Left 4 Dead 2 Review
I’ve got friends that say they are “over the zombie fad”. The truth is, zombies have always been an integral part of this society’s horror game and movie industry. I wasn’t impressed with Dead Rising, or the crazy amount of zombie games leading up to it. I liked Resident Evil 4 & 5, but those weren’t exactly zombies, were they? In 2008, Valve finally unleashed a zombie game I was proud to own, although I did have small problems with repetitiveness and shortness in length. These two things were completely fixed in the sequel. Here is my review for quite possibly the best zombie game ever made.
First off, the setting for the campaigns are awesome! They take place in the south, never really specifying, but giving off a strict Louisiana vibe. The campaigns throw you into a shopping mall, amusement park, a small town being flooded by storms, the swamps, and an air-raided city. There’s nothing like being attacked b the undead when you can’t see over five feet in front of you because of the rain. The levels are done with up-most detail, and are simply fantastic.
Like the first game, I do wish there was more back-story and information about the characters, but as a whole, they are much funnier and more bad ass than in the predecessor. The characters include Coach, Nick, Rochelle, and the country bumpkin know as Ellis, whom carries an extreme resemblance to True Blood’s Jason Stackhouse.
The difficulty of this game in comparison with L4D is much harder. The normal mode feels like advanced mode from the first game, but the challenge of the game adds t the fun factor, length, and variance. It took me a over two hours to beat the second campaign, and that was once out of about twenty times I played through its entirety.
There are three new “boss infected” in this game. These include the jockey, spitter, and charger. Where as the latter two are kind of self-explanatory, the jockey jumps on your head, guiding you away from the group. This can be lethal when on rooftops. The old “boss infected” are still in it, but seem a little more powerful. Aside from your normal infected, each level seems to have it’s own special infected. These include zombies in bio-suits, riot gear, clown suits, and even mud-men in the swamps. They seem to change up the zombie’s attire according to the setting, which is cool.
Now to the weapons, which honestly improve the fun factor of this game by 100%. Sure, you get a bunch of new kick-ass guns, but what really takes the cake are the melee weapons. These range from crowbars, police batons, katanas (my favorite), guitars, and tons of others! The game also offers boomer bile bombs, adrenaline shots, and defibrillator paddles to resurrect your dead homies.
The game offers multi-player online play in versus and co-op modes. The versus mode is smooth and more fun with the new infected and new levels. The co-op is great, but has suffered extreme lag on the servers. This will be cleared up in time, but is still a bit annoying. The new scavenge mode is a lot of fun as well.
Survival mode returns in a battle against time to see how long you can last against non-stop hordes. Realism mode pretty much makes the game harder by not allowing you to easily locate friends in distress. I’ll have to get excited about that one later.
The graphics, dialogue, music, and gory details have all taken a step forward from the first game, and the control scheme has stayed the same…this is a good thing.
In my opinion, Left 4 Dead 2 gives me everything I could ever want in a first-person-shooter. The multi-player is extremely fun, the controls are easy and maneuverable, the characters are likable, and the game-play just plain rocks. I give this game an almost perfect rating, and I think it is quite possibly the best zombie game ever released. I would even put it up there with the top FPS games out there. The game is a great buy, and I definitely recommend it. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
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