Left 4 Dead 2

Rating: M

Score: 9.5/10

Valve is no small name in gaming. They made the Half Life series, the Team Fortress series, the Counter-Strike series, Portal, and their newest series: Left 4 Dead. Released a year ago, Left 4 Dead was praised immensely, even by me, for being a simple, easy to learn and play shooter with the best co-op play around. It had great points, but lacked story, variety of guns, and variety of options. The Co-Op made up for those faults, which can’t be stressed enough. Does Left 4 Dead 2 improve? This game is a Microsoft exclusive, only available on Xbox 360 and PC.

One thing the original lacked was a solid story. It had scattered pieces of a story with dialogue, but the only notable story was “this is your gun, this is a zombie. Put two and two together.” Left 4 Dead 2 improves, but not by much. They have more dialogue for the story, but the story is still loosely put together as filler for your main mission: Run from safe house to safe house killing everything in between. Not terrible, but not impressive. Then again, how much story do you need in a zombie invasion?

There’s some new equipment to play around with, but not too much of that either. There’s about double the guns (not saying much, the original had about half a dozen), and new defibrillator, adrenaline, and the Bile Bomb. The new guns are basically modified versions of older guns, shooting more bullets less accurately or something similar. Along with guns are melee weapons: weapons for close-combat that prove quite effective in tearing through hordes of zombies. The downside of melee weapons is the lack of distance, which is more important that you might think. The upside is that melee weapons don’t use “ammo” of any kind; they can be infinitely used without reloading. Defibrillators can replace first aid kits, the payoff being that defibrillators can bring back dead teammates (in a non-zombified form, of course). You can’t have both a med kit and a defibrillator, so choosing wisely for the situation is the key to victory. Adrenaline replaces Pain Pills for temporary, quick health boost. While you recover less health, you run faster for a while. Again, choosing wisely is the key to victory. Lastly, the Bile Bomb uses the Boomer’s bile (which attracts zombies, in case you’ve forgotten) to a set location/zombie. Just toss at a zombie, and all the other zombies will fight him to the death.

There are some new faces in the special infected category too. The Spitter shoots toxic acid at your group, the Jockey jumps on your shoulders and controls your movement for a while, and the Charger launches himself at you and, once he grabs you, starts smashing your face into the ground. Each serve their own purpose, and work well with the other special infected already present (i.e. Boomer, Smoker, Hunter, Tank, and Witch).

With some new infected and gameplay changes come new survivors, four of them, of course. Nick is the drifting gambler, Rochelle is the news reporter, Ellis is the local mechanic, and Coach is the retired gym coach with a bad knee. Each has their own personalities, but they aren’t quite as lovable as the original four. The original survivors were much smarter too, knowing when you needed help and (usually) not running into your shots. The new survivors will watch you get torn apart by a hunter and will do nothing to stop it. The less A.I. you have, the better (so get three other friends, ASAP!)

Someone thought the original Left 4 Dead wasn’t difficult enough, that it needed much more zombies. I’m not sure whether to demand that person get a raise or get fired. While it is true that difficulty and more zombies can increase the replay value, sometimes it can just get insane.

In case you’ve forgotten, or didn’t already know, all the zombies and the location of all the equipment is dispersed randomly by an almighty engine known as the “A.I. Director”. The A.I. Director changes the game every time you play, and spawns zombies and equipment based on how you’re doing and how mean he feels like being. Now, he has the power to summon multiple Tank (Hulk zombies, and are extremely hard to kill) at once on only normal difficulty. That was never heard of in its predecessor, not even on expert. If the game wasn’t hard enough then, there’s the new “realism mode”, where zombies are stronger, Witches can kill you in a single hit, and friendly fire can take a huge chunk of health away. Dang, that’s pretty harsh.

It’s pretty cool that they set the game in the southern USA, with the survivors starting in Savannah, Georgia and ending up in New Orleans, Louisiana. It’s not a perfect representation; in fact it’s a poor representation, of the southern USA, but it wasn’t meant to be a perfect model. It was just meant to be an interesting place for a zombie apocalypse.

Left 4 Dead 2 improved on some of the faults of its predecessor, and overall doesn’t stray too far from the tried and true formula. The story is still quite loose; the survivors are a bit bland, and computer controlled A.I. characters have about the same number for their IQ as their age. The challenge is punishing at times, but it never feels like a chore to play. Just hope you’re not left 4 dead.