Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

Left 4 Dead 2

1. Official Site
2. Platform: 360
3. Publisher: Electronic Arts
4. Developer: Valve Software
5. Release Date: 11/17/09
6. Genre: Action/Adventure

by Ron Lenzi

In a World....

Exactly one year after Left 4 Dead was released, Valve has come out with Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to 2008’s co-op zombie-killing extravaganza. When I first heard the announcement of a full sequel to Left 4 Dead and not an expansion, I had serious doubts as to whether they could improve and change the game enough to justify it. After getting some hands-on time with the game at PAX 2009 , I felt more at ease Left 4 Dead 2 would be a true sequel. I’m excited to report after playing the release version, this belief still holds true.

I’ll start off this review by stating if you did not care for the gameplay of Left 4 Dead, or had no interest in any of the innovations in the first title, Left 4 Dead 2 will not change your mind. The offline and online co-op is handled the same, the action is similar, and campaign progression is mostly unchanged. If, however, you enjoyed the first title and wanted to see improvements in all areas as well as new features, or if you were interested in Left 4 Dead but never had the chance to play it, Left 4 Dead 2 is for you.

There are plenty of articles written about the basics of how Left 4 Dead is played. Here is a brief summary. There is a world-wide virus which has turned most of the population into infected monsters. In the co-op modes, each player controls one of four survivors, attempting to navigate hostile landscapes looking for a way to escape. The survivors must work together, cover each other when the infected attack, assist when one of them falls, or rescue team members captures by one of the special Infected. Versus modes have four players as the survivors and four players as special infected, with the players attempting to escape and the infected trying to kill the survivors before they do. Game play in all modes is fast and frantic, with a Valve-created mechanic called “The Director” watching the progression of the survivors and dynamically altering the game to create peaks and valleys in the action.

Making their return in Left 4 Dead 2 are the Campaign, Versus, and Survival modes. These modes are essentially untouched from the first title, with the exception of some new levels. The rest of this review assumes you’re familiar with the first Left 4 Dead. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look at the new features and game modes Left 4 Dead 2 brings.

And.... Action!

Sitting underneath the core game is The Director. Improvements have been made all-around with the background AI controlling the action. I feel like the difficulty has been ramped up significantly, with The Director throwing more waves of Infected and special Infected than before. I haven’t memorized the levels yet, but I am aware of the Director having the ability to alter physical paths the Survivors must take through a level in order to keep the play fresh. Veterans of the first game will definitely notice the intensity increase coming from The Director.

Shot on Location in the South

For the sequel, the location has shifted to the Southern United States. There are five campaigns total, with areas such as a city mall, a creepy carnival, swampland, and a southern downtown scene. Scenes definitely have more variety than the first title, with bright sun-lit areas, dense smoky rooms, and pitch-black crawlspaces and sewers. One particular area comes to mind when the Survivors drop down a manhole cover and end up in a very dark corridor which leads to a large underground room. The only light comes from the beams of your flashlights. You can hear the splashing of incoming Infected, but only see them if they happen to pass in front of your light or begin chewing on your face. I really enjoyed the different feel in each campaign. There are also some new events where the Survivors must run through an area while an alarm is going off, or complete tasks in order to move on to the next location. This shakes up the monotony of moving through a level just to get to the next safe house and is a welcome addition.

Those Costumes Look So Real!

Adding to the menagerie of Infected, three new Special and a couple of uncommon Infected are introduced. The new special Infected are the Charger, Jockey, and Spitter.

The Charger resembles the Tank, with one very tiny arm. He’ll run at a Survivor, grab them, and take them off into a corner where he continuously bashes them into the ground until they are rescued or killed. He goes down much easier than the tank, and if he misses a Survivor on his rampage, he’ll need to rest a moment to attempt it again.

The Jockey is a little hunch-backed Infected who jumps onto a Survivor’s back and rides them like a horse, attempting to steer them away from other Survivors and into the waiting arms of other Infected. He’s a quick little bugger and can be quite annoying.

The Spitter is a female Infected who can spit out a green acid which pools on the ground. Any Survivor caught in this pool will take massive amounts of damage. Killing her also leaves a pool of acid where she was standing. I always seem to end up stuck in one of her puddles.

There are several other new uncommon infected, like Mudmen who can spit mud and block your view, or clowns who can call other common Infected by their squeaky shoes, but the one I think matters is the Riot Police Infected. These guys aren’t much more dangerous than common Infected, except they have body armor, which makes a frontal assault mostly futile. The best way to take care of them is by getting behind and shooting them in the back.

Props!

Left 4 Dead 2 introduces many new weapons and items for the Survivors to use on their mission to escape. On the weapons front, there are a host of new ranged weapons, like silenced SMGs, AK-47s, and Sniper Rifles. There is also a grenade launcher, which rarely shows up and gives considerable splash damage. These all give more variety in shooting, from different magazine sizes, round loads, and accuracy. It’s great to have more weapons to choose from and you can get the feel of each to determine which one is right for you.

There are three new sidearms introduced in Left 4 Dead 2. There’s still the regular pistol, but there is also the P220, the Glock, and the Magnum. With the Magnum, you cannot dual-wield, and if you have the P220, the second pistol you pick up will be a Glock. However, I have not noticed any difference between the normal pistol, the P220, or the Glock. The only difference seen is with the Magnum, which holds fewer rounds but is much more powerful than the other pistols. I don’t really see a reason to add the P220 and the Glock, but I don’t see the harm in having them either.

Completely new are the melee weapons. These take the place of your sidearm, and are used in close-up hand-to-hand combat situations. Some examples are a bat, machete, frying pan, and electric guitar. While all melee weapons do the same damage, different ones allow different reach and the katana or axe are useful for chopping off the head of a Witch if used in the correct manner. I absolutely love the melee weapons and do not use a pistol at all anymore. If I get hit by a Boomer, or an event starts with all of the Infected running at me, I switch from a gun to a baseball bat and swing for the fences! They are very effective and the sound each one makes when it connects with a target always makes me smile.

Also new to the sequel are weapon accessories. The two types are laser sights and modified ammo. Laser sights attach to any non-pistol weapon you have equipped. You can see the laser sight emanating from the gun and it increases the weapon’s accuracy. The modified ammo comes in two types – Incendiary and Explosive. Picking one of these up takes the med kit slot and you need to then place it on the ground in order for everyone to use it. Once placed, anyone can come up and take ammo from it to get one magazine of that type. It’s great fun shooting one Infected, having it burst into flames, and then having other Infected behind it continue to run through and catch on fire themselves.

Three new support items enhance game play as well. There are adrenaline shots, defibrillators, and vials of Boomer bile. Adrenaline goes in the pill slot and will give a 25 point boost to health, make the character run faster, and makes them immune to fatigue effects. It also makes the progress bars for using health kits and rescuing fallen Survivors faster. The shot lasts for fifteen seconds. The defibrillator takes up the med kit slot and lets you bring a dead player back to life instead of having to wait and find them in a side room. The vial of Boomer bile takes up the slot for the pipe bomb or molotov. Throwing this onto a target is just like having a Boomer vomit on it. The Horde will ignore the Survivors and attack whatever is covered in the green goo. I personally haven’t had much of a use for the adrenaline, but the defibrillator has come in handy on more than one occasion, and the Boomer bile is great when a Tank shows up.

More Thrills! More Excitement!

Along with the new campaigns, Infected, weapons, and items, there are two new game modes. In Scavenge mode, the Survivors need to fill up a generator by collecting sixteen gas cans strewn about the map. The Infected are trying to stop the Survivors from doing so. There is a time limit to the level and every time a Survivor successfully empties a gas can into the generator, the time is extended by twenty seconds. There are six maps to play and once a round gets going, the action is non-stop right up until the timer counts down to zero. Lobby creators can pick one round, best of three, or best of five, with teams switching sides after each round. I enjoyed the jump-in and play aspect of this mode and it offers another way to enjoy the Survivor vs. Infected game play.

For the other new mode Realism, I wanted to wait until I could play with several people who also had mics. This mode does as its name implies. The game removes the glowing outline your teammates have when they go around a corner, requiring everyone to stick together and communicate in order to make it through the levels. Also removed are the pointers leading you to items and weapons. You need to find them in the level as you’re going through it. This makes the audio comments Survivors make much more important, because if you’re not next to your teammates and you hear Coach say “Med Kit here”, that’s the only clue you’ll have one is nearby.

Not only are Survivor and item location removed, the Infected are more realistic in a zombie movie-sense. They will take less damage shot in the torso and more damage shot in the head, making “pray and spray” shooting tactics more about wasting ammo than killing anything. This mode also does not point out the Witch, with the exception of her audio cues, and she gets a morbid upgrade, instantly killing anyone who disturbs her.

If a Survivor dies, they will no longer appear later in the level behind a locked door. Once dead, they’re out for the rest of the level unless a defibrillator is found and used to bring them back.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to think of this mode, but after three hours with a team that effectively communicated locations of themselves, the Infected, and items, I enjoyed it more than the standard game. Realism forces you to pay attention and really pulled me into the game world. You start to see how much you rely on the game telling you there’s a health kit to the right, or having the confidence to go a different path than the other Survivors because you can see exactly where they are on the other side of walls or a different floor. Realism is certainly more difficult with the restrictions on death, the super-powered Infected, and the Witch, but after experiencing it, I won’t play the normal mode again.

The Cutting Room Floor

It’s difficult for me to find negative aspects of Left 4 Dead 2. There are a few, but I don’t believe they take away from everything done correctly. The AI of the bots does seem ‘dumber’ than the first one. Many times I am firing into a horde of Infected and the bots will run directly in front of me. I have also seen times where a bot will stand perfectly still, shotgun in-hand, and do nothing while Infected are jumping on me. The intelligence of the bots is noticed less when you’re playing with more actual people, but those who want a single-player experience with three bots supporting are in for some frustrating game play.

Graphically, I have seen a couple of slowdowns, but only where there is a lot of action going on at once. When there are thirty Infected on the screen, Survivors are shooting, and all of the Infected are on fire, the frame rate takes a dip. I have also seen an incident where a zombie was floating in mid-air, climbing an imaginary wall, made it to the other side, and dropped down in front of me. Issues like these are few, and have not distracted from the game.

That's a Wrap!

Left 4 Dead 2 improves on most everything from the first one, while adding enough new levels, Infected types, weapons, and items to give a new experience. Those who haven’t played the first game but are interested in this type of game should skip it and get Left 4 Dead 2 instead. While I didn’t think there would be enough room or time for a true sequel, Left 4 Dead 2 delivers one.

Gaming Trend Score

96

1. Graphics: 90
2. Audio: 95
3. Controls: 95
4. Gameplay: 98
5. Value/Replay: 98
6. OVERALL:96