Summary
- Valve has released a fresh update for Left 4 Dead 2, fixing bugs and technical issues.
- The update also includes a humorous addition, with Valve officially naming the alligator in the game's swamp Fred, by popular community request.
- While there have been rumors of a potential Left 4 Dead 3, Valve has a history of stopping its franchises at the second installment, so fans shouldn't expect a new game anytime soon.
Valve first released Left 4 Dead 2 all the way back in 2009, and now, 14 years later, it's released a fresh update for the game. Like most Valve-developed games, Left 4 Dead 2 earned critical acclaim at the time of its release, with a great deal of praise for the improvements made over its predecessor and new features it introduced to the franchise. Valve supported Left 4 Dead 2 years after its release with bug-fixing updates and fresh content.
Left 4 Dead 2 received multiple DLC packs, giving owners of the game on PC additional content completely free of charge. The Valve-developed DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 stopped a couple of years after its release, but some community-made content was given a release through official channels, with Cold Stream dropping in 2012 and The Last Stand releasing in 2020. Now Valve itself has released a new update for Left 4 Dead 2, though there's no substantial new content.
The latest update for Left 4 Dead 2 is available to download now on PC, and it mainly just fixes lingering bugs and other technical issues. One rather amusing detail in the patch notes for the latest Left 4 Dead 2 update is that Valve has, "by popular community request," canonically named the alligator in the swamp Fred. Otherwise, this update is rather routine and just ensures that Left 4 Dead 2 is even more polished than it was before.
It remains to be seen if this update will bring lapsed players back to Left 4 Dead 2. The game is 14 years old, after all. But there is some demand for the series to make a comeback with a new installment. There have been rumors about a potential Left 4 Dead 3 over the years, but Valve has stopped short of making any official announcements. Such a game would likely generate a great deal of buzz, though Valve is known for stopping its franchises at the second installment for whatever reason.
It's happened with Portal, Team Fortress, and of course, Half-Life. It's possible Valve will eventually move forward with a third main series game in one of its popular franchises, but fans shouldn't hold their breath for that to happen any time soon. Left 4 Dead enthusiasts will just have to be satisfied with the first two games as there's no guarantee that a proper third Left 4 Dead game will ever hit the market. At least they can count on Valve randomly updating it every once in a while.
Left 4 Dead 2 Update Patch Notes
- Fixed several exploits reported via HackerOne.
- Fixed controller navigation in some menus.
- Fixed not being able to open the train door in Crash Course when playing the Tank Run Mutation.
- Only the original attacker gets credited for damage caused by exploding props.
- Restored the knife's original horizontal swing trajectory.
- Fixed incorrect instructor lesson bindings for the Tank.
- Fixed LDR skybox rendering on low shader settings.
New response criteria:
- "TankActive"- 0 means no Tank aggro, 1 means Tank is aggro.
- "Chapter" - 0 is first map of mission.
New Script Functions:
- "AreAllSurvivorsInBattlefield" - Returns true if all Survivors are in the battlefield
- "GetClosestCharacterWhoIsIT" - Returns the closest character who is IT
- "GetClosestSurvivor" - Returns the closest Survivor to the passed origin
- "GetHighestFlowSurvivor" - Returns the Survivor with the highest flow
- "GetLowestFlowSurvivor" - Returns the Survivor with the lowest flow
- "GetRandomSurvivor" - Returns a random Survivor
Maps and Mutations:
Dead Center
Map 1:
- Restored window clip-hang bugs that were patched with TLS to re-allow access to the rooftop in Coop mode.
- Versus: Tank will now only spawn after Survivors have exited the elevator, and no later than leaving the kitchen.
Map 3:
- Blocked a stuck spot at vending machine alternative path.
Dark Carnival
Map 1:
- Patched a rarer stuck spot at the swamp's cargo container.
- Patched an elaborate SI out of bounds exploit.
Map 5:
- Addressed some issues with "THE MAIN ATTRACTION" Achievement by adding more triggers so it no longer fails if any Survivor disconnects or goes idle while on stage.
Swamp Fever
Map 1:
- Patched janky ladder near the ferry event.
- By popular community request the TLS Swamp gator is now canonically named Fred.
Map 2:
- Blocked a stuck spot behind some rocks at the start near the parachutist.
- Blocked a stuck spot on a cypress knee near the parachutist area dock.
Map 3:
- Blocked stuck spots at two sets of cypress knees around the event start area.
- Versus: Blocked a stuck spot for SI behind a bush to the left of the first bridge upon entering the water.
- Versus: Blocked a stuck spot for SI in the bush near the lantern/event start.
- Versus: Improve SI clipping of first ladder outside saferoom to allow drop through a large gap.
- Versus: Moved a TLS Infected ladder out of the Survivor's way at the start.
Map 4:
- Versus: Blocked a stuck spot for SI behind a bush in the back of the enclosed hedge area.
Hard Rain
Map 2:
- Restored a shortcut that was patched with TLS; instead fixed the soft-lock where Survivors cannot progress if one player skipped the elevator.
The Parish
Map 2:
- Eliminate a stuck spot that a previous ladder patch created.
Map 3:
- Versus: New ladder in far corner of manhole drop area to fix stuck.
Map 4:
- Versus: Reduced a jet strike trigger after the balcony drop that previously dealt 25 damage per touch (75 total) to Survivors, down to only 2 damage per touch to behave like the other triggers.
The Passing
Map 1:
- Blocked a stuck spot in a corner behind a floodlight in the top floor after the alarm cars.
Map 2:
- Fixed collision issue with clips on the stairs by the saferoom that caused noticeable teleporting when not on a local server.
The Sacrifice
Map 2:
- Versus: Delete func clip that blocks SI access into end closet.
No Mercy
Map 1:
- Lift anti-grief kill trigger off the ground to prevent an incap glitch.
- Versus: Add clip to patch a ladder shortcut at the start.
Map 2:
- All sets of railings will now appear for all players regardless of graphics settings.
Crash Course
Map 1:
- Block rare stuck spot between the box wreck and traffic light.
Map 2:
- Clip to prevent gas cans from falling between finale buses.
Death Toll
Map 3:
- Blocked a stuck spot at the top of a rock cliff cluster just after the church bus.
- Blocked a stuck spot between the cliff rocks and the right side of the mandatory house.
- Versus: Fixed an SI stuck spot on the barricade by the church.
Dead Air
Map 3:
- Updated clip brushes and navmesh to allow SI players onto a previously blocked pipe that has an Infected ladder leading up to it.
- Updated clip brushes and navmesh so that Survivors may now enter the hallway next to the end saferoom, which was blocked by a roof clip in the port from L4D1.
Map 4:
- Fix SI player and AI stuck spot inside the end rubble.
Blood Harvest
Map 2:
- Versus: Fixed SI stuck beyond the end of tunnel just before end safe room.
Map 3:
- Fix rare stuck spot in starting saferoom for SI only.
- Stuck in tree near shed.
Map 4:
- Versus: Patched fence Infected ladder next to lawnmower room.
Cold Stream
Map 2:
- Fix stuck next to military truck leading to barricade.
- Fix two stuck spots behind the long hedges on the right of after the military truck leading to barricade.
- Fix a regression with easy event skip clip and a stuck clip nearby.
Map 3:
- Enlarged a stuck clip to fully fix it.
The Last Stand
Map 2:
- Simplified finale difficulty scaling so it is now only increased on Advanced and Expert difficulties rather than scaling each difficulty differently; the intention is to curb player fatigue and confusion in addition to bringing it more in line with expectations from other finales.
- Lowered the number of required gas cans in Single Player by 25% to help compensate for only having bot teammates; Easy/Normal difficulty now require 6, and Advanced/Expert difficulty now require 9.
- The gas can requirement in Multiplayer modes now increases by 1.5x per difficulty; Easy/Normal difficulty now require 8, and Advanced/Expert difficulty now require 12.
- Versus: Fixed an out of bounds exploit to get under a cliff side.
- Versus: Fixed a stuck spot between a tree cluster and Versus-only fence at the cliff that overlooks the beach.
Tank Run:
- The first map of a Campaign will now spawn two Tier 1 weapons near the start area if no other Tier 1's are nearby.
- Car alarms will now spawn a Tank if triggered.
- Disabled water slowdown for all maps.
- Set Survivor revive health to 50.
- Added auto self-revive mechanic with a delay based on the "survivor_revive_duration" Cvar (default 5 seconds).
- Slight buff to pistol and melee damage against the Tank.
- Fixed issue where the sacrificing player would get auto-revived after restarting the generator.
- Fixed issue where the finale would result in a failed screen if players that jumped off of the bridge to restart the generator got incapped.
- Fixed issue where players going idle, switching characters or leaving the game would break the auto-revive for that Survivor.
- Fixed issue if a Tank was deleted while being biled, it would break the script.
- Fixed issue where Tanks would not retain their slowdown when biled, if they were hit with another vomit jar while already being biled.
- Fixed issue where Survivors could get instantly revived when hit with a car.
Death's Door:
- Enabled heartbeat sound when under 25% health.
- Enabled B&W state when at 1 permanent HP.
- Fixed heartbeat sound when taking over bot.
- Fixed Fallen Survivors being able to drop medkits.
- Fixed temporary health decay in the safe room, loading players will no longer decay temp health.
- Defibrillator now heals 1 permanent - 99 temporary HP (still B&W).
- Safe room respawn now heals 24 permanent - 26 temporary HP (only heartbeat sound).
- Safe room transition now heals 80% of the missing HP to half health of living Survivors, e.g. 1 to 40 (no health effects).
- Fixed an issue that caused the mission to fail for Sacrifice type finales when the player presses the final button.
Versus Survival:
- Thickened clips and other map-specific fixes to dramatically reduce stuck spawns.
- Made it auto-trigger any outputs on the entity used to start Survival if the pre-round timer expires.
Taaannnk!!:
- Thickened clips and other map-specific fixes to dramatically reduce stuck Tank spawns.
- Players no longer need to wait for incapped Survivors in order to progress at areas like elevators.
L4D1 Coop & Survival & Versus:
- Set the claw viewmodels for the L4D1 SI to the proper L4D1 models for L4D1 Versus.
- Disabled water slowdown for L4D1 Survival.
- Defibrillators now convert to pain pills instead of medkits; previously, when converted to medkits the game kept trying to spawn more defibs which led to an over-saturation of medkits.
- Changed noise levels for running and talking to their values from L4D1; this will make it slightly harder for Common Infected to notice Survivors, like their L4D1 counterparts.
- Changed to use much more accurate L4D1-like looking ragdolls.
Left 4 Dead 2 is available for PC and Xbox 360.
Source: Steam