure, the game might be slow in some points. But what is worse than a slow game? A game that's slow and it takes even LONGER for decent DLC or patches to come out for it

Stronger: The most important part, how do we make the game just stronger than the previous title? How do the three above factors fit into just making the game better as an overall package, in essence, making the game stronger?

These are the guidelines I will follow for the columns although knowing me I'll probably end up changing the rules on the fly in order to make them fit with whatever fucking wacky theory I come up with. So, now that we have all of the rules out of the way lets just get right into it.

Left 4 Dead

The game isn't even three months old yet, but it's already creating buzz about upcoming DLC or sequels and you really just can't help to think about it yourself. And actually it's not that hard to do seeing as while L4D is an awesome game...it really isn't that long or deep and there's a LOT of room for improvement and expansion there. The thing is going about expanding the game is what could be a little bit more difficult. Of course one could easily go in and decide to change every single thing about the game in order to make a perfect, but as we know the likely hood of that happening in just once sequel is just very, very, very slim. So I'm going to be basing all of my thoughts here in reality just to make it all a bit more realistic.

So when you talk to someone about L4D there are actually a few things that vary. Some people say that the game is way too easy with the right people; others say the game is mind numbingly hard. But I think there are other ways one could make the game more challenging without actually making the game hard to the point where it's cheap...

Harder

Harder Incapps

Getting Incapacitated in L4D is actually pretty common, but one thing about it that could be changed is a bit of a heftier penalty for it. If you lose 100HP you get incapped, and then you get an extra 300 HP while you are incapped while you are waiting for help. Now the whole 'extra HP while dead' gets to be a bit of a hassle in Versus. Although in Versus it is balanced out by something else I'll get to later.

Now, let's say you are that poor soul get gets incapped and no one comes to help you, thus you get killed. In normal gameplay what would happen is that you would appear in a predetermined spot in the level to be 'saved' by your teammates, in Versus once you are dead (as a Survivor) you are dead. Now another point of interest is that in single player that if you get incapped three times you are dead, and if you use a health pack that resets the 'incap' count back to 3. I actually have a problem with that. For a game that's so realistic in it's portrayal of damage and stuff, you'd think that if you somehow managed to get incapped three times, that should be it. And I think that should be the case.

Or better yet they could tie it to the game difficulty settings. On Easy and Normal, sure, med kits can reset your incap count so you can survive a level. But once you hit Advanced and Expert I think they should do away with the incap count, as soon as you've been incapped 4 times (to give them some leeway here) that's it. You're dead. I have no problem with the whole 'respawn in another part of the level' thing they have going on because if you somehow managed to die and left the game with only one person, the ruthless computer would make the game damn near impossible to play alone.

Disarming

One thing that always (and still does) irk me about L4D is in the sense that these three seemingly normal people (Bill obviously not included) suddenly know how to handle all sorts of weapons with great ease and accuracy. I understand you have to make the game FUN, so you obviously can't have the gun jamming all of the time or have horrible accuracy...but how about disarming Survivors?

Now that doesn't mean that anyone can just run up and yank the weapon from Francis' hand or anything, but a more realistic (and possibly fun) portrayal would be that getting tackled by a Hunter or yanked by a Smoker could yield chance of you actually dropping something off of your character. I don't know about you but if I was just calmly walking along and all of the sudden some emo zombie leaped out of the shadows and pounced me I don't know how well of a grip I'd keep on my gun or that bottle of Tylenol in my pocket.

Of course, the reason I say this should be a RANDOM occurrence is because if this happened every single time you were Hunter'd or Smoked you can just how fucking annoying that would be. There's already enough stuff to exploit online in L4D and I don't think we need to add anything else to the pot here.


Now that we've seen how Valve could make the game a little more challenging the next time around, now it's time to look at some of the mistakes they made this time and how those could be fixed in either a sequel of a future DLC release. This isn't meant to be like "lol the game sucks" these are all things I've heard TONS of people say they don't like about the game and things that could pretty easily be fixed.

Better

Melee =/= Death

Okay, I understand the reason of having a melee button in this game. I really do. It's a good way to keep those damned zombies off of you and a good way to take out some of the lesser infected without a wasting some precious bullets. But oh my fucking God there is no worse feeling than playing Versus and running into an impenetrable wall of randoms who are just holding down L Trigger. I understand that it's a good deterrent but I really don't think the damn button was made to be used as your primary weapon. I've literally seen some randoms go whole campaigns without firing a single shot and just whacking everyone out of the way.

Now I am not saying that meleeing should be removed at all, or even weakened. But there should be SOME perks to playing a Special Infected outside of the increased HP and special attacks. I think they shouldn't be nearly as infected by meleeing as some of the others. Yes, I know whacking an Infected in the stomach is the real way to kill them, but should being whacked in the head as a Hunter really stun you for 10 in which it turns into a circle jerk of elbows until the poor Hunter gets shot in the face?

Better Special Infected Placement Logic

Another thing that irks me, which I think I might just be alone on. Is the way Special Infected are placed during Versus. There are a few restrictions of course that are obvious. Infected can't spawn in a Safe Room and they can't spawn in a spot in direct sight of a Survivor, I am cool with those. However this can be refined and fixed in a way to make it a bit more fun.

I'm all for keeping Infected out of Safe Rooms, but in the direct line of sight could be a bit better. There have been many times where Survivors have been almost miles ahead of me and the game still wouldn't spawn because they might 'see' me. In a game like L4D where shit jumps out at you at all times to scare the shit out of you at any moment. In the spirit of that I think that SI's should be able to spawn BEHIND Survivors. There is nothing scarier than turning around to see a Hunter diving at you in mid leap.



And just so it doesn't sound like I'm Pro-Infected I think there is something that can be changed in spawning as well. With Special Infected as soon as the Survivors leave the saferoom, it's open house. Everyone on the undead time is able to spawn ANYWHERE on the map. For those of you who play the game and have happened to play No Mercy Level 4 seem to know very well what happens when the Undead spawn to far and at the top floor of a certain elevator. In order to fix this I think that there should be a limit on hard far the Undead can spawn. This way it keeps the action flowing because now the Undead or forced to spawn close enough to the action that they can still set up an ambush, but no so far ahead that they are moving certain pieces of he game world around in order to cheat.



Faster, as stated above, doesn't mean you move the game at a breakneck speed. This is just how we could fix how fast content and fun is delivered in the game. With Valve we know this game is going to be supported well into the future but just for shits and giggles...

Faster

Episodic DLC Content

Yeah, I know I am already behind on this one but just hear me out. I'm not talking about like...the standard "YAY! ANOTHER WEAPON" DLC. I mean like some full fledged episodes. Every two months of so how about they release a whole new campaign, maybe one that begins to uncover the origins of the mysterious infected (more on that later) and actually offering up some new things. Maybe some "Defend" Events where you are split up into teams of two or maybe an entire campaign where you play as the Infected and are trying to kill (and eventually succeed in doing so) a whole new set of Survivors?

Map Editor

Yes. Fuck you. I don't play the game on PC but I WANT CUSTOM MAPS. Just think of the fucked up and CRAZY shit you could do with a decent map editor? Of course this would appeal to more of the PC and mod crowd because this IS Valve, but holy shit if you've seen some of the stuff people can do with Gary's Mod imagine what those same people could do with Source and Left 4 Dead. Just imagine....


For the love of God, turn your speakers down.


And of course, we get to "Stronger". How can the overall game be improved to the masses, this isn't that technical stuff that we gamers would get, this is the stuff that appeals to everyone outside.

Stronger

An Optional Storyline

Yeah, yeah. Having no real storyline is pretty accurate for the cheesy B movies this game is based off of, but I think it turned a lot of people off. I've heard a lot of people ask me flat out "What is this game about?" and they are less than enthused when I tell them the game isn't really about anything but surviving a zombie outbreak. I think some form of story would help the game out a bit. And just so it doesn't seem like its thrust upon you it could even be some sort of an optional thing. Maybe a clipboard you find in one level has some notes scrawled on it, those notes talk about something you find in another level, that something you find is actually a password to some computer in some other level. That kind of storytelling without storytelling could really give an extra layer to the game in the long run.

Customization

I love Bill and Louis as much as the next guy, but if there is one this the masses loves its customization. I'm not saying turn the survivors into some freaky level of nothing like some low rent CAW from a wrestling game, but it would be pretty cool if you could re-invent each character to your particular play style or liking. What if you decided Francis wasn't some hard nosed biker and instead some metrosexual from the trendy side of the town? Maybe Zoey could be some sassy black chick who happens to be in love with Bill...or should I say...yeah...Beth?

It would do wonders, it could turn L4D into some sort of "Create your Own Adventure" only there is no way for you to cheat because you can't find out what happens on Page 63 before you turn to page 124 and find out what outcome you like better. L4D could be the perfect canvas for this type of storytelling especially with its subject matter. People need to survive, they need to work together to create that goal. But there is just so much more than could be explored on that. I don't know if Valve purposely left it this open ended, but it could be a great blessing in disguise.

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Working Feedback

Working Feedback will return to its original format next week, but this week I decided I'm going to answer my own question. I think just by looking at the release list for 2009 I think Resident Evil 5 is going to be GOTY or a top contender. Now...will I like Resident Evil 5? I'm on the fence about that.

I loved Resident Evil 4, but I really don't think after all of this waited I'd just want to play the same game in a different setting with different changes. That's the same thing that made Resident Evil 1-3 stale and sort of boring after awhile. Will this stop Resident Evil 5 from blowing up the gaming world? Fuck no.

But looking at the release calendar thus far, it just looks so empty and bare that it's almost BEGGING for a game to come out of fucking nowhere and surprise the pants off of all of us. I tend to think a lot of things go in cycles, and in 2007 we had a sudden rush of new IPs and a lot of them were pretty good, in 2008 we had a lot sequels that were great, I think in 2009 we are going to hit another cycle of new IPs but some sequels dropped in there. I guess we'll know what is what when the Conventions start up.

Working Question


...


...Fuck. I really can't think of anything gaming related...uh...um...

Is Samus hotter in her Power Suit or in her Zero Suit?

Yeah, that's pretty weak but it's all I got.



Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams...and **DasUberOgre has been incapacitated by Smoker**