Left 4 Dead 21

Written by Eric Monday, 08 February 2010 20:24

I’m always looking to work on my zombie slaying skills for the inevitable coming of the zombie apocalypse, so when Valve announced that they would be releasing Left 4 Dead 2 roughly a year after its predecessor I was ecstatic. I’ve spent countless late nights battling through the undead with several different friends with the original and looked forward to doing the same in some new locations.

I did not anticipate that Left 4 Dead 2 could stay so true to the formula established in the first while making such a significant departure in gameplay and level design that I have no desire to go back and play the original.

The most significant contrast between the two games is the scenarios that the survivors must battle through. The original game consisted of several night time urban scenarios while its successor puts the survivors up against hordes of the undead during the day in several varying environments from urban, swamp, carnival, and even a classic Romero setting, the shopping mall. The levels of Left 4 Dead 2 not only have more variation in their settings, but have much more detailed environments. Attempts at quarantining the plague, evacuation zones and general evidence of chaos are much more evident in Left 4 Dead 2.

The level Hard Rain, in particular stands out in my mind as a shining example of the differences in level designs from the original. Every other level in the series follows a linear path of getting from point A to point B. The Hard Rain campaign takes a new approach by making the survivors get from point A to point B and back to point A. At the start of the campaign our survivor’s find their rescue vehicle out of gas, which prompts them to battle their way to a gas station and then back to their boat. The level is fairly straightforward until the survivors have to make the return trip to the boat. The rain begins to come down exceptionally hard, impairing the survivor’s vision and slowing them down exceptionally due to the flood like conditions of the level. Valve usually dials up the tension of the zombie apocalypse with their crescendo moments, but the hard rain campaign successfully keeps the same level of tension for the last half of the level.

The change of scenery also comes with an entirely new cast of survivors. Each character is more fleshed out in terms of dialogue spoken and personality then the original cast. Ellis in particular serves as the group’s comic relief and most of what he says is quite ridiculous and in turn hilarious. While all these new characters are entertaining in their own right, I still miss Francis and his general comments about hating everything you come across in the game.

The game’s AI director has been given a significant overhaul with more responsibility for the mortality rates of the survivors. The director is still responsible for the frequency of hordes and special infected but now has the ability to transform a level from being straightforward to a becoming a difficult to navigate maze of the undead. Just like in the original the director will make changes based on how well the survivor team is performing. It may block certain pathways while opening up others or it can be downright nasty by making certain areas completely non navigable. The cemetery section of the Parish campaign may be straightforward during one playthrough but if your team is doing exceptionally well it may be transformed into a maze filled with multiple pathways that lead to dead ends, being completely unrecognizable from the previous playthrough.

The director is also in control of spawning the items to aid the survivors, such as health packs, pain pills and weapons. Valve has added an assortment of new items for the survivors to make use of including ammunition types, bile bombs, and adrenaline shots. There are two new ammunition types besides standard bullets. Survivors will now be able to make use of incendiary bullets as well as explosive bullets, both are pretty self explanatory but they can be very dangerous when a teammate is prone to friendly fire. Bile bombs are bottled boomer bile, which uses the grenade slot shared by the Molotov cocktail and pipe bomb. The boomer bile can cover multiple targets and will attract the horde to attack said target in the same way a boomer throws up on the survivors. The adrenaline shot gives the 25 health and allows faster movement for 15 seconds. It also prevents the slowing of infected melee attacks and fatigue from melee weapons for a short time.

All the weapons from the original are present along with several new additions to the survivors’ arsenals. There is a magnum to accompany the traditional pistol in the sidearm category, and a chrome shotgun and silenced SMG are added to the first tier weapons. Several weapons have also been added to the second tier weapon category. Players can now mow down zombies with an AK-47, combat rifle, combat shotgun, and a sniper rifle. While each weapon both new and old have distinct differences in terms of ammunition capacity, spread, fire rate, and distance, I found myself constantly going back to the new sniper rifle. Its rate of fire and the damage it deals gives me great pleasure, and it is an effective weapon without using the scope. Valve has also added a grenade launcher which deals a massive amount of damage and is an enemy of both zombies and teammates everywhere.

Hands down the biggest change from Left 4 Dead is the addition of melee weapons. A survivor is able to carry one melee weapon at a time, which replaces the pistol slot as a sidearm. Each melee weapon varies from one another in damage, rate of swing, and hilarity. The electric guitar makes a ‘twang’ sound when it strikes a zombies while the frying pan makes a hilarious three stooges sound when it connects with a zombie’s skull. The Katana is my personal favorite melee weapon because of its speed, allowing me to quickly get myself out of trouble when backed into a corner by a horde. The chainsaw will be a favorite weapon for many players, for its gruesome effectiveness. The chainsaw is the power weapon for the melee category but it can only be used for so long because it can run out of gas. Why can’t we use the gas cans scattered around to refill the chainsaw?

From the start players will be able to enjoy every level of Left 4 Dead 2 in the versus mode, which is a big step up from one of the largest complaints about the original. Left 4 Dead 1 felt like an incomplete game because only two of the four levels were enabled for versus mode. The versus mode in Left 4 Dead 2 seems like an entirely different beast than its predecessor based upon level design and the new special infected types. There are three new special infected which make surviving the apocalypse even harder, particularly in versus mode.

The Jockey is a small cackling creature that jumps on a survivors head and can steer them in any direction. The Jockey can be particularly effective at separating and individual from their teammates or steering a survivor into dangerous area like the spitter’s acid patch. The spitter has the ability to launch projectile acid from a distance which will cover a large section of ground and deals massive damage if any survivor steps into it. It can be used to temporarily block the route of the survivors or to separate them. It is also effective at preventing the survivors from using one of the most common tactics employed in the original, which was huddling in a corner and shooting all infected that came close. The last special infected is the charger which is another solution to the huddling tactic employed by survivors. The charger is basically a semi tank with a lot less health, which charges at a group of survivors, grabs one of them and continues to run with them until it is stopped by a wall or object. Once stopped the chargers will repeatedly pick up and slam their victim into the ground until the victim is dead or saved by their teammates.

All of these new special infected, along with the returning special infected from the original make versus mode much more challenging. The design of the levels is much more zombie friendly, with plenty of open spaces giving the survivors nothing to hide behind as well as plenty of rooftops and perfect choke points for zombie ambushes.

There are two additional modes of play for those looking for more zombie action. Survival mode is back from the original, which pits the survivors at a crescendo point against waves of the undead. It is still as impossible to survive as ever. The new debuting mode is called scavenger, and it is designed to be a quicker versus experience. Two teams of four face each other, alternating between infected and survivors, in the best of three rounds. The goal of the survivors is to gather as many gas cans scattered throughout the level and bring them back to the starting position and fill up a generator before time runs out. The goal of the infected is to simply stop them. Whichever team collects more gas wins the round, whichever team wins two rounds first wins the game. Like the other modes in Left 4 Dead 2 scavenger is extremely fun and gives us a versus experience that doesn’t take a large portion of time to complete.

Overall Left 4 Dead 2 is a much more complete package at launch than the original game. It is hands down a much stronger title than its predecessor, it looks better, the levels have more depth and life to them, and it is a more frantic and intense experience. It builds upon the formula of the first by leaps and bounds while keeping the core gameplay that made legions flock to it. Left 4 Dead 2 is the ultimate co-op experience and the best zombie shooter made to date.