On September 24, 2020, a new update will come to Left 4 Dead 2; Valve‘s zombie-slaying title that originally released on November 17, 2009.
It’s been over ten years, and someone within the Left 4 Dead community apparently had an itch that could only be scratched by adding on a little bit more to the perennial favorite witch-infused cooperative zombie first-person shooter.
Thus, we’re looking at The Last Stand update to be arriving in one week from today and it’s bringing a bit of heft with it; twenty maps for your team to attempt to hold back the wild onslaught of the infected and undead with dwindling resources, new weapons for you to encourage the infected to depart the earth permanently, and it’s all coming in Valve’s first major update to the title for the past couple of years.
Staggering and revive animations have been cleaned up (finally), new previously unused voice lines are coming out of the woodwork; it’s all generally inline with a bit of a flourish being added, an additional feathering of the cap in what is widely considered to be one of the best cooperative survival experiences in existence.
It’s more of the same being retuned and upgraded; if you’ve survived the experience before then you likely understand what we’re all looking at for the incoming update.
Along with all of this comes thirty new achievements for you to crow about, two new mutations that can stress your friends out even further, and of course long-standing bugs have finally been quashed.
It’s all thanks to thirty-something community members banding together to bring revitalization to the classic as fans hold their breath over the announcement of Left 4 Dead 3; a title whose simple existence has been simultaneously confirmed and denied more often than Bigfoot.
The best part of this update is that it’s coming for free to everyone that owns the title; no additional purchases, no belabored microtransactions or additional in-game currencies; it releases, you download and play. If only all titles were so simple, maybe the community would be a bit less fractured in other titles.
Regardless of digressions, however, Valve’s continuing willingness to work with the community they service has consistently set them apart from every other storefront and attempted platform in the past decade; it’s not a stretch to state that any other developer would have shelved the title or attempted to profit in some fashion from the work that has been put in.
That the community is still strong and active today, from matches to modding, is a testament from Valve.
