Review: Left 4 Dead 2 (360)
Developer: Valve Software
Publisher: Valve Software
MSRP: $59.99
Release Date: 11/17/2009
Platforms: Xbox 360, Windows (Steam)
When the first Left 4 Dead was launched, I wasn’t sold. I can only assume it was because of my passion for games like Fallout 3 or Fable 2 had blinded me, because once I got my hands on it, I was hooked! Probably one of the best co-op experiences of 2008, Left 4 Dead brought a few simplistic, yet necessary alterations to the zombie survival genre. First & foremost is the movement. No longer are the zombies mindless, shuffling bags of meat. No, these undead can clear a 40 yard dash in less than 5 seconds. This poses a big problem for anyone trying to survive long enough to repopulate the earth. With a first-person-shooter style (in lieu of the 3rd person action that titles like Resident Evil focused on), a small variety of weapons, several tongue-in-cheek movie style campaigns & unique “special” zombies like the Boomer & the Smoker, this was a game that had the perfect formula for those all-night gaming sessions with your buddies.
When the sequel was jarringly announced at E3 2009, the backlash was fierce. Many fans felt a bit betrayed, saying that Valve didn’t support the first game enough. They felt that releasing it so soon after the original was unnecessary & wouldn’t offer enough new content to make it a true sequel. Personally, I didn’t agree, but I was one of the few who had a chance to play it at E3 & at PAX, so I can understand the general public’s trepidation. Now that I have the final product in my hands & have spent an extensive amount of time with it, I can say that those worries about rehashed content are aren’t quite true. This game offers plenty of new things to enjoy, provided that you enjoyed the first one. For while the content is new, the gameplay is not. So if you grew tired of the FPS zombie killing through hour long campaigns, then you’ll grow tired of this as well.
First up, we get to play with a new set of survivors: Coach (exactly how the name implies, a high school football coach), Rochelle (probably the most level headed one; works for the media covering the evacuation & a Depeche Mode fan), Nick (gambler, conman & ladies man) & Ellis (a stereotypical hick mechanic). All four of them make a decent team & the banter between them has been vastly improved, not only entertaining, but really fleshes out each of the personalities (no worries though, if you’re attached to the original four: Louis, Francis, Bill & Zoey, they will be back in the upcoming DLC pack, The Passing). With new survivors also comes new locations to play in & Left 4 Dead 2 didn’t disappoint. All set in the southern US, the five new campaigns range from the mall to the swamps to the carnival to a plantation house. I had a lot of fun exploring the new places (my personal favorite being the carnival), especially with the upgraded visual details L4D2 brings to the table. Lots more intricacies give it a more “lived in” look & really showcases how suddenly the area was overtaken by the zombie plague & evacuated along with the chaos that followed suit.
You can’t have a true sequel without some new toys to play with & Left 4 Dead 2 brings in a few that changed everything for me. Now you no longer have to wait for a teammate to respawn in a closet once they die. If you have the new defibrillator, you can shock them back to the land of the living right then & there. Just beware, it takes up the same spot your med kit does, so you’ll have to choose one or the other. Less impressive is the addition of the adrenalin shot. This occassionally handy item will give you a quick speed boost, nice when you need to grab one last gas can in Scavenge or need to haul ass out of an infested area to get to a safe room. It even tweaks your audio a bit, giving the impression that your ears are ringing when you’re on it. Even still, I found the pain pills to be much more useful over the long haul so I rarely carried the shot. Fans of the pipe bomb & Molotov will be happy to see the new item for that slot: the bile bomb. This bottle of zombie vomit (harvested fresh daily from a Boomer?) does pretty much what the Boomer does. Hit a zombie with it & the horde comes crashing in to kill it. It’s especially wonderful if you can tag a Tank with it. Even if you just throw it on the ground though, the cloud alone will attract the horde, bringing them together like the pipe bomb only without the explosion. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel!
All your favorite weapons from the first game have returned with a fresh coat of paint & a few new ones have been added like a new shot gun & a couple of new assault rifles & a grenade launcher. You can now find laser sights for your weapons which improve your accuracy, handy when you’re running & gunning. New ammo types such incendiary & explosive rounds will give your weapon an added punch, although it comes in limited quantities. With all that said, for me, the new melee weapons still came out on top. Giving you a choice now for your secondary load-out, you can have the standard pistols or a melee weapon. These include a police baton, iron skillet, crowbar, electric guitar, cricket bat, baseball bat, etc… There was just this satisfying sense of awesomeness that would come over me everytime I was surrounded by the horde & had to relegate myself to swinging an axe or a machete (chchchch…hahahahah). You can even pick up a chainsaw & get all ‘Leatherface’ on the horde (just remember, the chainsaw will run out of gas).
Speaking of new details, your enemies got the same face-lift. Now, shooting zombies has several effects. You might blow off a limb (which isn’t always a guaranteed kill & they may keep coming after you) or you may blow a whole through their mid section. Then again, you might just graze them a bit or even take their head clean off. Having that kind of variety helped with the staleness that sets in after awhile (it can get tiresome & tedious once you’ve killed a few thousand of the critters). Fortunately we aren’t just stuck with the same hum-drum enemies that we wasted through-out the first game. Valve has added a new class of zombie: uncommon infected. Basically, it’s a type of infected that is a bit stronger than the regular infected & are fairly rare. In fact, each campaign has only one type of uncommon infected (i.e. Dark Carnival has the clowns, The Parish has the riot officers, etc…). We also get some new special infected to play around with in addition to the returning Hunter, Witch (who’s been tweaked a bit, she can now wander around the level), Smoker, Tank & Boomer. The Spitter is akin to the Smoker, as she’ll spit acid at the survivors, leaving a pool of goo on the ground that will do quite a bit of damage the longer you stand in it. The Jockey, which plays similar to the Hunter, will jump on & ride a survivor into danger, be it into a pack of zombies, a puddle of goo, or in the path of a Wandering Witch. Lastly, the Charger is like a lower grade Tank. This brute will run like a bull at the survivors, grabbing the first one he comes across & knocking down anyone else in his way. One he has you, your stuck as he’ll continue to pound you into the ground until a fellow teammate kills him. Trust me, you want to stay out of his way as he’ll do a ton of damage just from the initial charge, let alone the following pounding.
The campaigns themselves have also had a bit of a formula change. First, Valve promised multiple paths to reach your goal, some being more difficult than others. While it’s true that the game isn’t quite as linear as the original, the “multiple paths” don’t really deviate too far away from the end goal. It’s mostly just minor shortcuts. Like in one instance, you’re crossing a park that has a small hedge maze in it. You can opt to go to either side of it or go through it. I think maybe I was hyping that aspect a bit too much as I expected a bit more of a dramatic route change. Second, the AI (dubbed the Director) has been somewhat improved, changing the difficulty on the fly based on your play style. When actually viewed in action vs seeing the intent on paper, it’s hardly noticeable. Item placement & the amount of zombie hordes hauling ass after you like someone rang a dinner bell seem to be the biggest changes. Although, I did run into instances where the AI Director actually forced a path change on me. There is a point in the first campaign where you’re traveling through a mall. There’s a hallway that T’s off to the right & left. Most of the time, the right side is blocked. But, just the other night I found the left side blocked & had to go to the right. This change put me in a slightly different position a little further into the campaign, there-by making things a little more difficult for me & my fellow survivors. There’s multiple levels of difficulty & it seems like your AI teammates get more & more ignorant the higher you set it. Seriously, try playing through Expert by yourself (without glitching). It’s next to impossible. You truly need a human-controlled team & even at that it will be very difficult. There were many times I found myself in the Smoker’s grasp & my AI controlled teammate just stood there right next to me, watching my life drain away. It wasn’t until I had been fully incapacitated my partner actually moved in & broke the hold. But, if you (or you & your buddies) are that good, Valve has provided a Realism mode that will make it even more difficult. Basically, it removes all the outlines & highlights that are normally found around items & your teammates (when they’re out of view). This forces you to not only be very aware your surroundings, but you must stay together. Stray off & get pinned by a Hunter and your fellow survivors will have a hard time finding you.
Lastly, the objectives have been similarly reworked. In the first game, you travel from point A to point B & then hold out until rescue arrives. This applied to each individual campaign. There was only a very light story to tie each one to the next & the format was always the same. In the sequel, all 5 campaigns are tied together, tracing one long journey where point A is the beginning of the first campaign & point B is the end of the last one. In addition, the “hold out until rescue arrives” mechanic has been adjusted a little to add some variety. In one campaign, you create your own rescue. You’re tasked with finding a given amount of gas cans to fill up the tank of a race car. All the while, you’re being chased down by scads of regular & special infected (this also introduces us to a new multiplayer mode, but I will touch on that in a min). Another level has you running to a certain location & then backtracking all the way to the beginning again for rescue. While the intent is the same, the more consistent story & small changes to the formula kept things fresh.
If the campaign, be it single player or co-op, isn’t your style, there are a handful of other multiplayer modes in the package that may strike your fancy. Of course, the Versus & Survival modes return from the first game, allowing you to go head-to head in two 4-player teams or take on the horde respectively. The new addition to the franchise is the Scavange mode (and is my personal favorite). This mode takes a page straight out of the first campaign, tasking you to grab as many gas cans as possible before time runs out. You’ll start with 1:30 on the clock & you’ll gain an extra 20 seconds for every can you can deposit into the generator. All the while, an enemy team play as the special infected and are doing everything they can to stop you. Once your time runs out, each team swaps sides & the opposing team now needs to get more cans than you did in order to win the round. It’s a ton of fun & the matches don’t take very long, perfect if your chronologically challenged & can’t do the 2 hours it takes to go through an entire Versus match.
If you didn’t like Left 4 Dead, or if you did for awhile but grew tired of it, there may not be much here that will bring you back to the fold beyond a rental. There’s a lot of new, but the basic gameplay hasn’t changed. Alternatively, if you loved the first game, or are just looking for a true 4 player co-op experience, then you won’t go wrong with Left 4 Dead 2. To be honest, I loved the gameplay of the original title, so the sequel brought all kinds of joy to my infected little heart. The new achievements are all different from the first game (with a couple that are near impossible for the average player) & the level of detail has really fleshed out the franchise in ways the previous game fell short. The new weapons & gear options are just a blast to play with & the co-op (in any mode) is among the best available today. I’ve already spent hours & hours killing zombies & survivors alike & I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon. With new DLC right around the corner adding even more survivors & weapons, a new campaign & a new multiplayer mode, Valve is committed to not only expanding Left 4 Dead 2, but bringing the entire franchise together full circle. Good job Valve, you’ve made this one a piece of cake to recommend!
Rating: 
5 Responses to “Review: Left 4 Dead 2 (360)”
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Loved the review. I have only played it once, got really mad and stopped. It’s been sitting here since. I loved the first one and had been anticipating it for a long time (since I bought PLAY and it had an article about it in 2006) but this one doesn’t feel the same for me. I’m not sure why. Maybe I will give it another try.
Thanks for the kind words! What in the game upset you? I know the AI can be a total pain…
I played with my brother and we got to the carnival level but the finale just plowed us. He played it by himself after that and made it through twice but it didn’t give him the achievement. Not sure if you have to have another survivor with you or what but it’s horribly frustrating to get through all of that and have nothing to show for it. As for me, I felt weird playing the 1st level. Not sure but it just didn’t have the same feel as the first game, which felt completely right and perfect to me.
Well, Valve has had problems with that before (Achievements not unlocking), so it’s entirely possible that it glitched. I had no issues with it, hence why I didn’t note anything like that in the review. All the campaign achievements “should” be able to be unlocked by yourself, but a handfull of them are terribly hard without human teammates. If you want, I’ll jump in & play through the campaigns with you. Just shoot me an invite when your ready & as long as I don’t have something else going on, I’ll pop in.
I should play it again though, 60 dollars is just sitting on my coffee table going to waste.