Left 4 Dead 2 Review
The ultimate zombie apocalypse game has actually been improved. There was actually a movement by some fans of the original game to boycot the sequel, assuming that there was not enough development time in-between. The assumption was that the developer would not have made enough changes/improvements in the original to make it worth another full-price purchase. Well, the boycotters could not have been more wrong. The game is improved in dozens of ways and it is well worth the price.
The gameplay formula is essentially the same. Some sort of infection has broken out, turning people into crazed zombies and you and three other survivers have teamed up to escape, fighting your way from safe-room to safe-room. The back-story is unknown to you, told only through the graffiti left in safe-rooms by previous survivors. Each campaign is made up of smaller chapters, starting and ending at safe-rooms as you move forward. The finale is a non-stop zombie-fest as you fight for your lives, holding off increasingly ferocious zombies, waiting for rescue to arrive. So far, it sounds the same as the first game, right? Well, that's where the similarities end.
Here's a break-down of the improvements:
1. Unlike the first game, much (but not all) of the second takes place in broad daylight, not at night. Other elements besides darkness are employed with great success to make the sequel just as creepy. The opening chapter, "Hotel" has you working to escape a burning high-rise hotel. The final push is through a smoke and flame-filled room that reminded me a little of a level from one of the Max Payne games. Another campaign, "Swamp Fever" is set in a boggy marsh. Stepping off the dry ground into the marsh impedes your movement and makes it more difficult to evade the hordes. The most terrifying to me was "Hard Rain". A rain-storm blows in and gets worse as the chapters progress. The wind and rain makes it difficult to see and impossible to hear the tell-tale sounds that special infected make which would normally warn you in advance. A sugar cane field that you must cross and then cross again to return to the beginning of the level becomes flooded on the way back, adding impaired movement to the impairments of sight and hearing.
2. Melee weapons. An axe, katana, guitar (a la Dead Rising), frying pan, crowbar, police batons, (of all things) a cricket bat, and my personal favorite, a chainsaw.
3. Special ammo. You can now find a deploy special ammo like incindiary rounds or explosive rounds. A "bile bomb" has also been added to the molotov and the pipe bomb. The bile bomb is a jar of boomer vomit, collected by scientists who were trying to study and stop the outbreak. They can be thrown at enemies and will cause the horde to attack each other. There's an achievement if you use one on a tank.
4. New Special Infected. In addition to the special infected from the first game, there are three new ones: the Spitter (spits caustic acid), the Jockey (jumps on your back and rides you away from help and into danger), and the Charger (rushes the survivors and tries to pin them against walls).
5. "Uncommon Infected". Adding to the roster of zombies are four new types. They are not "special" per ce, but pose new challenges. The scientist zombie, in their protective suits, are protected against fire. SWAT team zombies wear body armor, forcing you to attack them from behind. Clown zombies in the "Dark Carnival" campaign are no more difficult to kill, but they usually stand off at a distance and squeak their red noses to attract the horde. The swampy mudmen appear in the "Swamp Fever" campaign and they come up out of the water and surprise you.
6. Improvements to "the Director". The original game introduced us to "The Director", the game code which randomly determined encounters so that no two playthroughs of the same chapter would ever be the same. In L4D2 the director now controls weather and the placement of weapons. Play through a chapter once and you may find a M16 waiting in that first closet. The next time it might be a shotgun, or a melee weapon. This forces you to play every level differently each time you play.
7. New firearms. In addition to the melee weapons, new firearms have been added. A Desert Eagle pistol, 3-shot burst assault rifle, AK-47, grenade launcher, SPAS-12 shotgun, and a H&K semi-auto sniping rifle. You can also find and deploy a laser-sight upgrade which improves your weapon's accuracy.
8. Realism mode. In this gameplay mode, the interactive helps are turned off. You won't be given on-screen cues find weapons and ammo, where to go next, or to locate friends when you get seperated. Killing zombies in this mode also requires head-shots or decapitations with melee weapons.
9. New Scavenge Mode. This new multi-player game type is previewed in the finale of the opening campaign. You are trapped in a mall and your only escape is in a car which is on display in the mall's atrium. To start the car you have to fuel the car up by finding and carrying eight gas cans to the car and filling the tank. While carrying a gas can you cannot use your weapons or health-kits, making you vulnerable to attack. The multiplayer mode pits survivors against infected as the survivors must retrieve a designated number of cans and the infected must try to stop them.
10. Witches can walk! In the original game, the "witch" is a female zombie who is found sitting and crying hysterically. Disturbing her is not a smart idea as she can take tons of damage and immediately charge the person who disturbed her and will deal out an instant incapacitation to her prey. If possible, you should sneak past her and avoid the inevitable loss of health that one of your team is likely to take. In L4D2 the witch may be found sitting, but she will just as often be found wandering around, making avoiding her much more difficult.
And, although the characters are different, the humor is not. In the original, the humorous exchanges between Francis, the wisecracking "I hate everything" biker, and his comrades was chuckle-worthy. In L4D2, the comic relief is provided by redneck farmboy Ellis, who rambles on in telling hilarious stories about himself and his friend Kieth. After fighting your way through a swampy shanty-town, Ellis regales you with a story about the time his buddy Keith decided to build a shack. After completing the second stage of the carnival campaign, you hear how he and his buddy Keith played bumper cars with lawn mowers and Keith ended up falling under his own mower. Or the time he and Keith decided to fill water balloons with their own who-knows-what. These stories inevitably are cut off by another character who asks, "Ellis, it now a good time for this?" Good natured Ellis, never detered, simply responds "Okay" and then proceeds to tell another tall tale at the next safe-room. I will not spoil these stories any further here. Suffice it to say they are hilarious.
There are mini-games in the carnival you can play to earn achievements, like whack-a-mole, and a shooting gallery. Earning enough points while the horde attacks is tricky, to say the least. Earning enough in the shooting gallery earns you a prize: a garden gnome name "Gnome Chompski". Carry him to the end of the campaign and you earn the "Guardian Gnome" achievement. No small feat, that one, since you cannot use weapons while carrying the little guy.
Another nice Easter Egg is a jukebox in a corner cafe in the French Quarter in the opening chapter of the final campaign, "The Parish". It never occurred to me to touch the thing, but my curiousity got the better of me one day and I interacted with it (face an object and push X). It played a Jonathan Coulton tune called "RE: Your Brains", a song in the style of an office memo from a guy who has become a zombie.
Fighting off zombies as the jukebox plays that song in the background is a masterful touch. One of many that make Left 4 Dead 2 well worth the money.