This post over on Geekologie was pointed out to me by a co-worker today due to zombie content. I was especially pleased to see an apparent reference to the movie trailer I posted before on the same subject. Either that or they’d been playing a lot of Call of Duty: World at War.
Some creative soul has put together a music video that heavily features Francis’ “I hate” sound clips:
Ahh, a man after my own heart…
Who let the furries in?
I saw this over at BoomerCharged.net and thought it deserved a cross-post:
More info can be found on the YouTube page, or on the creator’s WeGame profile.
For a while I’ve been thinking about what a Left 4 Dead film would be like. We’ve seen a lot of awful game-to-movie adaptations over the years. For whatever reason, it seems that games have always translated badly onto the silver screen. Left 4 Dead is somewhat different though. The whole point of the game is to re-create the tension, the action and the overall feel of a zombie movie. If any game deserves a movie adaptation, this is it. It even has ready made movie posters! Rather than making a movie out of a game, you’d be getting a movie out of a game born out of movies. Making a movie would bring the whole process full circle.
Each campaign takes 1-1.5 hours to complete (depending on restarts, and a little longer on Expert), rather than the 20+ hours of gameplay that most single-player games are expected to provide. I think this format lends itself excellently to being filmed as no-one will be disappointed by huge swathes of content being cut. Admittedly only one campaign would be able to be portrayed in a film, but we all know that Hollywood isn’t afraid of franchises and sequels.
The main thing that L4D has going for it in a motion-picture conversion is the characters. The 4 survivors have been outfitted with well defined, distinct personalities that drive the players through the world. This is achieved primarily through the brilliant dialog, which can be lifted straight from the game and worked into the script for a movie. As for the actors that would take these roles… I’ve had some thoughts on that too. I’ll be posting the second part of this article in the next week or so detailing my decisions, but in the meantime I welcome any suggestions people might have in the comments.
With the recent update, dealing with Witches in versus mode has become a whole lot more important. Luckily, rogotin over at Boomercharged.net has written an excellent guide on how to ‘crown’ the Witch reliably. I highly recommend everyone read it before taking your trusty shotgun back into battle.
Ok, I’ve just found the perfect scenario for a Left 4 Dead campaign:
Zombies? Check! Nazis? Check! WWII era weaponry? Check! Of course, this scenario would require a huge effort on the part of the developers: New player models (with winter coats, boots etc), new zombie models (Nazi uniforms) and new weapon models (I figure the survivors would use WWII era German weaponry that they find. Bit of a stretch to expect it to be in good working order but hey, there are zombie Nazis stumbling around! Anything is possible!). Plus all the level work needed. But I bet the result would be well worth it!
A short while ago I introduced my 2 favourite upcoming 3rd-party campaigns: Dead Before Dawn and Final Flight. I haven’t heard anything new about the latter, but today I came across a new video showcasing some of the other locations to be featured in the Dead Before Dawn campaign.
There certainly seem to be a large number of different locations, all of which are very impressive. However, I really hope that the layout will be different in the final product. It seems from the video that all the locations are laid out around a central park area. At one point it is mentioned that the map was originally just one large area, but that it has been split into 4 separate maps. From the amount of content shown here, I certainly hope so! This campaign continues to look promising, but I still have my reservations. I guess we’ll have to wait and see!
By law I am required to inform you about the new L4D patch. I haven’t had a chance to play since it came out, but the details look juicy. Check them out here.
