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Left 4 Dead 2 – Xbox 360 Review

Reviewed by AceGamez on November 30, 2009

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Hearing the squeak of a zombie clown’s nose as you stave its face in with a frying pan is one of those priceless gaming moments that you’ll never forget; and Left 4 Dead 2 is full of them – zombies, clowns and priceless gaming moments.

Back in 2007, Valve hit upon an ingenious idea – the kind of masterstroke that would have Einstein rising from his grave and shouting Euurrrggghhhhreka! Take inspiration from classic zombie movies to create a grim, post-apocalyptic vision of America. Throw four hapless humans together whose only aim is to get from one safehouse to the next and survive. Pit them against endless hordes of fast moving, vicious, relentless zombies that want to eat their brains. Bung in a few mutated variations for good measure, with special abilities that make them a very serious threat and render you helpless when they attack, forcing players to work together or die. Use a first person shooter template and build the game around four-player co-op. Allow people to jump in and out of the game at will and program some very intelligent and capable AI routines to take charge when human players are absent. Create an AI director that determines where and when hordes and special zombies appear and moves weapon, ammo and item placements so that no two games are ever the same. Round it off with some tongue in cheek humour and drown it in a lake of gore and guts. And thus Left 4 Dead was created, and the gaming public didst rejoice, for they saw that it was the finest zombie game in the land.

It all sounds incredibly obvious now in retrospect; I mean, why didn’t anyone think of it sooner? Resident Evil has been around for over a decade and only now has it finally introduced two-player co-op, after toying with the idea first by giving you occasional AI companions; but instead of the clunky, limited movement of RE, which has its benefits but plenty of drawbacks too, make everything fast and instant. Keep the bullets flying and the blood flowing, forcing you to run, then walk, then hobble, then drag your sorry arse towards the safehouse before a Boomer projectile vomits on you and the resulting horde that is attracted by its dripping bile finishes you off. Fear the hoarse screech of the Hunter that could leap out at you from around the corner and slash you to pieces if a teammate can’t rescue you in time. Choke as a Smoker constricts you with its insanely long tongue, with your fate now in the hands of your companions. Mutter expletives under your breath as yet another raging Tank bursts through a wall and knocks you twenty feet through the air, all of you trying to focus your firepower on it to bring it down as the horde attacks unabated. Soil yourself (just a little) when you hear the crying of a Witch and then tensely sneak past it because you don’t want to end up doing a really excellent chopped mince impression.

This was Left 4 Dead’s instantly classic formula, and the Versus mode was even more inspired, some lovely red icing on the delicious blood pudding; two teams of up to four players take it in turns to attempt to complete each chapter of one of the game’s four campaigns, while the other team spawns as a variety of Special Infected and attempts to hurt the survivors so much that they use up all of their health packs and don’t manage to make it to the safehouse at all. Then it’s your turn to run the gauntlet and you hope like hell that the enemy team aren’t as good as you were.

Thankfully, Left 4 Dead 2 barely tinkers with this winning formula at all. You could almost argue that the game is more of an expansion pack than a fully-fledged sequel – almost – but why mess with near perfection? Instead, Left 4 Dead 2 is exactly what we’ve all been hoping for; new characters, new locations, new set pieces, new gameplay elements, new modes, new enemies, new weapons, new items, better graphics, even more gore… and the same old terror-inducing, adrenaline-pumping zombie onslaught. Rarely has a sequel been honed so well while sticking to its roots so faithfully and turned out to be even more incredibly playable and entertaining than its predecessor.

The new rag tag bunch of survivors come together in Louisiana this time, and much is made of this fairly atypical game setting. Native character Ellis is something of a redneck, so there’s plenty of banter at his expense throughout the game, then you’ve got a big, burly black guy known as Coach, a sarcastic businessman called Nick who was just visiting when the apocalypse hit and makes his disdain for the locale clear, and Rochelle, the sexy, sassy female of the team. There isn’t really much of a story, although this time there is at least some continuity between the five campaigns, rather than the entirely self-contained episodes of the original; each one picks up where the other one left off, as your escape only gets you so far and then you end up on foot again.

The amusing movie-style presentation returns, the loading screens taking the form of movie posters with cheesy names and cheesier taglines. In Dead Center, the shopping mall campaign, “Prices aren’t the only thing getting slashed,” and for Dark Carnival, which takes you on a few metaphorical roller coaster rides as well as one literal one, “You must be this tall to DIE”! It’s all very tongue in cheek and the credits roll at the end as before, giving you a massive range of game stats to read before informing you of the exact number of zombies (usually in the thousands) that were harmed in the making of this film. The only real downside to the story is the lack of cut scenes; the CGI opening movie is so full of promise, but each campaign starts off without any real cut scene and there’s no finale either; when you get rescued, the game just ends.

By far the biggest change to the formula comes in the form of melee weapons, and they slot so slickly into the gameplay that you wonder why they weren’t there from the beginning. The gore has been turned up even higher too, and the screen is literally caked with blood splatters as you hack your way through a host of zombies with a machete or katana, heads and limbs flying in all directions. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such an obscenely gory game before – and I’ve loved every minute of it! Heads bounce and roll across the ground, arms are lopped off with ease, and if you hack at a zombie who’s standing on something above you, you can take both of its legs off with one clean swipe. Blood sprays from neck, arm and leg stumps, as the sickening parodies of humanity tumble to the ground with a screech or a gurgle. I won’t mention every new melee weapon, but as much as the frying pan is probably my favourite for the humour value of the ‘clang’ that it makes upon contact, once you get hold of the chainsaw and literally cut your way through a zombie mass, you’ll be cackling with glee – if you’re a bit twisted like I apparently am, that is!

The guns have been beefed up too, with magnums, three types of assault rifle, two types of sub machine gun, three shotguns (some of which are semi-automatic) and a couple of sniper rifle varieties. Throw in the returning pipe bombs, which attract zombies by beeping and flashing before they’re all blown to hell, the super powerful grenade launcher, and the Molotov cocktails, and you’ve got a recipe for enough entrail soup to fill a lake. Another new weapon is the bile jar, which you can lob at big enemies like Tanks to slow them down by making the zombies home in on them, while the pain pills, which temporarily restore your health and thus your speed, are complemented by adrenaline, which makes you faster for a short period. You can also now bring people back from the dead if you find a defibrillator, and you can deploy incendiary, frag and explosive ammo for some spectacular kills (bodies are literally shredded into chunks on impact from the latter) but both pick-ups replace that vital health kit.

The real stars of the new game are the new Special Infected though, each of which is a disgusting and lethal addition to the undead cast. Jockeys are craven little hunchbacks that leap on your back and pummel your head as they steer you into danger; Spitters are truly repulsive mutated women with sagging, zombified breasts and elongated necks and mouths, which can shoot lethal acid at you from a distance; and Chargers are like mini-Tanks and can knock you flying or grab hold of you, slam you into the nearest wall and pummel you into the ground until you’re dead. Each one is well conceived and adds an extra element of strategy to surviving when you’re on the human team and killing when you’re on the infected team. New gameplay elements have been introduced too, not the least of which is the need, on occasion, to transport fuel containers to a nearby vehicle or engine in order to fill it, the catch being that you can’t use a weapon while you carry them. There are also a number of sections where an alarm is set off and the horde assaults you in waves until you reach the place where you can deactivate it. Vicious.

Graphically, although not the most stunning Xbox 360 game by any means, Left 4 Dead 2 is a step up from the original, both in terms of resolution and variety. A lot of the campaign takes place during the day this time, and these chapters are in some ways even more atmospheric than the nighttime ones, especially during those moments of unsettling calm before the ravenous storm. There are some truly memorable locations too, including fighting your way through the Tunnel of Love, making a stand inside a crashed airliner, trudging through a swamp shanty town and forging a path through a sugar mill in the dead of night, while the standoff at the concert arena (complete with some firework displays and rock music!) is a defining gaming moment. There are some brilliant rain and fog effects too, along with the realistic flames, which are particularly disturbing as you watch immolated zombies screech and flail as they run around in agony for a few seconds. The audio design is top notch as before, with each Special Infected giving their presence away through their telltale signature mutterings, and all of the weapons and explosions sound the part, as does the sound of bullets ripping flesh and the swish of blades or the thwack of wood hitting decomposing skulls. The brilliantly atmospheric music returns as well, sparse and discordant during the quiet periods and frenetic and pounding when you’re fending off a full assault.

In terms of modes, Left 4 Dead 2 has almost indefinite replayability. Alongside the returning Campaign, a four-player online co-op version of the entire solo game (with system link and split screen support), and the Versus mode, where two teams play through a campaign and take it in turns as the survivors who are trying to reach the safehouse and the infected who are trying to stop them, comes Realism, Survival and Scavenge. Realism mode makes every enemy harder to kill and removes the handy coloured outline that allows you to see your fellow survivors through walls and spot when they have been caught by a Special Infected or are down and need reviving, as well as cutting out the respawning; after you die, you respawn a little while later in a cupboard and have to be let out by the other survivors, but in Realism mode, when you’re down, you’re down. Survival is a face-off against unending waves of zombies in a relatively confined area, where you’re doing well if you can last for two minutes (my record is around six minutes thirty at the moment and I’m not sure how I managed it!), and Scavenge is a team game where you attempt to retrieve fuel containers and pour them into an engine while the enemy infected try to stop you, and again you take it in turns to play survivors and infected, winning the round if you can secure one more container than the opposing team before you’re all wiped out.

Each of these modes is insanely addictive, every one of them filled with action and tension in equal measure. Left 4 Dead 2, like its predecessor, is the truest co-op game I’ve ever played; if you do not co-operate and work very closely together, you will die – it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. If you go running off alone or get left behind, once a Special Infected has you in its clutches, there is nothing whatsoever you can do – it’s all down to your teammates to rescue you before your health is whittled down to nothing. There’s no pausing to access your inventory either, and it takes vital time to switch to that pipe bomb and lob it, reload your gun, jab yourself with adrenaline, heal yourself, or revive a downed teammate. Consequently, there’s massive tension throughout the game, and with no way to know exactly where the items, weapons and ammo refills are located in any given level, you’ve got to balance the need to keep moving as fast as you can with the need to scavenge supplies along the way; if you spend too long in one place then soon enough you will be limping along in desperate hope of reaching the safehouse before the next horde assaults you, but if you don’t stop to search for supplies and heal, you’ll probably never make it.

There are a few technical issues that slightly hamper the experience; the partying up system isn’t anywhere near as elegant as the likes of Halo and Call of Duty, and I’ve experienced a fair amount of laggy gameplay, too. It’s also a real downer when you find a game where no one is talking and working together, although that’s hardly Valve’s fault. It can take a bit of time to find a smooth match with some talkative people who are willing to converse and co-operate, but once you assemble a decent group and get some real teamwork going, there’s no other shooter that can match it – no other game that is so immensely satisfying when you win because you stuck together and used tactics and strategy to make it to the end and stay just about in one piece. In terms of challenge, playability and atmosphere, it has all other co-op modes beaten, hands down.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a near perfect slice of gaming heaven, set in gaming hell. The graphics and sound have been enhanced, the gameplay has been refined, the new setting is well chosen and hugely varied, the new modes add even more playability, and the new weapons, items and enemies add even more substance to what is a surprisingly deep game, considering that, at its core, it’s a basic shooter/survival horror hybrid. It’s like the lovechild of Unreal Tournament and Resident Evil, and when you’ve got three good friends in tow to fend off the undead masses, it’s one of the best gaming experiences you can find online. It’s also very educational, too; when the zombie apocalypse finally happens for real, those few immune Left 4 Dead veterans will be the only ones left standing…

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