Customer Reviews

Left 4 Dead 2

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

When Left 4 Dead 2 was announced about six months after the first game came out, a lot of people were shocked for a few reasons. It's Valve and Valve is notorious for taking their sweet time releasing quality games, was one reason. And then there was the more important question. Was this a cash grab? Is it merely an expansion pack masquerading as a fully priced game? And now it's released and the answer to the above questions is evident: Left 4 Dead 2 had me at "improved pipe bomb."

But you're not here to listen to me go on about how cool the pipe bomb is and how awesome the changed effects of zombie bodies literally exploding through the air is. At least I hope not. The fact is, after playing through Left 4 Dead 2, the original game feels more like a blueprint. Everything that was in L4D is in the sequel, but the sequel is a completely different beast. I was surprised, when we played through the opening campaign "Dead Centre" just how varied and improved the game was. You begin at the top of a hotel, bringing to mind the small apartment complex that began the first game. Except that this time, there's a whole lot more. You see, the building is on fire, you can create backdrafts through doors, and the entire event feels more context driven than...well, than the entire first game.

Fire will cause impromptu passages, forcing you to discover different ways through the crumbling building. This means sometimes climbing out a window and balancing precariously on a ledge, moving from window to window in your escape. The intensity is further exasperated by the introduction of the special infected. Imagine playing this in Versus as a Jockey, hopping onto one of the survivors and moving them off the edges or being a Spitter and spitting the goo at just the right moment. Moving through the hotel, the fire increases and eventually, smoke will cloud your vision, creating an extremely claustrophic even where zombies charge out of the dense, dark smoke or other zombies, wearing hazmat suits, will simply rush, unharmed, through the flames at you. This diversity continues as you race through the chapters. In the first campaign alone, you will race through a burning hotel, tear through a grocery store in search for cola to bring back to a crazed, holed up hermit so he'll destroy a barricade and eventually reach the climax where you have to locate gas cans (like in the new mode) to gas up a car to escape.

The thing is, that's only the tip of the iceberg. Later campaigns like "Dark Carnival" add a bit of whimsy as you can play some of the carnival games (kudos to Valve for bringing back the Half Life 2 gnome for an achievement), race up and down a roller coaster as zombies chase endless after you, and eventually reach the end which culminates in an inspired ending scenario that's completely different (and a tad whimsical) than anything else in the game. This diversity only continues through the later campaigns as well, with "Hard Rain" being my absolute favorite. In "Hard Rain," as you move through the maps, it starts raining harder and harder. It's by far the most atmospheric and most interesting, since you eventually have to backtrack through the zones, but this time they are flooded and the weather adds a completely different challenge to the map. Additionally, unlike the first game where the campaigns all felt a bit too similar, resulting in my group relying on a couple campaigns we liked the most, each campaign offers so many differences, that I find myself wanting to replay them over and over. With five fully-developed campaigns, there's a lot more content than in the original game. Also, if you're feeling especially masochistic, try turning on the Realism mode which gets rid of the glowy outlines around survivors and ammo, makes infected harder to kill (headshots, please) and gets rid of the spawning closets...

And that doesn't take into account the other features. Of course, there's Versus and Survival Modes like in the original game, but L4D2 also throws in Scavenge. Scavenge essentially is L4D2's version of a capture the flag mode, with the myriad of gas cans being flags. The survivors race around the map, fighting both the infected and the clock, trying to get as many gas cans to start a generator as possible. Meanwhile, the infected obviously try to stop them. What I love about Scavenge is that it's not the time commitment that Versus is. It's a quick best of three or five game that ratchets up the tension and can create some truly inspired situations. My only complaint about this mode is that there's only one per campaign right now. Ditto the Survival mode which doesn't seem to have as many maps as in the original Left 4 Dead. Hopefully Valve rectifies this with DLC.

After you get past the myriad of modes and campaigns, there's still more tiny additions that made me smile. Guns are now strewn across the level and you won't find conveniently placed groups of weapons that contain everything. The guns also have a lot more variety, with a few different options for each type of weapon (I really enjoy the combat shotgun). The newly introduced melee weapons are interesting. In lower difficulties, they are seemingly overpowered; however, as you start to play on expert, I've found their limitations to be too great. Still, a nice additional and some of them are fantastic: taking down a witch with a chainsaw is perfection. The two grenade types return as does vials of Boomer bile. This operates under the same concept as the pipe bomb, except that the undead will race to the impact point and try to destroy whatever's there...like a Tank. Not that they will destroy a Tank, but they do provide some assistance. Then there's the other miscellaneous items, like defibrillators that will bring back dead party members.

And I haven't even talked about the characters and story. I do miss the original gang of archetypical characters; I miss Frank's acerbic comments ("I hate vans...") and the camaraderie they had. But the new gang is also better developed and their banter is fresh and entertaining as they move through the campaigns, which, by the way, feel a lot more connected and there's more story here. So here's the thing. Those who didn't care for Left 4 Dead will probably not be swayed by L4D2 because it offers more of what the first one did. It's not a radically different game, it just feels...more complete. When I blasted through the first game, I wanted more...I felt like I played through a blueprint of a fantastic game. L4D2 delivers on that promise. It's not an expansion, it's a great, new, longer and better game.

Very much recommended for fans of the original.

This game is very violent, very bloody and gory. But it's a game where you're killing zombies, what do you expect?

That being said, what a game, what a game. It's all I can say about this. To sum this up, this is an over the top, intense, first person zombie shooter that's everything that the first left 4 dead should have been.

First, the setting, stories, characters, etc.

So this time around you're playing in a southern area, around Louisiana, Mississippi, etc. which brings with it, it's own character. There's a famous southern rock band, the midnight riders, for instance and in one level, the ending fight scene takes place at a concert of there's where you can battle against zombies amidst the fireworks and light show that the stage provides. There's also a famous race car driver, and one level you're busy gassing up his stock car (at a car show) so you can drive it and get the heck out of there. But no, you sadly wont be doing any driving. It's a great ending to see the car bash through a bunch of zombies however.

You get the idea..

This time around, you're not playing 4 separate sort of "movies". The chapters are, at least somewhat, connected. Like when you drive out from the ending of one chapter, the next chapter, the car has broken down, and now you're on foot.

The characters, wow, what a change. Part of me misses the old l4d characters, like bill, and zoe.. but these new ones are so full of great humor and character it's quite a tossup.

There's Nick, who doesn't really "belong" in the south. He's very more of a serious, almost like a business man from the north. However, he's actually just a gambler and a conman, oh wait, what's the difference? I'm kidding! But seriously, he's always making jokes about the "south".

There's Rochelle, who's a news reporter, she's kind of an in between character, not too funny, not too serious imo.

Then there's Ellis and Coach. Ellis is a mechanic, and coach is well, a coach. They're always full of jokes and wisecracks and can really bring a laugh, or at least a chuckle around every now and then.



Ok so enough about that, lets get down to the nitty gritty.

This game is extremely over the top and I mean that, whole heartily. But it fits well here and provides a new layer to the l4d world. For instance, there's new melee weapons, there's normal things like you would expect. Like an axe, a sword, a baseball bat, a chainsaw... But there's also others like a guitar, or a..... frying pan and I must say, there's something oddly funny about smashing a zombie over the head with a frying pan and hearing that comical clang afterwards. With all the melee weapons, they're basically 1 hit kills to the normal zombies and will usually involve some sort of dismemberment. Even if you're using a guitar, if you hit a zombie at the head, it's gonna fly. However, you have to be careful as it's extremely easy to damage friends nearby with these.

Speaking about that, you can take a whole new world of hurt to the zombies. There's a new system in place that allows you to... well, lets put it this way.. if you shoot a zombie in the back, part of his back goes missing. You can blow off a part of the zombies head, if you slice with an axe or sword you can leave some nasty gashes in the torso. You can literally blow a zombie to bits, like with the grenade launcher and pipebomb. Sometimes after the explosion if you take the time to look you'll see bits of arms, legs, some intestines, whatever. It's pretty violent, pretty brutal, pretty fun. If this was happening in another game, and you weren't killing zombies... There'd probably be a ton of people freaking out. It'd be like an extremely violent game, even more so than the soldier of fortune games... But since you're killing zombies, it's actually quite fun.

Also, to quote game informer, "At one point an explosion propelled a zombie over m head with its intestines trailing behind it like a party streamer." oh and if you attack zombies with melee weapons blood splashes up on your screen, it's a neat effect and doesn't really get in the way.

The melee weapons takes place of your secondary weapon, so you can still keep your primary firearm, whatever it may be. There's plenty of new ones this time around as well.

The guns this time around are much more real. It seems as though they took their time modeling and animating these guns to their real life counterparts. There's an ak47, something that resembles a scar, you've got a much more modernized semi-automatic rifle equipped with sights for some nice sniping action, there's m16's, there's shotguns, uzi's, tmp's, grenade launchers, etc. Whatever you pick, you're probably going to like it. It just FEELS right, it feels like a gun in the game, not a toy.

There's also "laser sights" you can pick up that increase accuracy (I don't know why it would, but oh well), there's also new rounds you can put into your favorite firearm. You can use incendiary rounds, explosive rounds and they're a blast. Literally. There's a limited amount, so when you get them you only have like 40 or so in your primary weapon.

There's the new uncommon common zombies. Like the zombies in hazmat suits, or zombies in riot gear that are bulletproof unless you shoot them from the back. They add a little more fun and break up the monotony. There's also, this time around, 6 special infected (Not including the witch).

There's the spitter (One of my favorites) that spits out a pile of acidic goo that does quite a bit of damage. There's the charger that runs into the survivors and will grab one of them and keep slamming him/her into the ground until he, or the survivor dies. There's also revamped versions of the special infected from the first l4d. There's the boomer, smoker, hunter and tank. All of the special infected have a new look that fits this game very well and I definitely prefer it to the original (Except the hunter and tank they basically look the same). The sounds the special infected make are also much improved. The boomer for instance sounds much more gross and nasty and it's GREAT!

The campaign is much better this time around, the levels are much more detailed and fun although they're much more open and they aren't as linear. There's been a few times on the first play through where I was scratching my head trying to figure out where to go mainly because I ran past where I was supposed to go when I was busy killing zombies and ended up slightly lost.

But it's such a vast improvement, the environments are much more fun as well. One level where you play in a fair type setting, there's a roller-coaster that you send and it runs into zombies on the track, and I believe it was Ellis who says "These zombies don't respect lines" or something of the sort.

But there's still a lot carried over from l4d, you still have the same matchmaking service, it still looks like l4d, it's slightly improved especially with a lot of the effects, like fire, explosions, etc. but it's not going to blow you away.

However, there's new modes. There's the normal campaign and versus but...

There's the realism setting, which removes any glows and I haven't seen a real difficulty increase, even on expert. It just seems more visual, but I could be wrong. I haven't played it much.

There's the survival setting which basically pits you against wave after wave of zombies.

There's the scavenge mode that has you do something like hunting for fuel to keep something filled while fighting off a ton of zombies. It can get quite intense or frustrating haha.

All that said, I have had a few problems with this game, it's crashed a few times. Although, it's odd. Usually when a game or anything crashes, you'd get a popup, some sort of an error, at least it might help you in figuring out what happened, whats wrong. But I never get anything, the game just closes and that's it. It's happened in single and multiplayer so I'm not sure what's going on and it's also happened to other people so I know it's not just me.

There's also, of course, people. People you play with on multiplayer, it doesn't matter who or what. There's always going to be something, of course this isn't the games fault. But it's something to be aware of, quite a bit of people I play with, whether it's pubs or pugs, they're pretty decent. But there's always that one game, with that "one" person that just completely ruins everything. Like for instance, this guy "MorganFreeman911" would blame EVERYTHING on me, even when it was HIS fault. Like if I was shooting at a bunch of zombies and he'd run into straight into it, it was my fault. If he ran into a witch and got killed, it was my fault. You get the picture. It's people like that, that can really ruin a fun experience. If you're playing with someone like that, it's usually best to just leave, find a different game, and be on your merry way.

But all in all it's a very fun game and HOPEFULLY they'll release some DLC later on that'll add to the longevity of this game, because I do like this.

As time goes on, I'll update this review if needed. I hope it was helpful!

good graphics, the new characters are ok.. not great. the new weapons are good. the new maps and campaigns are pretty polished. the player bot ai is pretty bad. they will stand next to you while you choke to death and do nothing. valve games can be pretty fun, but there are most always glitches, constant updates, and they make game changes too often. this is a pretty solid intel machine, but l4d games manage to crash themselves to the desktop fairly often.

lots of cheat users online, mainly in versus, spraying porn all over, usually gay porn, or angry voice spamming. or aimbotting, spraying porn, voice spamming, and shooting teammates in the back all at once. the kick function works, but the amount of these people is unbelievable. also, the game itself will cheat on you. they call it the director, but the game does whatever it can to stop you. you get stunned and cant move, 3 creatures of the same type all attack you at once, you cant move or do anything, even with high skill at times, you cannot do a thing.

update, i recently went back to this game after the fall of apb. every game we had at least one serious griefer if not 2, every single match for almost 2 hours. and honestly, we owned them everytime, usually killing them kicking them after, but theres something about valve games and griefers. not even the funny kind, just angry ppl lashing out at total strangers, back shooters, keep shooting everybody in the back and pretend its an accident. people who constantly vote etc. try to inconvenience ppl in any possible way, deliberately deploy ammo if you're moving it to another location, they deploy it all walk off, try to light everyone on fire and shoot ppl in the back, yet they get owned anyway. what is it about this environment that attracts these people. tf2, l4d1, l4d2 all like that. they are easy to own, but valve games always have this feel to them, and i lose interest, bc even if you kill them, who cares about being around ppl like that all the time, there are much better things to do. i do not see people like this in public, but in these games they are everywhere.

The game is a blast to play, but it doesn't creep me out like the original. Nothing seems scary. It's more of an action game than a horror/shooter. It's a good action game, but some of the magic is gone.

Please, Valve, bring back the spooky.

Like others, I was disappointed to find that this was a Steam game. When you buy a boxed game, you don't expect to have to download it. While I realize Steam has advantages, it's really a pain in some situations. Believe it or not, not everyone has Internet access all the time. Some of us take our laptops on the road, even overseas, where there may be no Internet access, or high roaming charges. It's more than a little aggravating to have to get online to get permission to play a game you bought.

The game itself is interesting enough. The zombies and weapons are cool, the graphics very nice. However, you can't save your game. I found this a fatal flaw. You should be able to save your game, rather than being forced to wait until it autosaves at the end of a campaign.

I loved the original l4d, but l4d2 is just that more amazing. Much more color and the melee weapons are awesome. I couldn't help but laugh my way through most of the campaign modes. This game is amazing if you got friends to play a versus with and do not rage quit. I have to disagree that the new special infected "suck". Spitter does big damage to standing survivors, Charger separates survivors and practically knocks over every survivor, and the new jockey is just really fun to play as. Unlike the original l4d all the versus maps are unlocked out of the box, which is a big plus to me. With the added levels people will create this will be one game I'll be playing for a long time. Still not even played scavenge or realism mode yet. So good one Valve. Oh and for the person that gets a black screen you many need to update your drivers. I had a similar problem until I updated my graphics card driver.

I really wanted to like this game more. It has all the elements of a great game but doesn't quite come together. I've played this as single player and as a group on-line and both times problems arise. Some good points are new zombies and their distinctive screams/warnings. Melee weapons finally that can save your butt when you run out of ammo, which can happen a lot. New items like defibs that can resurrect a dead character and spitter goo that you can throw to draw zombies to it making for easier mass kills. Adrenaline shots that let you reload at a fast pace. And a nice variety in levels in diverse locations.
As for the levels we get into some disappointments. They go onnnnn forever. You might say "What's so bad about that?" Well it's bad when you have a horde of zombies on your heels and your just trying to reach a safe house cause your out of ammo and it's not really clear where your supposed to go. L4D1 had levels that were just the right length, IMO, and you could explore but not get "lost" doing so. Which brings me to another point. If you played L4D1 you know there's a rhythm to it. A horde comes maybe 2 and if you can survive that you'll have some breathing room to move on before being attacked again. Here it's like they thought "Hmmm 200 zombies made a nice Horde in the 1st game....let's make 3000 zombies this time." More is not better. It gets ridiculous when you play with live teammates on EASY and you can't even get down a long hallway because the zombies never let up. That's another problem. Easy in this game seems to be the way to go. It probably compares to "normal" in L4D1 and goes sky-high from there. Another problem that could have been addressed from the 1st game is when you're playing single player to have the computer players pick up molotovs and pipe bombs and be able to use them at its discretion. Granted the computer can be dumb but in this game the more diversions you can throw the zombies' way the better. All in All if you haven't played either game and are looking at reviews to help decide then I'd say go for #1. #2 is a diversion but is overall less.

Overall I like this game, but have some issues with it. I have a new Dell desk top, but Valve seems to have problems "recognizing" my Radeon grapics card. At certain points in each campaign I find the jerking and stuttering, making it hard to move or aim.

I should mention that I have only played the "solo" game so far...and in "easy" mode.

Also, several times I have found myself "stuck" due to me either jumping onto something, or being hit into an area.

When I mention the "randomness", I am referring to things I "know" are coming based upon the first two campaigns. Such as:
1) I know the instant I heal myself I will be attacked by one of the "bosses" in the game, lowering my health down once again.
2) I know when a "boss" appears, there is a 90% chance it will attack me rather than the A.I. characters.
3) I know if I make it to a safehouse with low health, use my first aid kit once in the house and then reach for one of the extras available so I still have one...they will all be gone due to the A.I. characters taking them. If I do not heal myself, they don't touch the last one on the table.
4) About 75% of the time, as my characters voiceover announces a first aid kit or pills available, before I can reach for them, one of the A.I. characters swoop them up...even though I do not have any.

Other issues:
1) In "easy" mode there just seems to be way too many bosses for my taste. Really seems to ruin the ability to sink into the atmosphere.
2) I could crouch (increasing accuracy) and unload 30 rounds from twin semi-auto pistols at a "Smoker" 50 yards away and just watch it dance around...while an A.I. with a shotgun at the same distance kills it in one shot.
3) The signs alerting you to a nearby safehouse are to vague. I found myself in L4D2 constantly wondering if (after quite awhile) if I was going in the right direction. Not sure if I like this or hate it : )
4) As other have mentioned...I miss the wise cracking from the A.I.'s in L4D1.


Positives? I loved the scenarios and the graphics. The campaigns were well thought out and rather roomy...allowing you to explore a bit before getting back on the right track to your objective. Lots of fun and each scenario lasts a bit of time.

Also, After loading disc one...everything seemed to be done and working. At no time was I instructed to insert disc two. Putting it in on my own after disc one was done caused nothing to happen at all. I'm not sure what it is for.

Anyway, both L4D1 & 2 are a hoot : )

the overall game was okay, single not much, this seems to be more of a polished multiplayer game then singleplayer, the only let down for me is that this game lacks a storyline, this game is nothing more than shooting zombies no story mode whatsoever, just run and live and shoot and help, there are no real missions, unlike most games theres a point to a game to follow through but this game lakes just that, other than that, this game is a online game for co-op and enjoyment if your looking for a good game to play alone, this game is not it, but if you have friends who like to play online together then thats tthis game. although this requires steam, steam is not bad, just you will have to purchase more than one copy per pc and have multiple steam accounts per pc to play together. an average decent game.

If you've played L4D1, this game is totally worth it. Pretty much every aspect of the game is tweaked for the better!