I gotta say, I was looking forward to his Left 4 Dead 2 review, but I didn’t quite expect him to shoot off the rails like he did. His complaint about the second game was that it really didn’t need to exist. In short, he retreads all the arguments that the boycotters were saying over the summer by stating the game was more of an expansion than full blooded sequel. He argues that the game, no matter how much it was changed, was essentially the same title as the first. He states that players still end up running from zombies and shooting them. This is a bizarre criticism that can be literally applied to every game with a number after the title. The reason the basic gameplay hasn’t changed is because it is what people like. Valve was not going to annihilate their audience by turning the game into survival horror. They built a new game on top of an old one, making a great game. No joke … after spending hours playing Left 4 Dead 2, the original game feels more like a prototype.

The best thing about the second game are the new choices. Do I forgo a health kit and take a defibrillator? Maybe I should lug the exploding ammo around instead of deploying it right away. Is the grenade launcher worth the price of not having a rapid fire weapon? Do I take the pills or the shot? The pills last longer, but the shot can make the difference between making it to the boat, or being served as the main course at zombie dinner party. These choices might sound trivial, but they dramatically effect the outcome of the game. The first game didn’t have such a selection. All the questions were answered with a simple affirmative. Find a health pack? Keep it. Find a better weapon? Upgrade.

The one complaint that did resonate with me was the lag issue. One day the game works like a champ, the next day, it’s run like Grandma Ethel on a slow drive to the store. If you happen to work at Valve and you are reading this … please stop reading right now, and kick your servers a good kick in the behind. It’s a mess out there. People are lagging out all over the place and as usual, your silence is creating more questions than answers.

Still, great game. Lame review.

Zero Punctuation: Left 4 Dead 2 & New Super Mario Bros Wii (escapistmagazine.com <- new window)

What is truly shocking is the turn-around time for a game company that is not known for its development speed. It took around five years for Valve to produce a sequel to its flagship title, Half Life. Then the company averaged two years between each of its Half Life “episodes” which were designed for rapid development. If you’re keeping score, we’re still waiting on the third one. And then there was Team Fortress Two which took over seven years of development time. So when Valve announced that it was providing a sequel in just under a year, people were open mouth in disbelief.

Outside the ridiculous lag issues, I’m happy to say Valve has managed the impossible. They have produced an amazing game in the same time that other game companies write their development documents. Valve has created a wonderfully rich world where infected men and women roam the streets, looking to kill anyone who is even slightly healthy. We never quite know how an infected person is able to distinguish a non-infected person, but when they do, it’s pure carnage.

Unlike the miserable Crash Course campaign (I still say it was either fan or intern made), these new campaigns tell a different story of the apocalypse as four strangers travel across the dilapidated South to make their way to safety of the military in New Orleans. From the burning halls of a hotel to the wind ravaged streets of a mill town, each map evokes a somber mood of a world flipped on its head.

And it’s not all just running to the end of the map to win. Some maps require you to do special tasks. For example, in order to pass by a gun shop, you need to retrieve a pack of soda for the owner only you can’t fire your weapons when you are holding onto the goods. It makes for great teamwork when you have two people blocking the zombies in front of you as you make your mad dash back to the store.

All in all, the campaigns are pretty astounding. The Dark Carnival has an amazing finale sequence, and the Hard Rain campaign is probably the best campaign to date with its dynamic weather system. The entire campaign culminates in a dramatic run across a damaged drawbridge where the zombies never stop coming. Swamp Fever is probably the weakest addition. There’s just not much happening in the campaign. Granted, the mud men make for worthy opponents, but the entire sequence of the campaign outlasts its welcome by the second map. The only neat thing is fighting the infected in the belly of a crashed airliner.

The weapons are also well done. The upgraded sniper rifle is now a formidable weapon. The melee weapons can do some major damage. And the assault rifle still sings a beautiful song as the infected line up in droves to hear it. There’s also plenty of new items such as boomer bile, adrenaline shots, and different ammo types. It all comes down to choice and sometimes the choices are really hard, but its awesome when you make the right call. It might be a sacrifice to forgo your health pack, but its simply awesome to be the hero of your team when you have a defibrillator at the right moment. Especially on versus.

As for versus mode, it is a a blast. It’s nice to have the new infected so you’re not always respawning as a hunter. The charger can decimate the most well organized team, and the jockey can turn the slight irritation of teammate wandering too far ahead into a wholesale massacre of the entire team. My least favorite infected is the spitter, but she is absolutely lethal in the hands of an experienced player. If you are incapped near a spitter, she’ll give you a nice acid bath which will probably take out the poor chump who is trying to save you. I don’t know if the tank has been toned down or the weapons powered up, but the tank doesn’t feel as overpowered as he used to. He used to be a game ender in my matches. Now they end fifty percent of the time (which is how it should be).

Scavenge mode is a white knuckled tension fest and realism mode can be overwhelming from the lack of onscreen instruction. My favorite addition to the game is one that no one mentions. If you are in a team of four friends, you can do versus mode with another four strangers. The game does all the matchmaking for you so no more sitting in a lobby waiting for worthy competitors. Our first game of this type was a total slug fest. We were evenly matched by the opposing team which made for a massive tension filled battle.

Is Left 4 Dead 2 worth your money? Absolutely. My only recommendation is that you buy it for the PC instead of the XBox one. You free get player mods, free updates, and best of all, no lag. This game is worth any penny.

Verdict: Buy It!

If my friends had a copy of this on their computers, I would certainly play this on my PC. The user mods alone make this game worth the price. Alas, we are all XBox fiends and really, I’d rather play on the couch than slumping over a desk.

The reasons you need to buy Left 4 Dead 2 on PC (arstechnica.com <- new window)

More to come … if you any of you have it … what do you think so far? Worth the price of admission?

“The first Left 4 Dead proved a handful of campaigns could provide months of replay value; the extra variety this brings could last years. It’s up there with MW2 as a must-but multiplayer game for Xbox Live.”

The only complaint is the lack of dynamic maps. I gotta tell you … dynamic maps are the future in multiplayer. Granted, at this stage of the game, it’s only a few different routes, but you can imagine in the near future where the entire level will be generated on the fly, making for some wild matches.

UPDATE: If you want to see the full video that CVG embedded in their page, head over here (youtube.com <- new window). It's the same video albeit longer and on a faster server.

Left 4 Dead 2 review in: “Must-buy multiplayer” (computerandvideogames.com <- new window)

This may be a controversial statement, but this does feel like a sequel to me, not an expansion pack. The new infected and items are going to add significant wrinkles to gameplay, and you’ll need to manage what you carry and why. There are harder choices to make, and more ways to die. And yes, it all looks and sounds better than the previous game.

Needless to say, this ignited a little firestorm in the forms. Although the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott is in the past, it appears there is still a lot of ill will towards the new game. One poster wrote:

I’ve had some people express the same sentiment to me. There’s not much I can really say except that if you don’t feel the game is worth sixty or fifty bucks, then either wait for the price to drop (and trust me it will drop) or avoid buying all together. If it still irks you, write a letter to Valve. I would like to say more on this, but I find the whole debate has grown stale. In any case, love it or hate it, Left 4 Dead 1 isn’t going anywhere and I’ll certainly continue to play long after Left 4 Dead 2 has been released. God knows, I have eight thousand more zombies to kill for the genocide achievement.

Teaching the controversy: the Left 4 Dead 2 demo is live! (arstechnica.com <- new window)

So here are some thoughts in no real order.

Tighter Menu Options / Controls
I gotta say, the menus feel focused. The organization is quite good. Information is displayed in a consistent way so you’re never really lost amongst all the different features. That said, even playing the game had a tighter feel.  I have no idea what was changed, but whatever Valve did,  it works great.

Weapons, Weapons, and More Weapons
Choosing a weapon in Left 4 Dead 1 is a relatively easy affair. Grab a shotgun, and if playing versus, upgrade to the auto-shotgun. Otherwise, switch to the assault rifle.  In Left 4 Dead 2, you now have three “levels” of weapons and bigger isn’t necessary better. For example, the new combat shotgun blows all the zombies to hell but its bullet supply seemingly runs dry pretty fast. And reloading it is bastard.  The second level submachine gun kicks ass.  And believe it or not, the sniper rifles are actually useful.

Melee Weapons Make You Psychotic
The first weapon I used was a frying pan, and it sucked. The second was a guitar which worked all right in the decapitation department, but it was still kind of slow. So I avoided all the melee weapons until I discovered the machete. The beautiful beautiful machete. Now I find myself charging into the midst of the zombie horde, getting shot in the back from my team members while getting pounded in the front by the zombies. But I don’t care.  I get the rage and I all can think is kill, kill, kill.  And my oh my … when the blood obscures almost all of my vision I just want to kill more.

Good Looking Zombies
Much better variety. And get this, they actually have color. In the last game, the zombies were all kind of washed out almost blending in with the background. It’s nice to actually see their features for a change. Better yet, they have reflective animal like eyes so you can even see them in dark rooms.

Uncommon Common Zombies Make for an Uncommon Pain in the Ass
You only face the swat zombie and he is friggin pain in the ass.   He’s covered in body armor, so you have to knock him around to show his ass, then shoot him in it.  One swat zombie is no problem to kill, but when you have a bunch of them charging at you, the trouble begins.

New Special Infected Models Look Good
Sure, the hunter, boomer, smoker, and tank return in all their glory, but they look much better. The smoker lost the shady pedophile look and now resembles an honest to god mutated zombie. The tank still looks like a Gold’s Gym reject but now with  brighter bronzer cream.  The boomer seems to have acquired more flab and his death explosion is one for the books.

Mixed Bag for the New Specials
The charger is the definite winner. He freaks me out when he attacks then quite literally, wipes the floor with me. The spitter is all right. She’s not so good as an offensive unit, but she’s great at creating logjams. Her acid spit is perfectly timed. It lasts the perfect amount of time before it fades. The jockey is the weakest of the bunch. He needs to get close to do any damage, but we almost always bag him from a distant since his laugh gives away his location. It’s also pretty funny when he rides someone. Most of the time, we just laugh at our screaming friend as he gets jockeyed away since it looks so ridiculous. I’m guessing the jockey can be pretty lethal on versus, but for now, I’m not impressed.

WITCH!
I’ve never been a fan of the witch. She makes for an irritating obstacle although it is fun to trick people into “activating” her on versus. The new witch is still annoying, but her new mobility throws a wrench thrown into the machinary.  As a team, my friends and I never set her off (unless she blocks a corridor) but now we are constantly stumbling into her which makes for unexpected adrenaline rushes.  They also changed her theme music.  Personally, I like the old music better.

New Items
The boomer bile is cool. I love seeing the zombies kick the crap out of each other. There’s also a speed shot which works well. The defibrillator feels unnecessary on co-op since survivors just respawn. On versus, it’s a necessity. In short, there are lot more choices than just a pipe bomb or a Molotov.

Better Pistols
They feel much better this time around. The sound is awesome and they have a higher rate of fire. They feel like a bonafide weapon instead of an “oh shit” fallback choice. Vale also made a tiny adjustment.  You can only have a gun or melee weapon. Not both. It’s a tough choice because if you choose a melee weapon and you are incapped by a horde, you are screwed in every sense of the word.

Great Level Design
I was disappointed with Crash Course. The entire map consisted of moving from warehouse to warehouse, until you reached the ultimate showdown … in a warehouse. The old Valve is back where the environments tell a story. You get a real sense of last minute panic as humanity was swallowed by the infection.  There was also a cool bit where you stare through a chain link fence at the next level and vice versa.  Granted, it’s only an unreachable background but it makes the two levels feel physically connected.

Great Climax Sequence
In this one sequence, you have to run through a labrynth of gates while an alarm alerts all the nearby zombies. There’s no waiting or you’re toast. It’s a great sequence. Once you do manage to shut off the alarm, the zombies keep coming. It’s an awesome sequence that leaves you struggling to breath long after it is finished.

Overall, Left 4 Dead 2 is looking great. While the game may feel and even look similar to the first one, there are so many new options that will change the way you play the game. The demo is being released next week to everyone. Do yourself a favor and downloaded it up. You won’t be disappointed.