Written by: Ian

 

 

 

Valve just doesn’t do sequels- not quickly anyway- so there was a huge backlash when 'Left 4 Dead 2" (or L4D2) was announced to be coming out just a year after the original- but does it live up to expectations and silence the naysayers? It’s certainly been assembled with unusual haste for the notoriously tight-lipped, ‘done when it’s done’ developer- so does it live up to the expectations of the million-selling original?

 

The story in L4D2 is significantly better than in the original. This time, the five campaigns are all directly linked to one another, rather than feeling like a series of disconnected episodes, linked purely by the characters you play as.

 

What’s also a nice touch is the fact that the characters reveal a little more information, and get to know each other more as you progress through the game. It’s definitely worth playing the game through in order the first time to pick up the little things like this. Don’t get me wrong, this is no noir opera that will go on to win awards- but it’s a serious upgrade to have the story linked, and one that works really well in the context of the game as the players battle to make their way out of infected New Orleans.

 

 

If you’ve played the first game- you know what to expect- except with some subtle improvements. You have four guys together-lonesome survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

 

You fight, co-operatively together, against the horde, to reach safehouses. On the way, you have to complete various objectives that inevitably alert the zombies, avoid powerful monsters, kill bosses, before escaping onto the next level. As ever, the focus is on teamwork- if you stray too far away from the others- you will get pinned by a special infected and killed or very badly wounded as a result.

 

For those that have played before- you probably want to know what the improvements are. For me, the best one is the addition of melee weapons- which are obviously very cool as you bash off a zombie head with a guitar whilst the strings ‘twang’ in the background.

 

 

There’s 8 different melee weapons, from frying pans to chainsaws- and they are all awesome! Then you get far more guns. This is mainly a visual upgrade, as weapons still fit broadly into the sniper/shotgun/machine gun bracket- but there’s now different nuances to each one, which is nice. You can also get weapon and ammo upgrades, such as laser sights and incendiary ammo. Then there’s the defibrillator, which helps you resuscitate dead comrades, and the adrenaline shot, which helps you move and shoot faster for a period of time.

Then there’s the three new infected. The charger is like a mini tank, but faster. The jockey takes control of a character and can force them to turn on their comrades, whilst the spitter can shoot pools of acid at the survivors, whilst exploding into a pool of acid when killed too.

 

Whilst perhaps not an exhaustive list- you can see that a lot of effort has gone into new gameplay elements- and this is for the better too- the game is more fun and more frantic with these upgrades. Throw in an extra episode (now up to 5), and that fact that all 5 are playable in versus- and you have a much more complete, and much more well rounded game than the original.