GamesRelay

Name: Left 4 Dead 2

Valve gave most people a shock at E3 when they unveiled Left 4 Dead 2 to the Half-Life 2: Episode 3-expecting crowd assembled in Microsoft's hall. A plethora of different reactions were felt; excitement and disappointment for such a quick sequel to a critically-acclaimed and widely-lauded original game. After a period of trench warfare between Valve and various fan groups, Left 4 Dead 2 has hit the shelves. Is it a quick cash-in, an expansion pack with a premium price, or is it a fully-functional sequel ably put to market, escaping the serrated net that had been aptly named "Valve Time".

A whole new cast of Survivors has been assembled to take on the Horde. While many came to love the original party, these new folks won't bore anyone. Now based down south in New Orleans, these characters represent some stereotypes of the area. Nick is identifiable by his white suit and understandably cynical attitude, whereas Ellis is an innocent, simple hick that always looks on the brighter side of the zombie apocalypse. Coach is a big black man with an often surly but sometimes jovial attitude, and Rochelle is a practical female support that doesn't say an awful lot. Their backgrounds are never introduced and getting to know them only comes through quips and off-hand comments. Once again, the nature of the contagion and what happened is kept to the side, either not mentioned at all or plastered on the walls for the patient player to read. The story overall takes a backseat to the co-operative zombie-slaying.

It's hard to write Left 4 Dead 2 off as an expansion pack when the amount of new content is considered. Through five new campaigns, you can play through single-player, four player co-op, four versus four, four player Survival, and a new mode, Scavenger. Where standard campaign game's are A-to-B affairs, Survival is an arena-based, beat-the-timer mode where you try to survive as long as you can against a never ending wave of foes. Scavenger is similar, yet the objective is to gather fuel canisters to fill a vehicle's tank in order to escape against a similarly never ending flood. Versus is like a campaign game, except four extra players continually spawn as different Special Infected. This mode has been greatly improved over the original game, as the variety of new Specials means that two Hunters are no longer required.

These new Specials are an interesting mix. The Spitter is a new favourite, firing a globule of acidic spit as a projectile, creating a pool that damages any Survivor that traipses into it – great for blocking off routes and punishing them in narrow spaces. The Charger is another dandy one, who charges forward at high speed in a straight line grabbing a Survivor as he dashes past and knocking others aside, and then traps them, smashing the Survivor into the ground until either of them dies. The Jockey is a specialised one who jumps on a hapless Survivor's shoulders and is capable of controlling their movement – brilliant for leading them away from the Survivor pack and into a rampaging group of Common Infected. The old favourites; the prowling Hunter, the sneaky Smoker, the bile-spewing Boomer, the almighty Tank, and the innocently-nightmarish Witch all return, completing a very full roster of adversaries to deal with.

Yet the new content keeps spilling out. Entirely new weapons litter every campaign, from simple SMGs, handguns and pump-action shotguns, to military-grade sniper rifles, grenade launchers and magnums. Also new are the melee weapons. Replacing your infinite ammo handgun, these implements of destruction are capable of mowing through groups of Common Infected with little perspiration. At the beginning of the campaign, these will be blunt weapons like baseball bats, frying pans and the ubiquitous crowbar, and then moving onto machetes, katanas and the all-powerful chainsaws. Even additional health items and throwables are included, such as the speed-increasing adrenaline shot, the life-restoring defibrillator, able to bring dead players back to working order, and the Bile Bomb, Boomer vomit that'll turn the horde upon each other. Like the Specials, all the old items return, such as the molotov cocktail, the pipe bomb, and the forever-necessary health pack.

But wait, there's more! The infamous AI Director from the original game has seen an overhaul as well, with multiple new and advanced effects that are more dramatic than having zombies appear out of nowhere every now and then. It can call in a hurricane, a veritable Maelstrom that has such roaring thunder and pounding rain that you can hardly hear anything over voice comms unless you find shelter. Injuring zombies has also become a whole lot more grotesque, with torsos exploding when opened with shotgun fire, to limbs being severed by sharp melee weapons. There's so much extra content in Left 4 Dead 2 that there's almost no room for critique. Almost.

The single player mode is as redundant as it was before. The AI for them is very simple, acting more as bait for predatory Hunters and helping you up should the same befall you. There's really no comparison between the AI-run bots and actually having three other human beings standing shoulder-to-shoulder against the horde. Of course, unless you personally know all of those three players, the matchmaking can be very inconsistent. You can never be sure when a teamkiller will join your game, if you take the public route, Skill and teamwork are so important for success, and can be very variable when strangers are concerned. Also, the Scavenger mode is only available on one map, which is unfortunate considering the wide breath of Survival arenas.

In the end, the game is exactly what a sequel should be. It takes the original gameplay and then expands and refines it to create an almost unrecognisable successor. Every conceivable part of the game has been radically altered and fleshed out, and each change is an improvement. While the trappings of the multiplayer co-op game still haunt it, with the pointless single player and the wafer-thin plot being the most damning. If you have a few friends to play with, there's no better game to play co-operatively with. It outclasses its father in almost every regard, and thirty minutes of play should impose on even the most vitriolic of Valve's userbase that this is as far removed from an expansion pack as any game is likely to be.