Left 4 Dead 2 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/28/2021)

[Image from igdb.com]

Left 4 Dead 2

Developer: Valve

Publisher: Valve

Genre(s): Action Horror, First-Person Shooter

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360

Release Date: November 17, 2009

In terms of overall objective and mechanics, a first-person shooter couldn’t have been simpler than Valve’s Left 4 Dead. It was multiplayer madness involving mowing down hoards of ravenous zombies and fighting for the lives of you and your teammates. The simplicity of Left 4 Dead and the strict imperative on survival through team-building made the game a very effective multiplayer experience. This is why releasing a sequel to Left 4 Dead only a year after the release of the first game was a risky move on Valve’s part. A sequel is designed to either expand on the gameplay of the first entry or completely shift the focus to something else entirely.

Given that Left 4 Dead was already as ideal as possible, Left 4 Dead 2 needed to prove itself worthy of being a successor of the first game. Left 4 Dead 2 ultimately boils down to tweaking the Left 4 Dead formula ever-so-slightly. The content of Left 4 Dead 2 could arguably have been appropriately sold as DLC for the first game. For many years, I thought of Left 4 Dead 2 as the inferior Left 4 Dead of the two, an unpopular opinion among people who have played both games. This was simply because I felt like Left 4 Dead 2 wasn’t discernable enough from the first game to warrant a sequel at all. Years later, I realized that I might have been wrong. Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t do much in mixing up the formula, but the changes it implements make a world of difference.

I’m going to blatantly give my first major criticism of Left 4 Dead 2 out of the way: it lacks the horror atmosphere of the first game. It always struck me as inappropriate that most horror games would be set in broad daylight. The first Left 4 Dead never had a clear emphasis on establishing a spooky, moody atmosphere, but at least most of the game was set at night. Most of Left 4 Dead 2 is set while the sun is shining, a somewhat inappropriate time of day for the premise of fighting zombies to be scary. This was the major reason I always felt the first game was better, and I held this opinion for many years. Then again, Dawn of the Dead was the superior sequel to Night of the Living Dead (in my opinion), and that was set during...well, it was set during the dawn. I then realized that this game wasn’t supposed to have a heavy emphasis on the atmosphere in the first place. The terror from Left 4 Dead stems from the seemingly endless hoard of the undead with an unquenchable bloodlust. This is the foundation of horror that makes Left 4 Dead 2 as effective as the first one.

Of course, a sequel is obligated to come with a few new changes. A good number of the levels are set in daylight, but the overall setting is much more consistent than it was in the first game. Left 4 Dead was set in a place called Fairfield, a generic every-city located somewhere in Pennsylvania. Left 4 Dead 2 is set in the deep south, with the five chapters of the campaign spanning across Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The developers did an exceptional job at theming the setting around the south. NASCAR is incredibly popular, and a southern rock band plays at a venue to distract a hoard of zombies from naming a few things. The settings are also appropriate for relishing in the south, such as swamps, rural towns with podunk, one-story houses with pools, plantation houses, and the city of New Orleans. No, not a city-based off of New Orleans. The party city of the south is the setting for the last chapter of the campaign. The chapter “Hard Rain” even uses the deluge-like amount of rain present in the south as a game mechanic.

Left 4 Dead also comes with a new ragtag, apocalyptic breakfast club of characters to play as. Like the setting, the characters are much more consistent with the theme of the south because each character feels like they are from there. Coach is a stocky, middle-aged black man who speaks with a heavy Savannah drawl. Rochelle is a young black woman wearing an extrusive, hot-pink Depeche Mode shirt. Ellis is a young, humble white guy with a southern hillbilly accent and an excitable attitude that verges on being childlike. His foil is the pessimistic, jaded Nicholas, the fourth playable survivor. Given the diverse makeup of the south, this new team fits the setting perfectly. The only playable character that seems out of place is Nick, who could easily be a tourist. I’m glad the sequel deviated from the character in the first game because it makes the zombie pandemic seem much more massive in scale in that it’s still rampant in another setting and affecting the lives of more people. This group functions just the same as the characters in the first game; a group of people who know each other from the worst circumstances, bantering because of their contrasting personality traits. They also have their quirks, like Coach’s big appetite, Nick’s sarcasm, and Ellis reminiscing about his buddy Keith (he’ll conjure up a story about this man before every act, so it’s a perfect time to spring into action and get out of the safehouse to interrupt him).

The most noticeable change to the gameplay of Left 4 Dead in its sequel is the additions to the weapons and items. There are new guns, health items, and secondary weapons to diversify the combat from the first game. Most of the guns are still the same: the automatic rifles, the uzi, the shotguns, and even the janky sniper rifle make their return (and none of the CPUs will insist on using it this time). The most distinctive addition to the firearms is a grenade launcher, a weapon with an effective blast range but is seldom found in the levels. An additional health item is a defibrillator that resurrects a player from the dead. It’s not very useful on CPUs but is very helpful with real players. The new adrenaline shot that increases the player’s speed doesn’t have much use unless the player wants to abandon his teammates at the end of the chapter to be rescued. The Boomer Bomb is a secondary weapon that breaks open when thrown to release a sample of the infectious boomer bile. It acts the same as a pipe bomb in that it attracts the hoard elsewhere but doesn’t relinquish them with a blast. Yet, it’s still quite effective. One totally new addition in Left 4 Dead 2 is the melee weapons. They are common and substitute for pistols whenever ammo becomes scarce. There is also a variety of them, including a guitar, nightstick, machete, katana, etc., and even a fuel-powered chainsaw. While I appreciate the variety, I wish all these weapons were as effective as the others. Ultimately, the melee weapons are a great addition and are much better than batting a zombie with the butt of a gun. I also never found myself using the pistols in this game either.

As one can see from the additional weapons, nothing from the first game was replaced or omitted. The same goes for the races of special infected that all add a hint of perilous zest to the zombie outbreak. All of the familiar special infected are here and fill their roles once again to screw over the survivors. There are an additional three special infected in the mix in Left 4 Dead 2, and they have their own unique attributes. The Spitter is a female special infected that spits acid onto the survivors. Like boomers, they have a habit of unassumingly walking up to the survivors in just enough time to make their presence known and splurging over them. The acid they shoot is easy to avoid outside but can be seriously deadly in closed-off quarters. I’m also not sure if it’s just me, but the female-centric special infected are slightly more unnerving than the male ones. There are even female boomers present here as if what the lumbering puss bomb needed was a pair of tits. The Charger lives up to his name as he charges the player like a linebacker. He slams the survivor on the ground multiple times with his enlarged arm, eventually incapacitating them if not taken care of. The worst of the new special infected is the Jockey. He’s a dwarf special infected that moves around like a chimpanzee. He lunges up to the face of a survivor and proceeds to skull fuck them while riding them off erratically until incapacitating them. I take it back; The Jockey is definitely still the most unnerving of the bunch. All of these additional special infected zombies on top of the ones already established from the first game make for a much more chaotic experience, something I thought would be hard to top from the first game.

While many different aspects of Left 4 Dead 2 are built upon what was already established, the structure of the chapters has a more overarching setup. Like the first game, the chapters can be played in whichever order but are less episodically contained. Left 4 Dead 2 is a southern road trip from Georgia to New Orleans with slight cues indicating that these chapters are meant to be played in order. For example, the second chapter starts with the car the survivors took from the mall at the end of the first chapter crapping out on them and having to proceed on foot. “Hard Rain” begins when the survivors have to retrieve gas to fuel the getaway boat from the previous chapter. Some sections in the chapters offer new gameplay features like having one player hold an item for a long time and having to be defended by their teammates. “Hard Rain” has the player go through the entire chapter backward while enduring an extreme level condition. These features are merely gimmicks, but each one is fleshed out quite nicely throughout the chapter. One might argue that the slightly more focused narrative and level features bloat the Left 4 Dead experience because the game is supposed to be simple. I will state that these new features act as additions the same way the new weapons and new special infected do. They are additions that just pack onto what was already established without distracting from the main course.

For some odd reason, I always preferred the first Left 4 Dead over the second one. I see now that with the added weapons, gameplay mechanics, special infected, etc. that Left 4 Dead 2 is objectively the superior Left 4 Dead experience. After adding all of these features, it practically renders the first game obsolete. Ultimately, that’s exactly what Left 4 Dead 2 is, an update to the first game. All of the presented here could have been sold as DLC, and I’m not sure the changes are substantial enough to warrant a full sequel. Left 4 Dead 2 even offers the first game as an expansion with all of the new features, seemingly as a means to update the first game. It is only by including the first game in its DLC that Left 4 Dead combines the two games in one glorious zombie-killing experience. Overall, this review and this rating go to the updates rather than the game itself. From a certain standpoint, it’s a shame, but it’s still a blast to play.