Game Review: Left 4 Dead 2
Left 4 Dead 2 is a first-person shooter developed by Valve Software. It is a four-player cooperative game that requires you to use team work to survive the zombie apocalypse. You start off in a safe room, where zombies cannot get to you.
Once you leave the safe room, though, the zombies spawn and are ready to attack you and your team on sight. You must fight them off with weapons you find around the levels. For example, you start off with pistols and have a choice of one other weapon, like a shotgun or an SMG. You can choose to swap your pistol for the game’s new feature, melee weapons. For close-quarters combat, melee weapons are a perfect choice to fight off the zombies. Later on in the campaign (set of levels), you will find more powerful weapons, like assault rifles and sniper rifles.
Left 4 Dead is great!
This is where Left 4 Dead 2 gets its re-playability. The weapons of each campaign are randomly spawned in the level. The same can be said for the zombies, zombies will be chosen at random by the “AI Director”. There are regular zombie, and then there are “uncommon-common” that have specific traits. For example, Hazmat zombies are invulnerable to fire.
There is also a group of eight zombies called “Special Infected”. The “Hunter” pounces on the survivors and rips them to shreds. The “Smoker” drags survivors away with his tongue. The “Boomer” vomits on the survivors to attract a horde. The”Jockey” rides on a survivor’s back and controls them, walking them away from the other survivors. The “Spitter” spits acid on you that hurts more the longer you are in it. Finally, the “Charger” chargers and grabs one survivor and starts pummeling them into the ground.
There are five campaigns that span 23 levels. Dead Center is a fight to get to a mall. Dark Carnival takes place in a carnival with clowns and all. Swamp Fever takes place in the swamps. Hard Rain take place in a city. Finally, The Parish takes place in New Orleans. The survivors are Nick, Ellis, Coach, and Rochelle. Nick is a gambling con-man who traveled to the south. Ellis is a mechanic with a heavy accent. He tells a bunch of crazy stories about his friend Keith getting hurt. Coach was a coach of a sport. He is big and muscular and loves chocolate. Finally, Rochelle is a newscaster that traveled south to report on the zombie outbreak.
There is also online modes. Versus pits four player-controlled survivors against four player-controlled special infected. Scavenger makes the survivors travel around a map gathering gas cans to power up a generator. The generator controls how much time the survivors have. The special infected must do everything in their power to stop the survivors from filling up the generator. Finally, Realism removes the outline around the survivors and removes the outline from weapons. This makes the game very difficult, even on easy difficulty settings.
Overall, Left 4 Dead 2 is a great game that improves on the original’s concept without changing what made the first one great. The game feels fresh and new and can be very addictive. If you like zombies, you’ll love this game.
