So apparently there is some mini organisation out there trying to get famous by claiming that Left 4 Dead 2 is racist because it has black people in it and some of those black people are zombies. Now I still feel that there were some racist undertones in Resident Evil, even though I feel they were based more on ignorance than ill feeling, however that being said I cannot for the life of me see how Left 4 Dead 2 could possibly be racist. Some of the lead characters who save the world are black, doesn’t that make them the hero’s? There is however something I feel Valve did wrong, they set the game in New Orleans. The city that recently was struck by Hurricane Katrina which killed nearly 2000 people and turned the city into a death trap. Setting your video game (which includes death, zombies and disease) in this setting is uncaring and a cheap ploy to try and grab some extra attention. I think too highly of Valve to believe that they didn’t realise this during their design meetings and therefore I can only believe they did it on purpose. Which is a bit tacky in my opinion. Will this put me off buying the game? Absolutely not, I missed the boat on the first Left 4 Dead and there is no way I am going to miss this one as well. This just raises the old question of when does it become acceptable to turn terrible acts into entertainment? Katrina smashed the city 4 years ago so some would think enough time has passed. However there are still hundreds of houses that are yet to be cleared out and over 700 people still marked as missing so it’s still pretty fresh in a lot of peoples minds.  | 
I don’t think it will be ground breaking, but it will still be Duke. Maybe...
12:00 pm
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August 3, 2009
12:30 pm
Meh, bloody bleeding heart Yanks.
Let them go and have a look at what their dear troops are doing to Iraq and Afghanistan instead.
August 3, 2009
12:50 pm
If I recall the Fallujah title was scrapped as well, it’s not like they are unaware of the pain that war either.
August 4, 2009
4:57 pm
there is not a place on the planet that hasn’t been struck by some sort of disaster.
plus there’s the fact that there are no such things as zombies… or are there
for that matter, ghost might exist too… thats it i’m gonna burn my copy of ghostbusters. what an insensitive game towards the deceased.
August 3, 2009
1:25 pm
Maybe they will dedicate this game to the families who were effected by the Hurricane Katrina tragedy…. Yeah RIGHT!
August 3, 2009
3:14 pm
New Orleans is Voodoo central. Why NOT set it there?
August 3, 2009
5:10 pm
Personally I think Valve have a winner idea.People just want to wine about something. What is making a game set in a place like New Orleans going to do to the people of New Orleans?No matter where you set a game that you are trying to get people to relate to you will offend people. We’ve all seen it on TV so it’s more ‘real’, the decay and disaster now Zombies. It’s brilliant! I’m sure a lot of people have thought “what would I do if this really happened” when playing L4D, this is all part of the experience of gaming.
You wanna be insensitive get photos of the deceased and put them on the Zombies then I might consider having an issue…
August 3, 2009
6:18 pm
I definitely think some people are overly sensitive about the race issue, although I do question the setting of the game, especially given what happened during Katrina and the US governments failure to respond quickly enough to the disaster. I hate to say it, but in that instance race clearly played a huge roll, therefore a zombie game set in New Orleans so “soon-ish” after the event is definitely in bad taste. Why not rather have it in Africa? Or some made-up African state?
August 3, 2009
8:26 pm
And have the same people cry over black zombies in africa.
Having just white zombies would be racist…
I’m a Equal opertunity Zombie slayer.
On that… why do we never see kids or baby zombies?
Drop kicking a wee zombie would bring a smile to my face….
And that will get the bleeding hearts out in the open for sure!
August 4, 2009
11:22 am
I always wanted to kill a midget zombie.. Wonder if that is racist as well
August 3, 2009
9:15 pm
holy poo, people are such whiners, you know what happened? they got a fat hat with a bunch of places in it and new orleans was pulled out, and i mean come on, racism? hurricanes? zombies? how the hell can that be realted???? the only place a game like this can be based on without offending some one is the moon, and then thier would have to be alien
zombies with venuerable limbs, and thier would be low gravity and lazers and space ships and men in funny suits, i mean that would be lame, so stop complaining and just give valve your money.
August 4, 2009
11:22 am
HEY THATS RACIST! What would E.T say???
August 4, 2009
4:33 pm
September 21, 2009
9:19 am
[...] Earlier this year Valve announced that Left 4 Dead 2 was going to be set in New Orleans and instantly some obscure group started screaming racism. This was quickly ignored but I did also say at the time that setting a zombie game in a city that is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina is possibly a stupid idea. [...]