This review is being written with The Passing DLC in mind as well, as that is the full package. So basically, I will review everything. Enjoy!
So, where to begin. E3 2009: Valve decided to announce this instead of the eagerly anticipated Half Life 2: Episode 3. A year later and they STILL haven?t said anything about the Freeman and Vance. Why, Valve? Why?
Anyway, boycotts sprung up once this was announced, due to the complaints that Valve could have just thrown this game into the original Left 4 Dead as DLC. Which is one of the stupidest claims anyone in the gaming community has ever made, if you consider how much Valve has improved in Left 4 Dead 2. This is surely no Left 4 Dead 1.5.
Here is a list of improvements and additions to the core gameplay and campaigns:
New Characters, New Campaigns
This one is evident from the E3 2009 trailer itself. This isn?t just a continuation from the original Left 4 Dead, but an entirely different game. Well, not entirely, but it?s a different story. Left 4 Dead lacked story, but it made up for it in some of the best level design and hectic gameplay anyone had ever witnessed. Left 4 Dead 2 expands on this by adding one more campaign than Left 4 Dead (making 5 campaigns instead of the original?s 4, until Crash Course was released), more Special Infected, four new game modes (Realism, Realism VS, Mutation and Scavenge), and characters which will make you think that the characters from the original were just empty shells, despite their likeability (seriously, who couldn?t get enough of Francis?s hatred for EVERYTHING?). Francis, Zoey, Bill and Louis make an appearance in the great downloadable campaign The Passing, but one of them is dead. I won?t say which one, but the attachment you grow towards them in the original Left 4 Dead will make their demise even more tragic.
The new characters, Ellis, Nick, Rochelle and Coach are all given life by the tremendous voice acting, and they all seem believable. They each have back stories; Ellis was a mechanic and has a friend called Keith who he has shared many adventures with. Rochelle was a journalist, Coach was a high school football coach (the name says it all really) and Nick was a conman and gambler, who loves his money. The opening cinematic shows him, in his first appearance, taking money from a cash register; don?t think he?d need money when he?s in the middle of the apocalypse. My favourite is definitely Ellis. His Southern accent makes him even more humourous than he is, and his cheery attitude towards everything will make the apocalypse seem a bit more bearable. His stories about him and his buddy Keith are also hysterical, with one involving Keith getting third degree burns, and getting bombed by the army. You can still hear them over the chaos ensuing around the player, which makes it better.
There are six new campaigns: Dead Center, The Passing, Dark Carnival, Swamp Fever, Hard Rain and The Parish. Two of these (Dead Center and The Parish) are set in the daytime, which is a welcome change from the night-time levels of the original Left 4 Dead, and it?s good that the fear that the infected invoke upon you isn?t deduced due to the different setting. They range from different locations such as a shopping centre, an abandoned theme park, the Louisiana swamps and New Orleans, which stirred up unneeded controversy due to the location being the centre of a natural disaster some years back. The campaigns this time around are each linked by a thin storyline: the Survivors are trying to reach New Orleans where they have heard that the army are evacuating Survivors out of the area to a safe zone. Each campaign has its own unique feel and events, such as calling a chopper via a rock concert and having to traverse a sugar mill full of Left 4 Dead?s deadliest enemies: the Witches; these emo-like Infected can incapacitate a Survivor in one fell swipe if aggravated, unless you use a shotgun round to the face to end their sorry lives. But this is easier said than done; I still haven?t mastered crowning Witches, and I have played this game close to religiously!
Talking of Witches:
New Enemies
Appearances can be deceiving?but in this case, they are not. Each of the Special Infected has their own special abilities, and distinguishes themselves from the other Infected due to these traits. They are all out to stop the Survivors from escaping the hell-hole that they have found themselves trapped in, and it?s their monstrous appearance and grunts that will make you run as quickly through the area as you possibly can. But when doing so, stick together, because the newest Specials (Charger, Jockey and Spitter) will do whatever they can to make your trek a scary one. Take the Charger, for example. His overgrown arm is used for batting and grabbing Survivors, and if he charges into you, watch out; he will proceed to crush your body into the ground until it lies limp and bloody. The Spitter uses projectile balls of acid to make hallways even more dangerous. These acidic balls of delight will cause an acid patch to spread and eventually disappear, and these patches can damage a Survivor quite severely if they are stuck in the acid patch for a lengthy period of time.
The Jockey, however, is so irritating yet awesome that he gets his own paragraph.
The Jockey is, to me, the most infuriating and freakiest Special Infected in the whole game. He will leap on your back and carry you as far away from your team-mates as possible before your health drains and you are left incapacitated, or one of your fellow Survivors kills him. His devilish giggle and scampering feet will warn you of his presence long before the inevitable leap onto your back, and the damage he can cause if he isn?t disposed of efficiently can be grave for both his victim and your team. I once had a Jockey lead off one of my team-mates, and in hot pursuit of this fiend, my two fellow survivors and I had a run in with a Smoker and a Charger. If this were on Normal difficulty the problem would have been easily dealt with, but on Expert difficulty, this conundrum can spell doom for the unharmed team-mate also, as he would be dealing with the Infected onslaught with one less Survivor. Survivors mean everything in this game, and doesn?t the Jockey, heck, EVERYONE, know that.
The Special Infected feature heavily in the campaign, but they are also playable, which makes this game even more exceptional. Play as the Survivors, or play as the enemy. The result of this is seen in game modes outside of the campaigns.
Some of the campaigns also have Uncommon Infected which look and act differently to the hordes of Common Infected you will find scattered around the different campaigns. Some of these include CEDA Agents (some carry bile jars, will mention again later), riot police who carry police batons and the mud men who?are covered in mud and don?t really seem that different from the others. Either way, these Uncommon Infected are still a threat, but just not as large as a Tank.
New Game Modes, New Weapons
Scavenge Mode is one of the most frenzied modes in the game. It involves the Survivors trying to fill a generator with sixteen gas cans spread across the arena before the timer runs out. Another team, playing as the Special Infected, must thwart their plans. Over the headsets on the Xbox 360, nervous voices can often be heard when that person has split up from the group, carrying a gas can, and they themselves can hear the sniggers of a Jockey or the grunts of a Charger. You cannot play as a brutal Tank on this game mode and for good reason: Tanks obliterate EVERYTHING if used correctly. They can be used on Versus mode, however, but only when the AI Director wants them to be used. The AI Director has been improved since the last game, just to say briefly, which makes it even more fearful than it was last time due to the new Special Infected. It feels like dropping a Charger into the mix? In runs a Charger. Wants a Tank to throw a car at Nick? A Tank will try and stop the conman in his tracks by hitting a piece of the environment at him.
Another new mode, which is accessed once you have downloaded The Passing (seriously, download it, it is worth it) is called Mutation. This mode changes every week and tweaks the selected game mode in various ways. One of these tweaks actually spawned a new game mode altogether (Realism Versus), and one, named Chainsaw Massacre?well, you can guess what that did.
The chainsaw is one of the new weapons that have been included in this sequel, along with melee weapons such as the crowbar (my preferred melee weapon as it reminds me of the classic Half Life), the cricket bat, the fire axe and the golf club among others. The chainsaw is devastating, with its teeth tearing through anything in its path, but once it runs out of fuel you?re basically screwed if your firearm is something like?oh, I don?t know, the silenced sub machine gun. How this is such a weak weapon I will never know, but it just doesn?t do a good job of stopping the Infected in their path. A new shotgun, burst rifle and the Magnum are added to the range of weapons, and there are noticeable differences between these and the original weapons. There are also new grenade-type weapons, such as the bile jar. This is basically a jar of Boomer bile used to attract the horde, and can be used to evade an attack and get to the safe rooms easily. These can be thrown at Tanks and other Infected, and there is even an Achievement (Septic Tank) for tossing one at a Tank. Watching the Infected attack a Tank is hilarious, especially as it clears the streets of the unwanted vermin.
Improved Dismemberment
Call me morbid, but I love dismemberment. Not in real life, just in computer games. It makes it all seem that much more realistic. Seriously, would a head not get separated from the shoulders if blasted point blank with a shotgun? Yeah, I guessed not.
In Left 4 Dead 2, you will see arms, heads, legs and torsos flying everywhere, showering blood on you and other enemies. Valve has made the corpses much more grim, with spinal columns visible through the backs of Infected?if you aimed lower than the head. Awesomely brutal.
But Enough of all That?
?You need my verdict on the game, as well as the facts on why the game is so awesome. Just because a game is amazing doesn?t mean I have to enjoy it. BioShock 2, for instance, which reviewers seemed to believe it was a brilliant sequel; I detested it. Sure, it looked pretty and some things were improved from the first BioShock, but the surprises of Rapture were all gone. Gone was Andrew Ryan, gone was the awe-inspiring sights of Rapture. Gone was the intrigue. It was the first game minus everything interesting!
Well, thank God this turned out OK. This game is in my top five favourite games of all time, which includes the likes of Half Life 2, Mass Effect 2, Resident Evil 4 and Red Dead Redemption. It?s just so much fun, requires a lot of skill and poses a challenge even on Easy (sometimes). The characters are all charming, the Special Infected all the more worrying, and the new and improved game modes prove there is something for everyone. The new Special Infected are a lot of fun to play as, even if a player controlled Tank is the cause of all the world?s problems.
The campaigns are far more diverse over the similar feel of the campaigns in the original Left 4 Dead. Sure, the campaigns of Left 4 Dead were fun and exciting, but the layout was the same (get from rooftop to escape vehicle, with crescendo events and many Infected on the way). In Left 4 Dead 2, there are differences between each campaign. The finales are still the traditional Left 4 Dead fare in some of the campaigns like Swamp Fever and Hard Rain, but the others feel much, much different. Dead Center has you collecting gas cans to fill up a car that is conveniently placed in the mall (this is picked up in the internet cartoon Left 4 Speed 2, which I recommend watching wholeheartedly), and The Parish has the Survivors crossing a bridge which is getting bombed by the army at the same time, making it even more tense. In Left 4 Dead, the only real difference between finales was where you could hide. In Left 4 Dead 2, however, the new Special Infected prevent hiding, so the differences are how and when you attack.
On the technical side it is a major improvement. There seems to be more Infected on screen at one time, they don?t disappear as quickly once destroyed (they still do disappear in front of your eyes on occasions though), and the AI Director is as evil as ever. The AI Director likes to spawn Tanks when you need Tanks the least, namely, when you are just about to reach a safe room, with health at a low, and one decides to pop up from behind a door or a car and just smash you into the air. Oh, Mr. AI Director, you?re ever so kind.
Any downsides? Well, the difficulty is pretty uneven. Advanced difficulty feels a lot like Expert on the original Left 4 Dead, and Expert on Left 4 Dead 2 feels like Gabe Newell and Valve in its entirety taking their anger out on us gamers. Expert is practically impossible, especially with Realism enabled, which makes it so you cannot see the outlines of your team-mates. Expert Realism is actually impossible. Period. I got to the fourth act of Dark Carnival with a team of, I would say, professionals, and we were getting owned very, very quickly, even if we stuck together. It doesn?t help that Chargers were thrown at us left, right and centre, and Hunters were waiting around every corner to pounce us. Also, the biggest flaw of all: Left 4 Dead-tards. These people will join online sessions and will take all the health packs, pain pills, everything. They will be unrelentless in their unneeded usage of said amenities, and will run ahead instead of helping fallen comrades. All in all, they aren?t a problem with the game, but a problem with mankind itself. Just makes you wish you were actually in the game with an automatic shotgun, because the Left 4 Dead-tard?s head would be smeared on the walls within seconds.
Valve has poured their heart and their soul into this game, and the result is the greatest co-operative experience until Portal 2 comes out. And my God if that game isn?t as great as it looks (it will be that good, trust me) then Valve will have a lot of angry, angry fanboys on their hands.
Peace out.
So, where to begin. E3 2009: Valve decided to announce this instead of the eagerly anticipated Half Life 2: Episode 3. A year later and they STILL haven?t said anything about the Freeman and Vance. Why, Valve? Why?
Anyway, boycotts sprung up once this was announced, due to the complaints that Valve could have just thrown this game into the original Left 4 Dead as DLC. Which is one of the stupidest claims anyone in the gaming community has ever made, if you consider how much Valve has improved in Left 4 Dead 2. This is surely no Left 4 Dead 1.5.
Here is a list of improvements and additions to the core gameplay and campaigns:
New Characters, New Campaigns
This one is evident from the E3 2009 trailer itself. This isn?t just a continuation from the original Left 4 Dead, but an entirely different game. Well, not entirely, but it?s a different story. Left 4 Dead lacked story, but it made up for it in some of the best level design and hectic gameplay anyone had ever witnessed. Left 4 Dead 2 expands on this by adding one more campaign than Left 4 Dead (making 5 campaigns instead of the original?s 4, until Crash Course was released), more Special Infected, four new game modes (Realism, Realism VS, Mutation and Scavenge), and characters which will make you think that the characters from the original were just empty shells, despite their likeability (seriously, who couldn?t get enough of Francis?s hatred for EVERYTHING?). Francis, Zoey, Bill and Louis make an appearance in the great downloadable campaign The Passing, but one of them is dead. I won?t say which one, but the attachment you grow towards them in the original Left 4 Dead will make their demise even more tragic.
The new characters, Ellis, Nick, Rochelle and Coach are all given life by the tremendous voice acting, and they all seem believable. They each have back stories; Ellis was a mechanic and has a friend called Keith who he has shared many adventures with. Rochelle was a journalist, Coach was a high school football coach (the name says it all really) and Nick was a conman and gambler, who loves his money. The opening cinematic shows him, in his first appearance, taking money from a cash register; don?t think he?d need money when he?s in the middle of the apocalypse. My favourite is definitely Ellis. His Southern accent makes him even more humourous than he is, and his cheery attitude towards everything will make the apocalypse seem a bit more bearable. His stories about him and his buddy Keith are also hysterical, with one involving Keith getting third degree burns, and getting bombed by the army. You can still hear them over the chaos ensuing around the player, which makes it better.
There are six new campaigns: Dead Center, The Passing, Dark Carnival, Swamp Fever, Hard Rain and The Parish. Two of these (Dead Center and The Parish) are set in the daytime, which is a welcome change from the night-time levels of the original Left 4 Dead, and it?s good that the fear that the infected invoke upon you isn?t deduced due to the different setting. They range from different locations such as a shopping centre, an abandoned theme park, the Louisiana swamps and New Orleans, which stirred up unneeded controversy due to the location being the centre of a natural disaster some years back. The campaigns this time around are each linked by a thin storyline: the Survivors are trying to reach New Orleans where they have heard that the army are evacuating Survivors out of the area to a safe zone. Each campaign has its own unique feel and events, such as calling a chopper via a rock concert and having to traverse a sugar mill full of Left 4 Dead?s deadliest enemies: the Witches; these emo-like Infected can incapacitate a Survivor in one fell swipe if aggravated, unless you use a shotgun round to the face to end their sorry lives. But this is easier said than done; I still haven?t mastered crowning Witches, and I have played this game close to religiously!
Talking of Witches:
New Enemies
Appearances can be deceiving?but in this case, they are not. Each of the Special Infected has their own special abilities, and distinguishes themselves from the other Infected due to these traits. They are all out to stop the Survivors from escaping the hell-hole that they have found themselves trapped in, and it?s their monstrous appearance and grunts that will make you run as quickly through the area as you possibly can. But when doing so, stick together, because the newest Specials (Charger, Jockey and Spitter) will do whatever they can to make your trek a scary one. Take the Charger, for example. His overgrown arm is used for batting and grabbing Survivors, and if he charges into you, watch out; he will proceed to crush your body into the ground until it lies limp and bloody. The Spitter uses projectile balls of acid to make hallways even more dangerous. These acidic balls of delight will cause an acid patch to spread and eventually disappear, and these patches can damage a Survivor quite severely if they are stuck in the acid patch for a lengthy period of time.
The Jockey, however, is so irritating yet awesome that he gets his own paragraph.
The Jockey is, to me, the most infuriating and freakiest Special Infected in the whole game. He will leap on your back and carry you as far away from your team-mates as possible before your health drains and you are left incapacitated, or one of your fellow Survivors kills him. His devilish giggle and scampering feet will warn you of his presence long before the inevitable leap onto your back, and the damage he can cause if he isn?t disposed of efficiently can be grave for both his victim and your team. I once had a Jockey lead off one of my team-mates, and in hot pursuit of this fiend, my two fellow survivors and I had a run in with a Smoker and a Charger. If this were on Normal difficulty the problem would have been easily dealt with, but on Expert difficulty, this conundrum can spell doom for the unharmed team-mate also, as he would be dealing with the Infected onslaught with one less Survivor. Survivors mean everything in this game, and doesn?t the Jockey, heck, EVERYONE, know that.
The Special Infected feature heavily in the campaign, but they are also playable, which makes this game even more exceptional. Play as the Survivors, or play as the enemy. The result of this is seen in game modes outside of the campaigns.
Some of the campaigns also have Uncommon Infected which look and act differently to the hordes of Common Infected you will find scattered around the different campaigns. Some of these include CEDA Agents (some carry bile jars, will mention again later), riot police who carry police batons and the mud men who?are covered in mud and don?t really seem that different from the others. Either way, these Uncommon Infected are still a threat, but just not as large as a Tank.
New Game Modes, New Weapons
Scavenge Mode is one of the most frenzied modes in the game. It involves the Survivors trying to fill a generator with sixteen gas cans spread across the arena before the timer runs out. Another team, playing as the Special Infected, must thwart their plans. Over the headsets on the Xbox 360, nervous voices can often be heard when that person has split up from the group, carrying a gas can, and they themselves can hear the sniggers of a Jockey or the grunts of a Charger. You cannot play as a brutal Tank on this game mode and for good reason: Tanks obliterate EVERYTHING if used correctly. They can be used on Versus mode, however, but only when the AI Director wants them to be used. The AI Director has been improved since the last game, just to say briefly, which makes it even more fearful than it was last time due to the new Special Infected. It feels like dropping a Charger into the mix? In runs a Charger. Wants a Tank to throw a car at Nick? A Tank will try and stop the conman in his tracks by hitting a piece of the environment at him.
Another new mode, which is accessed once you have downloaded The Passing (seriously, download it, it is worth it) is called Mutation. This mode changes every week and tweaks the selected game mode in various ways. One of these tweaks actually spawned a new game mode altogether (Realism Versus), and one, named Chainsaw Massacre?well, you can guess what that did.
The chainsaw is one of the new weapons that have been included in this sequel, along with melee weapons such as the crowbar (my preferred melee weapon as it reminds me of the classic Half Life), the cricket bat, the fire axe and the golf club among others. The chainsaw is devastating, with its teeth tearing through anything in its path, but once it runs out of fuel you?re basically screwed if your firearm is something like?oh, I don?t know, the silenced sub machine gun. How this is such a weak weapon I will never know, but it just doesn?t do a good job of stopping the Infected in their path. A new shotgun, burst rifle and the Magnum are added to the range of weapons, and there are noticeable differences between these and the original weapons. There are also new grenade-type weapons, such as the bile jar. This is basically a jar of Boomer bile used to attract the horde, and can be used to evade an attack and get to the safe rooms easily. These can be thrown at Tanks and other Infected, and there is even an Achievement (Septic Tank) for tossing one at a Tank. Watching the Infected attack a Tank is hilarious, especially as it clears the streets of the unwanted vermin.
Improved Dismemberment
Call me morbid, but I love dismemberment. Not in real life, just in computer games. It makes it all seem that much more realistic. Seriously, would a head not get separated from the shoulders if blasted point blank with a shotgun? Yeah, I guessed not.
In Left 4 Dead 2, you will see arms, heads, legs and torsos flying everywhere, showering blood on you and other enemies. Valve has made the corpses much more grim, with spinal columns visible through the backs of Infected?if you aimed lower than the head. Awesomely brutal.
But Enough of all That?
?You need my verdict on the game, as well as the facts on why the game is so awesome. Just because a game is amazing doesn?t mean I have to enjoy it. BioShock 2, for instance, which reviewers seemed to believe it was a brilliant sequel; I detested it. Sure, it looked pretty and some things were improved from the first BioShock, but the surprises of Rapture were all gone. Gone was Andrew Ryan, gone was the awe-inspiring sights of Rapture. Gone was the intrigue. It was the first game minus everything interesting!
Well, thank God this turned out OK. This game is in my top five favourite games of all time, which includes the likes of Half Life 2, Mass Effect 2, Resident Evil 4 and Red Dead Redemption. It?s just so much fun, requires a lot of skill and poses a challenge even on Easy (sometimes). The characters are all charming, the Special Infected all the more worrying, and the new and improved game modes prove there is something for everyone. The new Special Infected are a lot of fun to play as, even if a player controlled Tank is the cause of all the world?s problems.
The campaigns are far more diverse over the similar feel of the campaigns in the original Left 4 Dead. Sure, the campaigns of Left 4 Dead were fun and exciting, but the layout was the same (get from rooftop to escape vehicle, with crescendo events and many Infected on the way). In Left 4 Dead 2, there are differences between each campaign. The finales are still the traditional Left 4 Dead fare in some of the campaigns like Swamp Fever and Hard Rain, but the others feel much, much different. Dead Center has you collecting gas cans to fill up a car that is conveniently placed in the mall (this is picked up in the internet cartoon Left 4 Speed 2, which I recommend watching wholeheartedly), and The Parish has the Survivors crossing a bridge which is getting bombed by the army at the same time, making it even more tense. In Left 4 Dead, the only real difference between finales was where you could hide. In Left 4 Dead 2, however, the new Special Infected prevent hiding, so the differences are how and when you attack.
On the technical side it is a major improvement. There seems to be more Infected on screen at one time, they don?t disappear as quickly once destroyed (they still do disappear in front of your eyes on occasions though), and the AI Director is as evil as ever. The AI Director likes to spawn Tanks when you need Tanks the least, namely, when you are just about to reach a safe room, with health at a low, and one decides to pop up from behind a door or a car and just smash you into the air. Oh, Mr. AI Director, you?re ever so kind.
Any downsides? Well, the difficulty is pretty uneven. Advanced difficulty feels a lot like Expert on the original Left 4 Dead, and Expert on Left 4 Dead 2 feels like Gabe Newell and Valve in its entirety taking their anger out on us gamers. Expert is practically impossible, especially with Realism enabled, which makes it so you cannot see the outlines of your team-mates. Expert Realism is actually impossible. Period. I got to the fourth act of Dark Carnival with a team of, I would say, professionals, and we were getting owned very, very quickly, even if we stuck together. It doesn?t help that Chargers were thrown at us left, right and centre, and Hunters were waiting around every corner to pounce us. Also, the biggest flaw of all: Left 4 Dead-tards. These people will join online sessions and will take all the health packs, pain pills, everything. They will be unrelentless in their unneeded usage of said amenities, and will run ahead instead of helping fallen comrades. All in all, they aren?t a problem with the game, but a problem with mankind itself. Just makes you wish you were actually in the game with an automatic shotgun, because the Left 4 Dead-tard?s head would be smeared on the walls within seconds.
Valve has poured their heart and their soul into this game, and the result is the greatest co-operative experience until Portal 2 comes out. And my God if that game isn?t as great as it looks (it will be that good, trust me) then Valve will have a lot of angry, angry fanboys on their hands.
Peace out.