emilytropic

If I wanted to be preached at, I'd go to church. The creators of this game really ham fist their agenda pushing on and off the screen - even attacking other developers at GDC over their previous title Gone Home. Ironically, the insufferably preachy founder Steve Gaynor got all it's cred from supposedly telling opproesed stories, has been outed as fostering a toxic work environment that drove women to leave his studio. A former employee compared working for Gaynor to "working for a high school mean girl. His go-to weapon was to laugh at people's opinions and embarrass them in front of other people." This is a walking simulator - just like Gone Home. But it is primarily a political and social propaganda piece that is as ham-fisted as one could ever make. . I could even forgive the pandering if it wasn't done so badly that I got annoyed and quit believing or caring about the characters after 20 minutes. And no, that doesn't make me a homophobe for calling out terrible plots, writing, and twisting an entire story around a social diatribe you want to shove down my throat. It's bad writing and I never finished it. This ain't woke - it's tired old-school preaching. And we all quit listening to angry people that condemn others that don't agree with them a long time ago and for good reason. Go out there and find any one of a million other much better games to spend your time on.

Steve Gaynor, founder super-vocal and militant SJW behind the studio was removed from his leadership after numerous of his own female employees accusations about creating a toxic environment. Working for him was described as: "working for a high school mean girl. His go-to weapon was to laugh at people's opinions and embarrass them in front of other people." Shocking. The guy that got a lot of press for himself by verbally assaulting and attacking other dev studios at GDC for not being woke enough, is in fact, a toxic, bullying hypocrite in real life too. It's sad we have 'professional' reviewers fall for loud-mouths like him, defend, and get behind them because they picked up the hot button topic of the week - while he and the people on his team that were bullying and bad mouthing people on stage. Activists that are bent on creating hate and conflict are NOT people you defend. As for the game, this is a walking simulator that I didn't even finish because I found it short, boring, and with lots of other MUCH better games out there. The only reason it's even known is because he played the media to get behind him based on it having a homosexual girl. Wow. That's all it takes today folks - just pick a SJW topic, become toxic to get press behind you, and profit. In reality, if I wanted to get preached at for 1-2 hours by angry people bent on burning people that don't agree with them, I'd go to church. This game has proven to have no staying power, is never seen on best-of lists anymore, and is not revolutionary in the least. All it did do was expose the fact that reviewers are more interested in tripping over themselves to appear more woke than any serious criticism.

I really wanted to like this, and it's a decent game, but it immediately doesn't live up to a worthy Left 4 Dead successor. It has half the game modes of original L4D and is not even more fun than World War Z. While there are no glaring issues or serious technical flaws, here are some of the problems: -The hype of a Left4Dead successor falls immediately flat. -Not one innovative level or gameplay idea. Everything here you've seen before elsewhere. -Story and missions are just not very compelling or engaging like Left 4 Dead's story. -Gameplay becomes very repetitive. No director that really mixes things up. After two or three playthroughs of a mission, it offers nothing new except farming for cards. -Movement and reflexive shooting is sluggish and nerfed for console-style aiming. -Specials aren't interesting, unique, or add to levels. Shoot the red spot and move on. -Card system is interesting, but simply doesn't add enough to warrant more playthroughs to mine them. Plus, mining card systems ****. -Very uneven difficulty. Some levels far too easy, others impossibly difficult. -Follow AI is terrible - they just teleport and snap places. -Not one noteworthy technical achievement. Looks and feels like any of the 100 other FPS shooters out there. -Definitely not worth $59 when older games like L4D/WWZ/etc are more fun and sell for $10. L4D was a technical and gameplay achievement for it's time. It raised the bar and re-defined what a zombie shooter could be. The sad truth is that there's not one real area where this game is better, or even as good as, Left 4 Dead - let alone surpassing it. Which is really sad since L4D came out 13 years ago.