Left 4 Dead 2 Review [360]

17 Nov 2009 at 14:45:55 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360)

The daylight won't save you. While it might've initially worried us that several of Left 4 Dead's campaigns are set in the bright, sunny day, it doesn't make things less tense. If anything, it lets you realise far faster how screwed you really are when you can see, without the aid of flashlights, the wall of Infected bearing down on you.

Left 4 Dead 2 follows on nicely from the first game, taking the co-op zombie shooting out of the northern parts of America and plonking it firmly in the deep south, with a new cast of characters, five new campaigns, some new multiplayer options, and a whole range of improvements across the board.

It's hard to appreciate, initially, just how much work has been done here, but by the time you're done with the campaigns and have had some time with the other modes it all becomes clear. Some players were worried that Left 4 Dead 2 was something that should've been free DLC to the first game. I'm rather happy to say that Left 4 Dead 2 is a far, far more complete package than the original, and makes its predecessor look a tad unfinished.

First off, there are five campaigns – Dead Center, Dark Carnival, Swamp Fever, Hard Rain, and The Parish – all of which are playable in Versus mode, which allows a team of four players to mangle survivors from the perspective of the Infected. This might not sound like much, but only two Left 4 Dead campaigns were fixed up for Versus when the game first launched.

These campaigns have a wide range of themes. Dark Carnival takes humanity's entirely rational fear of clowns and runs with it, evoking plenty of half-remembered childhood nightmares about what happens in funfairs after dark. The Parish is a running battle through a city district suffering constant military bombing, while Hard Rain, one of the game's absolute highlights, takes players from a boat to a gas station, and then back the same route to the boat again - but in gradually worsening weather, with blinding rain only letting you see a few feet in front of you and forcing you to stick together and cooperate carefully, particularly as the rain brings out lots and lots of Witches.

It's a shame that the first campaign, Dead Center, is the weakest in the game. While there are some nice touches – particularly the Rescue event, which we'll talk about shortly – the first level is an annoying battle through a burning, smoke-filled hotel which has little of the tension or the carnage of the rest of the game. This ramps up nicely with a gun shop and a supermarket raid, culminating in the game's only Rescue event that doesn't involve waiting around for rescue, but it's a real shame that more isn't done with the shopping mall. Other games and films have shown that shopping malls are paradises when fighting zombies, but here it feels like just another half-ruined building rather than, say, the thrilling environment of Dead Rising.

I digress. Dead Center's Rescue takes its cue from the new Scavenge mode. You have the means to escape – a vehicle – but it's running on fumes, so you first need to gather the gas cans strewn around the upper levels of the mall and fill the car before the constant hordes and Tanks finally wear you down. This is pretty much how the game's new Scavenge multiplayer mode works, with a team of Survivors trying to gather gas tanks while under attack from player-controlled Infected. It's glorious, chaotic fun, with the difficulty ramping up the closer you get to success. A shout of "Tank!" when one ally is incapacitated by a Smoker and another is trying to bring the last fuel can over to the car is nerve-wracking, to say the least.

The campaigns also have a much better flow. While the original game's four scenarios were meant to follow a rough order, the links between the new five are far easier to spot, with allusions made at the start of each campaign as to what disaster occurred after the end of the previous one. The environments and characters feel more alive, too, with characters generally being responsible for working out how you're going to signal a rescue at the end of each campaign, rather than simply finding a radio. This makes the game feel a lot more organic and makes the characters feel more involved and more separate as their interests and skills come into play as they try to survive.

The campaigns are only one part of the game, though. The competitive multiplayer has been beefed up considerably by the new Special Infected. All of the old types return, but are joined by the Spitter, the Jockey, and the Charger. All three of these provide horrible, horrible new opportunities for sadistic teams of Versus players to abuse Survivors, to the extent that the previous tactics of hiding in a closet and spamming melee (which now needs to recharge) will pretty much get Survivors murdered. The Spitter is integral to this, hacking up a huge green gob of acid that deals plenty of damage if Survivors are silly enough to stay in it. The Jockey can ride players into these pools, or into incoming Infected. Chargers can take plenty of damage, run in stupidly fast, bowl players over and start pounding one of them to death. All three are annoying and potentially lethal, particularly when combined with what seems to be upped damage for the other Infected.

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