Left 4 Dead 2

Review from Jae - Wednesday, 06 January 2010 @ 12:23am

It’s hard to review a game that has been severely castrated for the Australian market. I’ll preface this by saying that the version I played has been an import copy of Left 4 Dead 2 and that if you intend to buy this game definitely look to obtain an uncensored version wherever you can. You would’ve seen some video comparisons out there already so you can see how awful the Australian version has become. It’s a sad time to be living in this country, having a game of this caliber cut down to reach our shores is abysmal to say the least.

L4D2 won’t provide you that wow factor you had with the first title. Looking at the whole package Valve has pretty much made the sequel a little bit better than the first in every aspect. The new additions like melee weapons, new firearms and new specially infected are only improvements on the first rather than innovation. The new campaigns however breathe some fresh air into the game. Dead center takes place in a shopping mall and gives you a very different objective towards the end whereas Dark Carnival has a different setting from what we’re used to in most survival horrors. The other three campaigns don’t offer much variation but they do have a more open feeling to them than the first title. For instance to get from one area to the next you have options that don’t seem too linear. At the end of the day you end up in the same place as if you had taken a different route but it’s nice to have that minimal feeling of choice in your path.

On the 360 there’s not really any big improvement over the graphics. Since I’m playing from the point of view of the uncensored version there is a lot more gore and detail when dismembering an infected. Shooting an infected in the back with a rifle will most likely expose his spine and rib cage and using a machete up close and personal will give you a satisfying decapitation. As immature as it may sound the gore makes a lot of difference in a game that pits you against the odds of a bajillion enemies. After playing an uncensored version I cannot imagine playing a local one but then again if you’ve never played it uncensored you may simply not know what you are missing, or even care. I doubt it though. Ultimately the game play doesn’t change, so if you’re still keen the MA15+ version could be your cuppa.

The Australian version of L4D2 was hit with the censor stick

One gripe I have is the massive slowdown. Playing this in splitscreen co-op gets quite choppy when a horde comes charging infront of you. More time could’ve been spent fixing this as the slow frame rate doesn’t match the intense music you get when a hundred infected start clawing at your face. Some of the new items are mute, the defibrillator, a life reviver that fills your first aid placeholder, is hardly worth carrying (unless you play expert mode) and the adrenaline shot is mainly for that last run towards the boat or helicopter. I do like the addition of the boomer bile which can be used to lure infected towards an area or another infected. You still need to kill the bunch of infected surrounding the boomer bile which makes it less useful than a pipe bomb in most instances.

If I had to write a guide to a Left 4 Dead game it will simply be “Teamwork is your friend”. You can’t survive a campaign or versus on your own. I did notice, since the specially infected have grown in variation, that you encounter each one more often. They’re not too damaging on their own but you can face life threaten danger when they do gang up. Once we were all getting off an elevator where we were greeted by a hunter, spitter, jockey and a witch. This by the way spells disaster. The new spitter is ingenious as it spits acid in your vicinity with the objective of spreading out your team so that it can divide and conquer. The charger is avoidable, if you see it in time, and the jockey is pure annoyance. I still like the original specially infected more but the new additions do contribute towards a smarter strategy. Not only are there new specially infected but you can find some colourful horde in the mix such as clowns and riot police. The riot police have bullet proof armour so your best bet is to distract them whilst another player shoots them in the back where it is unprotected.

Can't sleep, clown will eat me

If you plan to play this game online for the majority then you may have to simply put up with no Aussie gamers and cop the lag of the Americas. It’s not unbearable but it limits the play type to hanging around behind the team and using long ranged weapons as opposed to hand guns and melee ones. Try to find some local friends (i.e. me) and you could have a blast through the campaign. I’ve tried to find local versus games but I can’t seem to connect or find any. Perhaps it’s true and no one actually bought this game on 360 in Australia?!

I remember the first time I played Left 4 Dead, it delivered a level of fun I hadn't experienced in a video game for a while. Sucking many hours out of my time L4D1 quickly became one of my most enjoyable games of last year. When the announcement came out of E3 in June that Valve would be releasing Left 4 Dead 2, I wasn't one of the people that bitched and complained about why this wasn't DLC – was way too excited for the fact that more zombie killing was on the way.

When Valve came out to Australia in early October, I was fortunate enough to get invited to the media conference to hear Gabe Newell talk all about the awesome games they make. This is when my first taste of L4D2 arrived, a truly epic session of L4D2 with Erik Johnson from Valve... I just wanted to throw that last part in there so I could rub it in a little, I basically tell everyone I meet... you would too if you got to play L4D2 with Erik Johnson.
So all this was happening at the time when Valve had appealed the RC decision from the Classification Board, the build we were playing on was the “censored” version of L4D2 that was submitted as a backup in case the appeal failed. It did not occur to me at all during this instance that I was playing the “censored” version of the game. I think this is because in my opinion the gore looked about the same as the original, and I had not known that the violence was jacked up during the development of this new game.
When I finally saw what L4D2 was supposed to be like and then looked back at the build that I had played, there was no way I was going to pay full Australian price for a watered down game - this is why I picked up the U.S. version of the game on PC.

It's close to midnight and something evil's lurking in the dark

If you're a fan of the original then you'll be happy to know that this feels exactly like Left 4 Dead, the transition across to the sequel should be seamless enabling you to get right into the thick of the action. Really the only learning curve that you'll need to work around is the new special infected for the versus and scavenger mode.
The Spitter would have to be the biggest game-play changer, and also my favourite new member of the infected team. Survivors now no longer have the option to camp in a section with the Spitter on the loose, its ability to shoot pools of acid means the cast needs to keep on the move or suffer the consequence by taking large amounts of damage. With the addition of these new special infected though, the Hunter has now taken a back seat role in the game. There doesn't appear to be a real good use for the Hunter any more, it’s sometimes very hard to find a tall structure in the game to pounce off from to deal a decent amount of damage.

Valve have done an amazing job by overhauling the AI Director in the game to enhance the players experience. The Director is able to change certain aspects of the map, for example it can block paths, change the lighting and control the weather conditions - this is just a few ways that valve have decided to make the levels a little different looking the next time you may go through them.
The amount of new inventory items that have been added to L4D2 is also very refreshing, a huge range of main weaponry, healing items, and melee weapons give players a wide variety of choices that they can make.

Like a scene straight out of a movie

Once again Valve has made an excellent game, however it is very unfortunate that due to our outdated rating system a lot of people will not get to play this game the way it was supposed to be played. It’s a brilliant sequel which should satisfy fans of the original, definitely one of my top games of this year.

Pros

Larger range of weapons and items
AI Director improvements
360: A refined experience from the first.
PC: Fantastic PC community

Cons

360: Hardly any Australian players online, framerate issues and NO GORE
PC: Sometimes connects to a server overseas.