Do You Guys Know What Suck the Heads Means? - Left 4 Dead 2 Review

What will they do for the boxart if the series starts getting more and more entries?

Everyone loves killing zombies, but we’ve been so inundated with zombie slaying that I was afraid I would be sick of Left 4 Dead 2 before I even played it. I enjoyed the first game, but it got old fairly quickly. After a month or two everyone resorted to the same tactics and versus mode was robbed of all of its fun by people hiding in corners. Thankfully Left 4 Dead 2 corrects all the problems of the first game while adding a lot of new, interesting content.

One of the aspects of the first game that I really enjoyed was the subtle method of storytelling, where we found out more about the world from writing on the walls left by other survivors, as well as dialog between the main characters. Left 4 Dead 2 has a lot more of this story as various writings on the wall hint strongly that the survivors, while immune, may still carry the virus. The campaigns are linked together a lot better through the story as well, and you can tell what went wrong with the last escape at the beginning of each campaign.

Boomers are still there to mess you up.

Speaking of the campaigns, they are much more varied and interesting than the ones in the first game. Each campaign not only has a variety of interesting set pieces, such as the witch filled saw mill in Hard Rain, but they also change up the finale events. For instance, the finale of the first campaign, Dead Center, has the survivors collecting gas cans to fill up a race car to use for escape. The regular finale events involving holding out while massive hordes attack are more varied as well. In addition, each campaign has slight variations on the music, which is a lot more southern this time.

The new special infected give the game a lot more variety, and keep you from using several of the cheap tricks from the first game. For instance, the new spitter will spit a large pool of acid on the ground that will do exponentially more damage as you sit in it. This helps prevent closet-sitting and spreads out the survivors a bit. The charger rushes at the survivors, grabs the first one he runs into, knocking aside the others, and starts pounding the first guy into the ground. He does a lot of damage pretty fast when he starts pounding, but you can kill him fairly fast if you have a clear shot. The jockey jumps on top of a survivor and tries to drag them away from the others into spitter goo, witches, off ledges, or into car alarms. Jockeys aren’t too difficult to kill, but if everyone else is busy, they can do some damage.

There are now more interesting events throughout the levels such as this one where you have to retrieve some soda for an old gunshop owner.

These new special infected are joined by the first game’s cast of smokers, boomers, hunters, and witches. In addition to aesthetic changes, a major mechanical change is made to the witches during daytime levels. If it is the day, the witch will wander around crying, making her harder to dodge as you can turn corners to find a witch walking right towards you. You also have uncommon common infected with hazmat suits resistant to fire, body armor that makes them much more resilient to attacks, and several other kinds of slight changes that make it a bit harder for the survivors to kill them.

The survivors are slightly more explained as characters in Left 4 Dead 2, as the game starts with them strangers and they introduce themselves to each other midway through the first level. You can appreciate Valve’s usual attention to detail as in the first level they make up their own names for the special infected since they do not yet know what a "boomer" is. All of the characters save Rochelle are likeable and have funny lines. Coach is a sassy football coach, Nick is a smooth con artist who is also GOB, Ellis is a loveable redneck, and Rochelle is kind of just there. Rochelle is rather disappointing, she doesn’t have much of a personality besides being somewhat kindly and outside of “Son of a bee-sting!” and her horrible "Just axe me a question" none of her lines are that memorable.

Collecting gas cans has never been so much fun!

In order to increase the life-span of the game there are now new gameplay modes. There are the returning campaign, versus, and survival; plus new scavenge and realism. Scavenge mode involves a team of survivors trying to collect as many gas cans as possible before the team of infected kills them or the time runs out. Then the teams switch sides to see who can get the most. It's a lot of fun and doesn't take nearly as long as a regular Versus game. Thanks to the new infected, versus matches, pitting two teams alternating between infected and survivor against each other as they try to run through the level, are actually fun now, but still retain the problem of taking up so much time it's hard to get a good game going.

Realism is the standard campaign with some changes, witches now instakill, you don't see outlines of anything, only defibrillators(a new medkit substitute that can resurrect dead players) bring people back, and zombies take a lot more bullets to kill unless you headshot them. Because you no longer see the outlines of your teammates, communication is absolutely vital, do not attempt this without a microphone. Like in the first game, survival has you holding out in one area as wave after wave of zombies attack, and while it is fun to do from time to time, I'm not a huge fan of it.

There are a lot more weapons this time around.

In addition to all of these new gameplay modes there are a lot more weapons, new items like the adrenaline shots and special round dispensers, and so many other things that I don't have room to talk about it all. Valve took Left 4 Dead, made it better, went crazy with it, then added more stuff. Left 4 Dead 2 is everything a sequel should be and more, and something you can be proud to have in your collection.