ZXDarknessfalls
05-11-2011, 08:37 PM
Left 4 Dead 2
A review by ZXDarknessfalls.
http://www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/left-4-dead-2-logo-wallpaper-small.jpg
Left 4 Dead 2 is a first person shooter that places you in the midst of a zombie apocalypse as one of four playable characters (unless you have the DLC then you there is 8 ). For this review I will be taking into account the DLC and what it adds throughout the entire review. Anything that you can only have or do with the DLC will have 'DLC' posted after the sentence or paragraph as needed. Also this is a review of the Xbox 360 version.
First is the characters.
Nick, Ellis, Coach, and Rochelle (Group A) are the characters introduced in Left 4 Dead 2.
Francis, Louis, Zoey, and Bill (Group B) (DLC) are the returning cast from the original Left 4 Dead.
Depending on what campaign you play determines what characters you are able to pick from.
This doesn't really mean anything though because between Group A and Group B there is no real difference in how they play. All characters just sound different and that's about where the differences end when it comes to game-play.
Next are the campaigns.
Currently there are 8 campaigns to choose from. 6 of which feature Group A, and 2 that feature Group B. For each campaign there is somewhere between 3 to 6 chapters, or in other words levels. Each of the levels varies in time depending on the difficulty you are playing the campaign. And by that I mean the time it will take someone to finish the campaign changes, the levels themselves don't change or have time limits.
The 8 campaigns are as follow.
No Mercy (Group B) DLC
The Sacrifice (Group B) DLC
Dead Center (Group A)
The Passing (Group A)
Dark Carnival (Group A)
Swamp Fever (Group A)
Hard Rain (Group A)
The Parish (Group A) DLC
The order it is in would be the order to play them in if a player wanted to play it in the correct order for the story.
Which leads me into the story.
Story is fairly plain and simple, which works very well for this type of game. Your alive, and not part of the walking dead. You would like to keep it that way. You look for help. Not much more really needs to be said about this games story. Though when playing if you keep an eye out for what is written on the walls you can get a better idea of what happened to everything.
Game-play/Campaign
First decide if you are playing campaign by yourself or with 3 other players. Or mix and match (example being 2 human players 2 computer. No matter what you decide you will Always have 4 players)
After you have decided what character to play and what campaign to start you will be quickly thrown into a world of dead people everywhere. Something you will want to know right away is that you start with 100 life and that goes down as you get hit. Once you are at 0 you are 'downed' and need someone to help you back up, if no one helps you your 'downed' meter goes down and you eventually die. Getting hit also lowers the 'downed' meter.
Anyways, normally starting you in a fairly safe location you will have access to some supplies right away. This varies depending on what campaign and level you are on. Always though there will be some form of weapon and 4 Med-Kits for your team to start with (unless a special scenario, which I will go into later). From then on its you vs the world until you either die, reach a safe room(end of level, which will also have more supplies for you), or complete the campaign. Something to note however is that you need to get past more than just zombies.
You also need to get past things called special infected. Which are zombies with certain traits, they are easy to see compared to other zombies because they will look Nothing like them and each type has their own particular shape and size. An example of a special infected is the Tank. As his name may imply he is Very powerful. He will be bigger than you in height (not by much though) but also in bulk (by a lot). His arms are so large that he actually uses them to help him move also. When he hits you, you get flung far. Also he has a great deal of life meaning that unless you know what you are doing or happen to stay in front of him at all times, you will need the help of others to kill. If he is to far away from you he can rip chunks of the ground out and throw them at you also. The Tank however, being just about the strongest special infected, is only seen every here and there when you play and when he is in play the music changes and the ground shakes when he is near.
Also the Tank is only one of 8 special infected.
http://images.wikia.com/left4dead/images/f/fc/L4d2-tank.jpg
This is a tank. A lot more intimidating when you see him in game.
While trying to get to point A to point B you will run into a Lot of zombies (apart from special infected) and this makes things a little more difficult because when you are being hit by a zombie they are either in your way or slowing you down. Also just because of their sheer numbers you may get overrun. This can be helped or avoided by playing close to your team and also looking for other weapons or helpful tools along the way. Finding a new shotgun can be all the difference in saving your friend in a time of need or not. Without actually going into to much detail on the weapons and items here is a very quick overview of them.
Weapons: Shotgun, sniper, machine gun (multiple types of each) Melee weapons(also many types) and pistols(some variation). Molotov's, pipe bombs (flashing grenade that gets zombies attention), bile (throw it on a zombie or infected to get other zombies to attack it).
Health: Med-Kits, pills, adrenaline.
Others: Gas cans, propane tanks, etc.
When playing these items will light up a little so they are easier to spot on the ground or wherever they are.
Something else I should mention is that items don’t spawn in the same places, and neither do zombies, making the same levels different every time you play them.
Now when you put everything above together in a game you are playing with your friends it becomes an incredibly fun, and addicting experience. From saving your friends from special infected or hordes of zombies, to deciding to set off a car alarm and run so they get mauled by them, your almost guaranteed to have a good time.
If you decide to play with only computers the game still offers a type of fun that is hard to satisfy but it wont be as rewarding compared to playing with others.
As fun as the campaign is, its only one of the few game modes to pick from. The other modes are as follow.
Survival – Plain and simple. Live as long as you can.
Scavenge – try to collect as much as you can of a said object for said reason as fast as you can while playing against special infected controlled by human players (yes you can be the zombies, ill go into that in a little bit). Then you switch sides and see who can get the most.
Mutation – This changes often. Valve will have a new mutation up every week or so that changes something in the game and how its played. This weeks mutation is called 'Taaannnnkk'. When playing in Vs all 4 special infected players will spawn as tanks. I tired this this week already and all I can say is no one lives. Ever. Really fun also. This is one of the few times you may not start with access to life also as they sometimes start you with pain pills or no life at all depending on the mutation.
Realism – You take more damage, cant see your friends outlines through the walls, items don’t light up meaning you actually need to look for them. Just a harder way to play.
Versus- Get to point A to point B while not getting killed by zombies and special infected players. After one team goes you switch sides. Can play through any of the campaigns in this mode.
Realism Versus. - A combination of Versus and Realism. Nothing else needs to be said. \
The one I am going to talk more about though is Versus.
Like I mentioned earlier in Versus you either play as the survivors or the infected. And while you cant run around as a normal zombie you do get to be one of the special infected which I am going to break down now. (All special infected only have 2 attacks. Their main ability and to claw at people)
The Boomer – A fat male or female (really fat) that with its primary ability will vomit on the players. Players covered in this will have the attention of the surrounding zombies.
The Charger – Primary attack charges a player and pulls said player either far forward with it or until they meet a wall, where he will then hold you and lift you up and slam you back down over and over again until you die. There is no way out of this once hit until he dies, so you Will need the help of others to live. Also anyone else hit by the charge who isn’t grabbed will be flung away a little and take some damage.
The Hunter – Able to jump very high and use his primary 'pounce' to jump on someone and start tearing at them. Again you cant get out of this yourself once pinned and you will need help.
The Jockey – Will ride you. His primary 'lunge' is actually him jumping on your head and hurting you while steering you as he makes your character stumble in the direction he wants. You cant get out of this But he cant kill you with it. Once you are downed you are free to shoot at him as you please from your spot on the ground, just to watch him normally run away and leave you in a corner.
The Smoker – Is able to grab you from very far away with his primary 'tongue snare'. He can be on a building and grab you and once snared you wont be able to get out without help. Again.
The Spitter – Her primary is to spit a toxic goo at you. Where the spit lands becomes green and hurts to stand on. This may seem like a bad ability but because you get stopped or trapped by either zombies of special infected all the time it actually becomes a problem for players.
The Tank – See what I said about him earlier.
Lastly, The Witch – The witch is the only one of the special infected you cant play as. She sits in the levels (when she does appear) and cries. Her cry is distinct and easy to identify, when you hear it you generally turn off your flashlight and try not to disturb her. She can either be sitting down crying Or walking around slowly. This becomes a problem when she is walking by a bunch of normal zombies and you accidentally hit her. When you agitate her and she attacks whoever she was after (is she hits them) is automatically downed no matter how much life they had. And then she start to rip them apart killing them fairly fast if others don't come to save the day.
The following is a link to a picture that I didn't want to add to this cause its a bit large. But it has all the special infected.http://images2.alphacoders.com/748/74846.jpg
From left to right they goes as follows.
Charger, Hunter, Spitter, Jockey, Tank, Witch, Boomer, Smoker.
With the chance to play as the special infected mentioned above (minus witch) or as the survivors in a turn based competition against other players, its hard not to have a amazing time when playing any of the Vs type game modes this game offers.
Left 4 Dead 2 has a lot to offer to a fairly large crowd of people, be it together trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, or as one of the infected trying to stop the survivors. The campaigns are as fun as they are challenging and can be played over and over again by yourself or with others (others being friends or strangers that you can match with if you want). The Competitive portion is a FPS zombie lovers dream come true and can end up stealing hours or days from your life as you run, gun, melee, jump, claw, pounce, and punch people out of buildings.
Scoring
Game-play: 7/10 if you are alone
9/10 if you are with others.
Sound: 9/10. Though I don't mention it before the sounds fit the game almost perfectly the entire game.
Graphics: 8/10. Not the greatest, but by far not the worse and you almost never think about the graphics when in game.
Re-playability: 10/10. Play the game with friends and you will understand.
My score: 9/10. Though not consistent with the numbers I just posted above as an average the game comes together as a whole beautifully. I recommend that anyone who has never played this game to give it a try.
By the way I also intend on adding a video of actual game-play to this soon along with making any changes needed.
A review by ZXDarknessfalls.
http://www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/left-4-dead-2-logo-wallpaper-small.jpg
Left 4 Dead 2 is a first person shooter that places you in the midst of a zombie apocalypse as one of four playable characters (unless you have the DLC then you there is 8 ). For this review I will be taking into account the DLC and what it adds throughout the entire review. Anything that you can only have or do with the DLC will have 'DLC' posted after the sentence or paragraph as needed. Also this is a review of the Xbox 360 version.
First is the characters.
Nick, Ellis, Coach, and Rochelle (Group A) are the characters introduced in Left 4 Dead 2.
Francis, Louis, Zoey, and Bill (Group B) (DLC) are the returning cast from the original Left 4 Dead.
Depending on what campaign you play determines what characters you are able to pick from.
This doesn't really mean anything though because between Group A and Group B there is no real difference in how they play. All characters just sound different and that's about where the differences end when it comes to game-play.
Next are the campaigns.
Currently there are 8 campaigns to choose from. 6 of which feature Group A, and 2 that feature Group B. For each campaign there is somewhere between 3 to 6 chapters, or in other words levels. Each of the levels varies in time depending on the difficulty you are playing the campaign. And by that I mean the time it will take someone to finish the campaign changes, the levels themselves don't change or have time limits.
The 8 campaigns are as follow.
No Mercy (Group B) DLC
The Sacrifice (Group B) DLC
Dead Center (Group A)
The Passing (Group A)
Dark Carnival (Group A)
Swamp Fever (Group A)
Hard Rain (Group A)
The Parish (Group A) DLC
The order it is in would be the order to play them in if a player wanted to play it in the correct order for the story.
Which leads me into the story.
Story is fairly plain and simple, which works very well for this type of game. Your alive, and not part of the walking dead. You would like to keep it that way. You look for help. Not much more really needs to be said about this games story. Though when playing if you keep an eye out for what is written on the walls you can get a better idea of what happened to everything.
Game-play/Campaign
First decide if you are playing campaign by yourself or with 3 other players. Or mix and match (example being 2 human players 2 computer. No matter what you decide you will Always have 4 players)
After you have decided what character to play and what campaign to start you will be quickly thrown into a world of dead people everywhere. Something you will want to know right away is that you start with 100 life and that goes down as you get hit. Once you are at 0 you are 'downed' and need someone to help you back up, if no one helps you your 'downed' meter goes down and you eventually die. Getting hit also lowers the 'downed' meter.
Anyways, normally starting you in a fairly safe location you will have access to some supplies right away. This varies depending on what campaign and level you are on. Always though there will be some form of weapon and 4 Med-Kits for your team to start with (unless a special scenario, which I will go into later). From then on its you vs the world until you either die, reach a safe room(end of level, which will also have more supplies for you), or complete the campaign. Something to note however is that you need to get past more than just zombies.
You also need to get past things called special infected. Which are zombies with certain traits, they are easy to see compared to other zombies because they will look Nothing like them and each type has their own particular shape and size. An example of a special infected is the Tank. As his name may imply he is Very powerful. He will be bigger than you in height (not by much though) but also in bulk (by a lot). His arms are so large that he actually uses them to help him move also. When he hits you, you get flung far. Also he has a great deal of life meaning that unless you know what you are doing or happen to stay in front of him at all times, you will need the help of others to kill. If he is to far away from you he can rip chunks of the ground out and throw them at you also. The Tank however, being just about the strongest special infected, is only seen every here and there when you play and when he is in play the music changes and the ground shakes when he is near.
Also the Tank is only one of 8 special infected.
http://images.wikia.com/left4dead/images/f/fc/L4d2-tank.jpg
This is a tank. A lot more intimidating when you see him in game.
While trying to get to point A to point B you will run into a Lot of zombies (apart from special infected) and this makes things a little more difficult because when you are being hit by a zombie they are either in your way or slowing you down. Also just because of their sheer numbers you may get overrun. This can be helped or avoided by playing close to your team and also looking for other weapons or helpful tools along the way. Finding a new shotgun can be all the difference in saving your friend in a time of need or not. Without actually going into to much detail on the weapons and items here is a very quick overview of them.
Weapons: Shotgun, sniper, machine gun (multiple types of each) Melee weapons(also many types) and pistols(some variation). Molotov's, pipe bombs (flashing grenade that gets zombies attention), bile (throw it on a zombie or infected to get other zombies to attack it).
Health: Med-Kits, pills, adrenaline.
Others: Gas cans, propane tanks, etc.
When playing these items will light up a little so they are easier to spot on the ground or wherever they are.
Something else I should mention is that items don’t spawn in the same places, and neither do zombies, making the same levels different every time you play them.
Now when you put everything above together in a game you are playing with your friends it becomes an incredibly fun, and addicting experience. From saving your friends from special infected or hordes of zombies, to deciding to set off a car alarm and run so they get mauled by them, your almost guaranteed to have a good time.
If you decide to play with only computers the game still offers a type of fun that is hard to satisfy but it wont be as rewarding compared to playing with others.
As fun as the campaign is, its only one of the few game modes to pick from. The other modes are as follow.
Survival – Plain and simple. Live as long as you can.
Scavenge – try to collect as much as you can of a said object for said reason as fast as you can while playing against special infected controlled by human players (yes you can be the zombies, ill go into that in a little bit). Then you switch sides and see who can get the most.
Mutation – This changes often. Valve will have a new mutation up every week or so that changes something in the game and how its played. This weeks mutation is called 'Taaannnnkk'. When playing in Vs all 4 special infected players will spawn as tanks. I tired this this week already and all I can say is no one lives. Ever. Really fun also. This is one of the few times you may not start with access to life also as they sometimes start you with pain pills or no life at all depending on the mutation.
Realism – You take more damage, cant see your friends outlines through the walls, items don’t light up meaning you actually need to look for them. Just a harder way to play.
Versus- Get to point A to point B while not getting killed by zombies and special infected players. After one team goes you switch sides. Can play through any of the campaigns in this mode.
Realism Versus. - A combination of Versus and Realism. Nothing else needs to be said. \
The one I am going to talk more about though is Versus.
Like I mentioned earlier in Versus you either play as the survivors or the infected. And while you cant run around as a normal zombie you do get to be one of the special infected which I am going to break down now. (All special infected only have 2 attacks. Their main ability and to claw at people)
The Boomer – A fat male or female (really fat) that with its primary ability will vomit on the players. Players covered in this will have the attention of the surrounding zombies.
The Charger – Primary attack charges a player and pulls said player either far forward with it or until they meet a wall, where he will then hold you and lift you up and slam you back down over and over again until you die. There is no way out of this once hit until he dies, so you Will need the help of others to live. Also anyone else hit by the charge who isn’t grabbed will be flung away a little and take some damage.
The Hunter – Able to jump very high and use his primary 'pounce' to jump on someone and start tearing at them. Again you cant get out of this yourself once pinned and you will need help.
The Jockey – Will ride you. His primary 'lunge' is actually him jumping on your head and hurting you while steering you as he makes your character stumble in the direction he wants. You cant get out of this But he cant kill you with it. Once you are downed you are free to shoot at him as you please from your spot on the ground, just to watch him normally run away and leave you in a corner.
The Smoker – Is able to grab you from very far away with his primary 'tongue snare'. He can be on a building and grab you and once snared you wont be able to get out without help. Again.
The Spitter – Her primary is to spit a toxic goo at you. Where the spit lands becomes green and hurts to stand on. This may seem like a bad ability but because you get stopped or trapped by either zombies of special infected all the time it actually becomes a problem for players.
The Tank – See what I said about him earlier.
Lastly, The Witch – The witch is the only one of the special infected you cant play as. She sits in the levels (when she does appear) and cries. Her cry is distinct and easy to identify, when you hear it you generally turn off your flashlight and try not to disturb her. She can either be sitting down crying Or walking around slowly. This becomes a problem when she is walking by a bunch of normal zombies and you accidentally hit her. When you agitate her and she attacks whoever she was after (is she hits them) is automatically downed no matter how much life they had. And then she start to rip them apart killing them fairly fast if others don't come to save the day.
The following is a link to a picture that I didn't want to add to this cause its a bit large. But it has all the special infected.http://images2.alphacoders.com/748/74846.jpg
From left to right they goes as follows.
Charger, Hunter, Spitter, Jockey, Tank, Witch, Boomer, Smoker.
With the chance to play as the special infected mentioned above (minus witch) or as the survivors in a turn based competition against other players, its hard not to have a amazing time when playing any of the Vs type game modes this game offers.
Left 4 Dead 2 has a lot to offer to a fairly large crowd of people, be it together trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, or as one of the infected trying to stop the survivors. The campaigns are as fun as they are challenging and can be played over and over again by yourself or with others (others being friends or strangers that you can match with if you want). The Competitive portion is a FPS zombie lovers dream come true and can end up stealing hours or days from your life as you run, gun, melee, jump, claw, pounce, and punch people out of buildings.
Scoring
Game-play: 7/10 if you are alone
9/10 if you are with others.
Sound: 9/10. Though I don't mention it before the sounds fit the game almost perfectly the entire game.
Graphics: 8/10. Not the greatest, but by far not the worse and you almost never think about the graphics when in game.
Re-playability: 10/10. Play the game with friends and you will understand.
My score: 9/10. Though not consistent with the numbers I just posted above as an average the game comes together as a whole beautifully. I recommend that anyone who has never played this game to give it a try.
By the way I also intend on adding a video of actual game-play to this soon along with making any changes needed.