Recent reviews by Tomboy Plant make Tight Pant

DEAD GAME

This is one of the best games I have ever played! The gameplay and level of detail is unmatched by titles even today, Which makes the fact that this game came out in 2009 even more incredible.

There is surprisingly a lot of content in here between the official campaigns, community campaigns, workshop mods, versus mode, mutations, and vscript addons. The leaps between the different difficulty levels are insane. Going from baby mode to a masochistic nightmare. Despite there only being 4, there's a difficulty for every type of player.

The new special infected are a great addition to keep players from camping in corners and using nothing but meta spots. The new weapons are almost all great additions and I find myself using every single one at some point minus two exceptions.

The official campaigns are incredible not only in the gameplay but the atmosphere and visual storytelling too. I love that Valve games don't typically use cutscenes and instead let the story come through naturally through the gameplay. Portal 2 is rightfully praised for this but I feel like the L4D series does this even better. Carried by not only the world building but some of the best characters in any game ever. Seriously. I mean that about all 8 of the Survivors.

There is so much personality in every single character and there are so many unique interactions that I am still hearing new lines even all these years later. Visual readability is also huge in this game by having strong silhouettes and design rather then relying on big dumb glowing outlines.

Instead everything looks and feels so much more real. Details like the flashlight shining off to the side as you reload your gun to the tiniest things like the watch on Louis's arm actually having subtle working glow in the dark paint on the numbers. Who even thinks to add something like that?

It all comes together to an experience that fully immerses into the world and keeps me coming back. That and the fact that there is nothing like a battle pass, paid DLC, or grinding for weapon unlocks. Every gun is temporary, every skin is a free mod. There is nothing that makes me feel like I need to keep grinding or even finish a campaign.

I can walk away from this game at any time, even mid run and there are no consequences for doing that. Even online I am just replaced with a bot that has all of my stuff. I can just decide I'm not feeling it and leave. And that keeps me coming back! I never get burnt out on this game because I never feel like I need to play it when I don't want to.

Honestly it's almost perfect. ...Almost.

[The Bad]

I swear that somehow the bots are even dumber in L4D2 then the original. Trying to shoot through you instead of around and now being completely unable to set off car alarms to accommodate how stupid they are. The hitreg can be an issue as per any Source game, and the Bolt Action CS Snipers are borderline useless. There are also many artstyle issues with the returning L4D1 campaigns, and personal preference but I feel like the L4D2 HUD and UI Elements are an enormous downgrade from L4D1.

Thankfully, Every issue here can be easily fixed with workshop mods minus hitreg and some rare strange bot behavior with can really only be mitigated at best.

[Final Thoughts[

There's probably a hundred little things I'd tweak about the game here and there but I genuinely think this is one of the best games ever made, and I'm not even a fan of zombies as a concept in the first place. L4D2 is just that good.

It can be brutal and even downright unfair at times but that's part of the experience and more often then not, it is just fun.

Now I see why this game was so hard to look at in most of the clips I've seen. It's using Ai Up-Scaling and Frame generation to mask the complete lack of optimization. Turning those settings off cleans up the image and makes a whole world of difference but leads to absolutely abysmal performance!

No notes yet on game play yet as I will need to try it on a much higher end machine first as I literally can't look at it without eyestrain with the Ai crap on. I've used up-scaling and frame generation before but this is a special level of bad looking I haven't seen outside of performance mode in Portal RTX.

Don't listen to the minimum spec requirements. If you want to see the real image without eye-staining artifacts everywhere and nausea inducing false frames, you will need a much higher end machine to maintain 60fps even on the lowest settings.

Artifacts, eyestrain, and low frame rates are kind of a BAD thing for a comp shooter. I'm sure you guys know that. Too bad the devs don't. And the game isn't even particularly good looking to begin with. It's not bad, but how is it this much of a resource hog while looking so "just ok"?

It's UNO. Why does it need it's own damn launcher? Why is it SO HARD to keep a stable connection or even connect to another friend/client in the first place? Why does it keep forcing controller support on and then not listen to any kind of controller? Why is it so laggy? It's a f***ing card game.

This game has always had a stuttering problem with players joining, but now that they have added that joke that is EasyAnticheat for the sake of their half baked Versus mode, the game just feels horrible to play with constant weird little hitches and stutters even in private sessions.

It seems to be less of a issue on Linux but that experience is even worse generally with mods failing to load and quickplay either booting you to the title screen unless the host is also on Linux, or just straight up crashing when attempting to host quickplay.

The reliance on Microsoft Edge Runtime is also an annoying thorn in my side whether I am on my Linux boot, or my debloated Windows install. The game doesn't actually need it to run but it still tries to install it and fails every single time the game is launched.

It's a online service game so I knew it was going to end eventually, but I had hoped that it would have ended with a big lore event and not just slowly driving players away by making the game more and more unstable to the point it is nearly unplayable.

The balance and general community is also not the best. There are great people in it as any community but there are far more negatives then positives.

It's a huge shame and waste of potential from what is otherwise such a fun game! I will enjoy what I can from it until the game is literally unplayable, but as a warning for the future of this game; be ready to just go back to Left 4 Dead 2.

Steam VR after the major update is so buggy and broken that I haven't been able to use VR at all for months now. It is absolutely useless and Valve as usual has been dead silent on the issues everyone is having.

I love having a $1000 paper weight. Thanks Valve.

Wasn't enough to ruin Big Picture huh? You had to go and mess up Steam VR too. I swear I wonder why I even bother with this joke of a platform anymore. Valve fell off so hard it's painful.

Bots, Cheaters, Broken Windows Support, no quality control for updates, These are issues that have ehhh... mostly(?) been fixed as of early 2025 when I am editing this review. But after all of the YEARS of this game being abandoned... It really feels like a hand was only forced when they started not making as much money on whales and children virtually gambling with crates.


Let's be real, it's still a company and only money speaks. A "great community" means more dosh spent on their platform if they are kept happy.

Maybe that's just me being overly cynical from burned by Valve inside and outside of TF2 to the point of not being able to trust or have any faith in anything they do anymore...

Tell you what; Despite my own negative bias, I'll be completely fair. TF2 is still a great game at it's core after all and I wish more of these "hero shooters" were like TF2 every day.

I'd like to give it a NEW positive review that isn't nostalgia for what it was in it's golden age.

So... since the game was straight up unplayable for 7 FRIGGIN' YEARS, If Valve keeps the game playable for 7 MORE YEARS, I will retract my negative review.

Is that unreasonable? Nah. That is equivalent exchange.

This game has lost a lot of it's appeal for me after recent seasons and some baffling design choices but even with that, this game is still a must own for me, Which should speak volumes for how good the base game actually is! There is nothing quite like low poly drunken Dwarves fighting bugs for minimum wage in randomly generated janky UE4 caves while management yells at you for demented rituals involving gold and mushrooms. ROCK AND STONE!

This game is the perfect storm of dumb and actually scary. It's a ton of fun but certainly a game you'd want to have friends to play with.

I never could have imagined that yet another port of TETRIS of all things could be so beautiful. This really isn't just a game, It's a experience. Thank you so much for bringing this to Steam!