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Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Valve Games Review (Part 2 of 2): Left 4 Dead 2

For my Valve game review, I take a look at Left 4 Dead 2 and its predecessor. I still remember, back in elementary school, my friend and I (both avid FPS gamers) were getting tired of CS 1.6 and CS:S, but one day, my friend spots an ad by Valve featuring L4D. Every single day, both of us would search for new Left 4 Dead gameplay videos, and I can't begin to describe the anticipation that was in both of us. Remember for us, this was essentially the newest FPS out since CS:S from Valve so we were very anxious.
Leaf 4 Dead 2 features Uncommon Commons
Getting incapacitated, picking them up and healing them? Playing as zombies? These were all unheard features of any game before its time (to our knowledge at that time). And when L4D was finally released, both of us immediately bought it. I'll have to say, both of us enjoyed it thoroughly and the game pretty much lived up to the hype. But not a year later, L4D2 was announced and this marks the split of the L4D fandom/community.

     I personally was initially against L4D2 being released so early. The main reason was that Valve promised constant updates to L4D, just like in TF2 where maps, weapons and new features were constantly added (see my other blog post). I remember I read a quote from a Valve employee that said (I'm paraphrasing), "There were many things we wanted to do for L4D but didn't, so we're doing them in L4D2". Immediate, I thought "It's not too late!", "You can release your ideas as updates for L4D". But no, L4D2 was released, and eventually, the fan base rose as time went on.
     To be fair, there are lots of new features in L4D2 such as mutations, new weapons (Military Sniper Rifle, AK47, deagle, adrenaline, uncommon commons and new special infecteds). I've enjoyed L4D2 along with a bunch of my friends, but with any good game, there are always a few downfalls.

     To give a basic gameplay overview, there is single player where you play as a human (with 3 others) and fight your way through various zombies to reach a rescue point. There is also a multiplayer mode (max of 8 people, 4 on each team) and you essentially take turns being the zombies and humans for each map (you get to play as both on every map) so obviously, teamwork becomes a huge variable for enjoyable games. Well, so with multiplayer, there are some idiots (we are talking about the internets) and some people enjoy ruining other peoples games. Some enjoy glitching (such as getting to unreachable places) and some griefing (such as team killing). But not all of this comes at the fault of the player, there are many evident glitches in L4D2 that haven't been fixed for awhile. But overall, I found some good friends to play with, to ensure at least an enjoyable game and I'm also expecting many more updates in the future (such as map ports from L4D1).


I do not own or take credit for all of the above image, if you would like them to be taken down, please message me.

Anyone else play games from the L4D series? What's the best zombie game you know? What do you like/dislike about co-operative shooters?
   

19 comments:

David Ian said...

i love this game and valva its 1 of the best game company of the world pretty nice post +1

Xenototh said...

Tired of CS? Blasphemy! I played LFD, but I just couldn't get into it as much. As for best zombie game, that's going to Resident Evil 2 and 3. In an FPS format? I don't know about that one...

InfoTube said...

Great game!

Philip said...

I personally enjoy both games. I tend to play L4D2 more as it's more multiplayer friendly (at least, there's more variety so we can play with each other, or against each other if we're feeling evil)

Some of the DLC ties the 2 games together as well.

Unknown said...

One of my favorite shooting games.

HiFi said...

I've never played lfd2 before, but I might just pick it up sometime and give it a shot.

Kopite said...

I'm waiting for Steam's summer sale to get this. I missed out last December's sale sadly but managed to get TF2 and BF2 on sale <$10

Magixx said...

epic, keep it up!

Zander said...

Good read, have a great weekend!

Alice said...

I've not actually gotten round to playing this yet, but from what I've heard it's interesting, I've also been to a few talks by people from Valve talking about it.

psychpost said...

i love the movie feel on these games

Delirium Tiger said...

offtopic. If you played Portal 2 can you tell me if that super 8 tech demo was just movie ad or they plan to make game too?

Dola said...

tried playing the original on xbox it was meh =\

animestan said...

@ Delirium Tiger, I'have player Portal 2 (albeit I haven't finished it) but I'm not sure what "Super 8 tech" is. Is there a link to it?

Anonymous said...

I really liked L4D2. The violence was very entertaining

mindlessfrk said...

Awesome game indeed, once I started playing with my cousin, and only after 4 hours we stopped, and we were like, what? it's 5am?

Ante Babaja said...

left 4 dead rules

Moobeat said...

solid review

ChromaticFPS said...

I did not enjoy LFD2 at all. I did enjoy beating zombies to death with a guitar though lol.

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