Summary
Valve first releasedLeft 4 Dead 2all 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 2earned 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 supportedLeft 4 Dead 2years after its release with bug-fixing updates and fresh content.
Left 4 Dead 2received multiple DLC packs, giving owners of the game on PC additional content completely free of charge. The Valve-developed DLC forLeft 4 Dead 2stopped 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 andThe Last Stand releasing in 2020. Now Valve itself has released a new update forLeft 4 Dead 2, though there’s no substantial new content.
RELATED:The Walking Dead Game Was Very Nearly Set in The Left 4 Dead Universe
The latestupdate forLeft 4 Dead 2is 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 latestLeft 4 Dead 2update 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 thatLeft 4 Dead 2is even more polished than it was before.
It remains to be seen if this update will bring lapsed players back toLeft 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 beenrumors about a potentialLeft 4 Dead 3over 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 withPortal,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 Deadenthusiasts will just have to be satisfied with the first two games as there’s no guarantee that a properthirdLeft 4 Deadgamewill ever hit the market. At least they can count on Valve randomly updating it every once in a while.
- 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.
- 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.
Dark Carnival
- 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.
- 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
- 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
Eliminate a stuck spot that a previous ladder patch created.
Versus: New ladder in far corner of manhole drop area to fix stuck .
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
Blocked a stuck spot in a corner behind a floodlight in the top floor after the alarm cars.
Fixed collision issue with clips on the stairs by the saferoom that caused noticeable teleporting when not on a local server.
The Sacrifice
- Versus: Delete func clip that blocks SI access into end closet.
No Mercy
Lift anti-grief kill trigger off the ground to prevent an incap glitch.
Versus: Add clip to patch a ladder shortcut at the start.
All sets of railings will now appear for all players regardless of graphics settings.
Crash Course
Block rare stuck spot between the box wreck and traffic light.
Clip to prevent gas cans from falling between finale buses.
Death Toll
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
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.
Fix SI player and AI stuck spot inside the end rubble.
Blood Harvest
Versus: Fixed SI stuck beyond the end of tunnel just before end safe room.
Fix rare stuck spot in starting saferoom for SI only.
- 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.
The Last Stand
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.
- 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.
Left 4 Dead 2is available for PC and Xbox 360.
