Agreeing to Create Bad Games, What the Hell Is ‘Titanfall’? Chapter 483: Endless Dark Tide Launches to Rave Reviews! Suc

"Eighty bucks, goddamn, that’s really not cheap..."

After buying the ga, dream winced at spending eighty US dollars.

Not bad!

Just now, the first multiplayer cooperative horror shooter using the Phantom Dream V engine, Alien: Endless Dark Tide, after five rounds of massive marketing, officially launched for sale!

Multiplayer co-op, a brand-new engine, 3S standard, made by a major studio.

For a mont, the entire gaming community was drawn in, and dream was no exception.

"Hope the quality is decent,"

As he loaded the ga, dream joked:

"At least this IP spin-off better not be as terrible as Gollum, otherwise no one will ever license to CloudPower again."

On hearing that, the viewers burst into laughter.

Don't trash-talk; no one wants to license to CloudPower anymore. Alien was licensed because Vivendi held the rights.

"'Voluntary authorization'—"

Hahahahahaha...

But overall it seems pretty good, at least from the gaplay demo they released earlier.

After all, it’s made by Flabird Studio.

Indeed, CloudPower’s ace studio rarely misses.

My take is, as long as Konik doesn't get any wild ideas, the ga won’t go off the rails.

Hard to disagree.

Big studios are still big studios; they have the chops. As long as they don’t try to be edgy, they won't ruin it.

Eighty dollars—if they package this up as so kind of paywall, CloudPower headquarters might get bombarded.

"Please stop making that joke, okay? My friend actually died in that disaster."

I get the sentint, but your Arabic-region IP...?

"The best pilot friend in the Arab region, right?"

"Hahahahahaha, damn..."

The clever ones are analyzing as we speak...

"LO00000000L..."

"....."

The chat was full of dark jokes to warm things up.

On the other side, dream assembled his squad—old friends George and sap.

According to the Alien: Endless Dark Tide ga description, it’s a four-player cooperative shooter similar to Left 4 Dead, so technically they needed a four-player team to start.

Unfortunately, Timmi, another friend in dream’s squad, had sothing co up, so they were short one player today.

"Luckily the ga has AI options, so it won’t really affect the experience."

dream said while loading the ga.

The three-man squad was ford and everyone entered the ga.

The ga opened with a cutscene that laid out the basic backstory—

In the future, in the year xXXx, NASA conducted an extraterrestrial life exploration, and during one mission, due to a spacecraft malfunction, the protagonist’s exploration team crashed on an alien planet where they discovered a gigantic, ancient, mysterious spaceship.

To return ho, the team had no choice but to board this huge, unknown vessel hidden in the jungle.

What the team didn’t know was that the spaceship had long since been overrun by terrifying aliens. Anyone who enters the ship will experience the Endless Dark Tide and beco a breeding host for the aliens...

Originally, Flabird Studio had intended to make this a single-player, story-driven ga.

But during the project's hiatus caused by engine instability, after several studio etings, they gradually pulled focus away from a story-driven single-player approach.

There were two main reasons.

First, the negative fallout from Gollum was too great; Flabird didn't dare to easily try combining "IP licensing" with "original derived story" in the sa way again.

Second, the market now favors online multiplayer gas; the social aspect of gas has been steadily rising.

So after multiple discussions, the developnt team ultimately set the ga’s tone on multiplayer cooperation.

And it turned out that change did indeed bring them more attention.

After all, looking at the global market, there are many multiplayer co-op FPS gas, but adding a "horror" label to one is still rare.

Besides, this ti they had the sixth-generation Phantom Dream’s Reality Augntation Technology support.

So players were genuinely eager to see what surprises Endless Dark Tide might deliver.

"Whooo—000000000K!"

Cutscene finished!

dream and his two teammates jumped into the ga, ford their squad, selected the first chapter, "Prologue," and officially started playing.

However!

As soon as they entered, a deeply familiar sensation hit them!

dream, George, and sap, along with an AI teammate nad Davis, spawned inside a small chamber.

The cramped cabin was cold and claustrophobic, suffused with an indescribable sll.

A chilling temperature, unpleasant odor, dim lighting, and faint, inexplicable noises...

No denying it!

Supported by Phantom Dream V, Alien: Endless Dark Tide's environntal realism and imrsion were indeed a noticeable step up from CloudPower’s previous titles. As the sixth-gen engine’s marketing claid,

just the single Reality Augntation Technology alone, by enhancing environntal interactivity, produced imrsion rivaling and even subtly surpassing the realism of Yiyou X2’s full-sensory assist system.

But that made sense.

Yiyou’s full-sensory assist is basically a "sensory amplifier"—an external auxiliary plugin that magnifies players’ sensory experiences within safety limits.

Phantom Dream V’s Reality Augntation, by contrast, refines and categorizes all senses and optimizes their enhancent. It’s more precise, can adapt sensing adjustnts to different environnts, and makes players feel more concretely intensified sensations at their core.

It’s hard to imagine how explosive a ga would be if soone one day combined the full-sensory assist plugin with the Reality Augntation core technology.

dream thought to himself.

Although his palate had been spoiled by Yiyou X2’s built-in full-sensory assist, he could still detect subtle differences.

No doubt the engine technology had improved.

But!

This ga!

This format...?

This opening...?

This cara movent...?

The way it enters the controlled character’s viewpoint from above... the table full of primary and secondary weapons and dkits... and that familiar safe door...

"....Why do I feel like I've seen this sowhere? Huh? Who bought dinner?"

dream pondered for a while and asked the burning question:

"Isn’t this just a Left 4 Dead mod?"

Exactly!

That familiar equipnt distribution! That familiar UI layout! That safe room etched into his DNA!

All of it!

It was basically Left 4 Dead, parentheses "Promax Power Enhancent Technology PLUS Next-Gen Rebuild Edition"!

Click!

dream picked up an assault rifle, racked the bolt, took aim like a pro, and was completely stunned!

No way...?

Dude, you really think I haven't played gas before?

You... so shalessly copied it!

Ask any motion-sensing pod player worldwide—who hasn’t played Left 4 Dead?

Even if you never ate pork, haven’t you seen a pig run?

You just blatantly copied the Left 4 Dead safe room?

If this wasn’t CloudPower’s first-party, 3S-level shooter selling for eighty bucks, I’d swear Golden Wind remade Left 4 Dead!

For a mont, dream was speechless.

No words.

He wanted to rant but didn’t know where to start.

After all, the chat viewers had a point—

If you can’t make it original, why not copy it wholesale?

"No problem, I have to say Flabird knows gas; they knew exactly who to copy..."

"Oh no, what if they actually make it good!"

L4D has evolved so much over the years; with hundreds of thousands of mods on the Workshop, countless mods and settings have made it a pinnacle of this genre. Copying it is never wrong.

My verdict—Flabird got it all.

When I saw the trailer I felt the UI looked familiar, but seeing the safe room in the full release really broke .

Cold-bloodedly taking soone else’s leftovers and frying them up—no one does it like that.

......

"Seriously? They just copied it wholesale? Can we sue them?"

At the sa ti, Little Nezha, who was watching the competitor’s work with Old Gu, jumped up from the sofa, hands on hips, furious:

"Copying the gaplay might not be plagiarism, but this is ridiculous!"

"Just tweak the UI style a bit, change the backstory, swap the safe room art, and sell it for eighty bucks a pop?"

You CloudPower people are sothing else!

You could've just stolen it outright, but you decided to be magnanimous and give players a ‘ga’!

However!

Gu Sheng, lounging crooked on the sofa like a bored CEO, waved his hand with a smile to calm the indignant Little Nezha:

"Flabird hasn’t just straight-up copied them... they did make changes."

As an experienced ga designer, Gu Sheng saw things differently than Little Nezha, a regular player.

Peering through the surface of the ga to see the design essence was his instinct.

Analyzing a ga’s intent from design clues was his professional reflex.

Indeed, from what was visible so far, Alien: Endless Dark Tide’s opening setup and UI style were nearly identical to Left 4 Dead.

But judging from the items and equipnt dream and others had scavenged, it was less a power-enhanced remaster of Left 4 Dead than a 3S-level upgraded version of another ga—

Alien Swarm.

This was a third-person, top-down cooperative action ga developed by BlackCatGas and released by Valve Software in 2004 in his previous life.

If that sounds unfamiliar, put it more bluntly—Alien-thed Running Gunner.

In that ga, players cooperated online in teams of four, explored fixed maps, completed objectives, and evacuated safely.

Its weapon set included standard assault rifles, shotguns, pistols, as well as heavy weapons like flathrowers, railguns, and grenade launchers.

It also offered a variety of items—sentry guns for defense, dkits for healing, amplifiers to boost firepower, electromagnetic towers to stun aliens, and so on.

Moreover,

"class systems" were a major feature.

Commander, dic, heavy, and hacker classes each had strengths; the right combos made completing levels much easier.

So looking at CloudPower’s Alien: Endless Dark Tide now, it beca clear: it was more like Alien Swarm from Gu Sheng’s past life.

In weapons, it paired basic and heavy firepower; special items could be found in loot boxes during play.

In terms of items, Flabird had heavily "borrowed" from Golden Wind’s Overwatch and APEX—

Torbjörn’s turret, Soldier: 76’s Biotic Field, Gibraltar’s Barrier Shield, downed player scans, even Wraith’s portal...

They cleverly combined "skills" with "survival," giving players a high-quality, approachable experience.

And in fact!

Just as Gu Sheng predicted,

dream’s squad, having realized Endless Dark Tide differed from Left 4 Dead, began to master the ga and had a blast.

They shouted and fought wildly against waves of aliens, screaming all the while.

The livestream chat was friendly and lively; viewers were pleasantly surprised, and the atmosphere blazed.

But Gu Sheng knew!

This hot opening actually hid the ga’s major problem—

the boredom that cos from repetitive play.

Although it looked like ninety-nine percent of players were saying "Flabird copied it blatantly."

Using Left 4 Dead’s design idea made Endless Dark Tide blow up upon announcent; the streaming performance was extraordinary.

But as the saying goes, success and failure co from the sa cause.

If roles were reversed, Gu Sheng would never, under any circumstances, choose Left 4 Dead as the design template for such a costly, high-priority project.

Because Left 4 Dead repeats too much!

Flabird evidently only saw that Left 4 Dead had stayed popular for over four years with a stable player base.

They didn’t analyze why it remained popular for so long, why it still dominates online player numbers in this genre.

Is Left 4 Dead’s gaplay that exceptional?

Sure, in its day, Left 4 Dead’s concept of second-generation FPS and zombie co-op was groundbreaking and still influences the industry.

But with the developnt of motion-sensing pods and rapid progress, that type of ga has shown its age.

Fixed clearance routes and level design, and a content update pace that lags behind the speed players clear levels, an the experience inevitably degrades with repeated play.

No exaggeration: this ga is the typical "no friends, you won't play" kind—"have friends, you clear once together and then it gathers dust."

Until—

The Workshop appeared!

The Workshop gave Left 4 Dead infinite possibilities and endless life!

That is the fundantal reason Left 4 Dead endured.

From an essential perspective, making this kind of ga is not a mistake; Gu Sheng himself wanted to soday make a cooperative challenge ga as a small side project.

But CloudPower erred by making this, without Workshop support, their single "engine revolution" flagship!

A ga prone to player fatigue was treated as the one miracle to change fate!

Players are excited now, true,

but when that excitent fades?

Without Workshop-like "life-source" support, how will you sustain the life of this crown-hope title?