Left 4 Dead 2

With the L4D2 release date looming closer, I couldn’t help but write up an article on it. For those of you who are a little more unfamiliar with the title, I’ll give you a short overview of the first one. Left 4 Dead was originally based on another Source engine game we all know so well; Counter Strike. The team started off with a mod called “Terror Strike” which was basically a small group of counter-terrorists fighting off huge hordes of knife-wielding terrorists. They thought that was pretty fun and decided to develop it into a game. Thus, Left 4 Dead was born.

The original L4D has a few basic game play modes. Campaign lets you play through the storyline with up to 3 of your friends, or random strangers online. There is also single player campaign. Survival, well… ultimately you die in the end! However if you’re good maybe you can last over 10min. Then post your e-peen score to the leaderboards. Versus is my not-so-secret love affair. You play as either 4 survivors or 4 special infected. Survivors navigate through the map to get to the safe house/objective, all while the infected run around trying to sabotage their progress. There are 5 types of special infected. Smokers use their absurdly long tongue (eww) to grab victims and pull them to their doom. Hunters pounce from high places for big damage, then claw their immobilized victim to death. Boomers… barf on people… sorry that’s about all they do really. If you manage to do that though then hundreds of angry zombies will swarm your targets. Then you have the tank. He’s really big… really angry… likes to throw people across the street and stuff. Good times. One of the best things you can do is light him on fire then use a lot of bullets. Finally there is the witch, while not a playable infected in versus, she is one of the most dangerous infected if handled sloppily. The only real way to encounter her and live, is to walk up and shotgun her face off, or tuck in your tail and sneak by.

So now that that’s out of the way, I can start to talk about L4D2. It will be introducing new special infected which gives a much needed new angle on multiplayer strategy. Spitters spit green acid at you, and the acid causes DoT. When you kill the Spitter she will make acid puddles. This could be helpful for the times your survivors hole up in a small space and refuse to come out. Then we have the Jockey. The Jockey jumps on people and rides them away into the sunset. No homo. How awesome is that? I can’t wait to ride someone off a cliff or into a fire. Third is the Charger. If you can manage to pin 4 survivors at once as the Charger, then you automatically win! Chargers run in a straight line and pin a survivor on nearby walls or objects. The Witch’s AI is different this time around. During the day they may wander around but you are less likely to startle them during this time. Following the trend of changing things up, we will now see different types of common infected. Some infected will be in hazmat suits which make them immune to incendiary attacks. Mud men lurk in swamps making them hard to see, when attacking a player, you will see mud on your screen obscuring your view. Some infected will be in riot gear, providing more defense.  Infected clowns (no joke) have squeaky shoes that attract other infected.

The AI Director script is improved in L4D2. It will change up certain elements of the maps each time you play. This can either make your experience easier or harder. Don’t worry though, it will scale to how well you’re doing. It will also now control weather elements. So you could be all “Tra la la la” popping some zombies in the head to one minute later “Oh god there’s a jockey riding Coach, a hunter on Ellis, and I can’t see 5ft in front of myself.”

Speaking of the new characters, I can’t say I have the same attachment to them as I did the ones from the original game. In the original game you got the sense that they really were a team, they had been surviving together for a while already. There are four replacement characters. Coach, a big black guy who taught high school health and defense, but wishes he coached professional football. Rochelle who got her degree in communications (we all know how useful that is), then failed to get the job she wanted with a news company and settled on a lesser position. Ellis is… from the south. What more can I say? He probably owned that Hummer from Zombieland. Nick was a petty criminal, and now just owns some expensive suits. So okay… we don’t have the most amazing crew here. In the original game all the survivors had a bit of personality in common, I think maybe they went a little TOO far in diversifying the characters which took away from the companionship. Now all they really have in common is they whine a lot, and don’t really want to be there.

So I know I just ragged on the game a bit, but I think we can expect a much better game overall from the 2nd one than we saw with the 1st. For those of us who play a lot of online matches, it really is time for new maps, new infected, new everything.  That is exactly what Left 4 Dead 2 will be delivering, and I am ecstatic about it!