Value is not really known for fast development, you only need to look at Half-Life 2 to see what I mean. Half-Life 2’s episodic strategy changed the way in which we viewed the delivery of sequels, so having Valve announce that the sequel to Left 4 Dead less than seven months after the original was release is something of a miracle.
But this caused some discontent with fans of the series, that they became worried that the game was rushed through and would be a carbon copy of the original. No, Valve was empirical in their statement that the new game would be bigger and better than the first. Well…. guess what they were right it is. There is a ‘but’ to this blinding fact, but the game has got a problem.
There are loads more Zombies in this game, excellent thing right? There are new friends for you to battle with, even better don’t you think? Well, not totally. You see there is so much more in terms of numbers that Valve seems to have taken the idea of times something a few hundred times and it will make it a few hundred times better. The answer to that is well…. not really, L4D2 doesn’t offer the same mind-blowing experience that L4D did.
If you didn’t play the first game L4D is a FPS that took the basics down to formula and started out afresh. It was built from the ground up to be a multiplayer experience and you could tell. The gameplay was simple but affective; the idea was that you started with your group of four people and fight your way through zombies to a safe room where you had to fend off more waves of zombies until help arrived. Seems too simple and too much like Resident Evil 1 but the blonde version, well you couldn’t be more wrong. The genius wasn’t the gameplay but the hardcore mechanics behind it, Valve had constructed a game were the AI director could understand how good you and your friends were and modify the gameplay to match. This lead to better players getting hard challenges whereas players who were less experienced didn’t just get creamed at the first sight of the horde charging at you.
This simple gameplay returns in L4D2 but with slight modifications. The opening level is a great example of this, you have a similar objective as the last game but this time instead of reaching an area and then defending it you need to find petrol cans to fuel a car for your escape. Again a simple idea but excellently implemented that it just feels right.
For the sequel, the basic story returns with not that much changed, you are just basically charged with escaping the Zombies in any way you can. There is a story arc that didn’t feature in the first game, and each character’s background is told through dialogue. The story follows four new survivors as they attempt to get across the southern states of America to New Orleans to meet a military extraction point. There are twists and turns along the way that you can only expect from Valve, but still offers something more meaty that the first game.
As with the first game, there are competitive game types away from the co-op play. These have been improved over the last time, where four survivors battle it out against four players controlled infected specials. There is also the addition of four-vs-four matchmaking allowing for you to battle it out with 7 friends. Playing as the infected has been improved too as there is now a cooldown indicator for your teammates.
It sounds all good then doesn’t it but there is a slight annoyance that I found, there is realism mode that ramps up the challenge for those who really want the challenge. But there is a small thing that the co-op could be a little more forgiving in places, as it does start to wear thin when you keep on having to relive the last ten minutes over and over again with unrelenting difficulty. But that is only a small gripe.
Overall, the sequel does everything that the original did and for the most point better. There are a few things that make you think that parts might have been rushed but not enough to make you feel any different about the game. Left 4 Dead 2 takes the problems that the first game had and fixes almost all of them. There is no mode that allows you to work up to competitive play making it much less easy for lower skilled players to get into. But the additions make the game so much better in terms of gameplay and more satisfying to play.
Nometet says: 4 stars out of 5
