Left 4 Dead 2 Released!

[poisonic]

i played the demo i love the game

[Major Banter]

The switches are the wrong way up.

Fail.

[Bema]

I've spent the entire day playing DJ Hero...sort of forgot about L4D2.

Woops.

[YokaI]

Scavange mode is really what justifies the thing as a sequel, and the more cinematic campaigns (End of The Perished was epic) but I still think that if you can't get the game at a low price (lower than 50 dollars) you may want to wait a while. I wouldn't say I can't go a day without playing this game, especially since it feels a lot like the predecessor, but if you can get it at a reasonable price I guess it may or may not be worth it for you....

Some people are claiming that L4D2's campaigns are less boring, but once the novelty runs out you'll all probably start feeling the same way you feel about l4d's campaigns. I'll probably write something a little more when I experience more of the game, but if any of these changes were applied to the old l4d campaigns it would have made l4d a much more valuable purchase imo, and with this "sequel" out now, I doubt there will be a time when valve decides to patch l4d1 with advanced gore and melee weapons (assuming those features are visual tricks and not integrated into the engine in some special way.)

[S.W.A.T.Y]

Going right now to gamestop to pick it up.

[Blink]

I have no idea why everyone is impressed by this game, it's an utter waste of time.

I played the demo and was largely disappointed by what was essentially CS: Source with zombies but I hoped the full game would be better.

Played through the first campaign and it's worse than the first game.

There is zero atmosphere and I mean zero. I just wondered around waiting for the next wave of zombies which the AI director enjoyed spawning roughly every 2 minutes and killed any chance of fear building up.

Thankfully the first campaign is in complete daylight which destroyed any chance of the game being even slightly scary. Night time and rain might be overused but it bloody works.

The special zombies are not even a threat any more. The charger takes just a few bullets to go down and the spitter and jockey are just pests.

Some of the level design is atrocious with just square corridors everywhere and the whole game has a completely cartoon feel which I guess is suited for console idiots.

I really wish I'd never bought it, what a load of tosh.

[popcornjake]

Some of the level design is atrocious with just square corridors everywhere.

I was incredibly surprised by this, I guess that's just one of the vices of a 12 month long development period. Other campaigns are more fruitful with their environments, but I did not sit back at any point and say "oh wow this area is pretty nice" as I did in l4d1 a dozen or so times.

It was still fun playing through the thing with some mates, but those plain square corridors and generally bland maps have no place in a full price retail game, we here at interlopers could do a better job .

[ThePain]

we here at interlopers could do a better job .

I hear a challenge.

The Interloper L4D2 Campaign. Everyone who wants to helps.

[Mephasto]

well i like the second one much better than first, man you should play the dark carnival.. darn it was awesome! were speaking of some great level design there.

[sdematt]

Ugh, so after hearing all this bad news, I'm holding off on buying it.

How are the grenade launcher and chainsaw? I'm excited for those.

[Psy]

I haven't played the full game but I share the same feelings as Blink with the demo. I'm going to hold off till it's £15.

[joe_rogers_11155]

I have no idea why everyone is impressed by this game, it's an utter waste of time.

This.

I think the melee weapons are spammed horribly, and the placement of firearms is just too predictable to be interesting. There's always a grenade launcher nearby and there's always plenty of other weapons and ammo laying about to keep you from feeling a need to use your melee weapons.

Now, I haven't played realism mode yet, but it would be realistic if there was only one shotgun at a time in a place, instead of infinite shotguns for the whole gang. And the ammo should be a little harder to come by. I dunno.

I just think Left 4 Dead 2 is not yet justified as a full sequel. Perhaps another year of development and innovation would have been nice, or simply DLC like the community craved so hard for in the past.

[Guessmyname]

well i like the second one much better than first, man you should play the dark carnival.. darn it was awesome! were speaking of some great level design there.

Yeah. Dark Carnival and the fourth campaign (who's name escapes me) are probably the best levels. Which is a bit telling, as they're both the only night levels. The fourth in particular is awesome because it's in the middle of a tropical storm. Visibility goes nuts.

Some of the items I felt were a bit useless. The defibs and ammo, for example, are pretty much pointless, as they replace medikits. And the defibs are absolutely bloody everywhere... and only useful if someone else dies.

They also claimed to have more plot, which I feel I have to disagree with. The plot only really starts to kick in in the final campaign:

Where the army takes over, and also implies that the 'immunes' (ie, you) are, in fact, actually carriers for the disease whom the military are shooting

Even then there's no real ending, just implication (You don't find out what happens after you escape etc). You don't see much more of CEDA, and the only 'plot' between the other campaigns basically amounts to you starting with the escape vehicle from the previous campaign. There's nothing really overarching. I was expecting an actual CEDA facility or an overrun refugee camp at some point... there isn't one. It's a shame.

[YokaI]

I think blink nailed it slightly on mark, though I can't imagine people thinking l4d1 is better than l4d2. I will agree that there's some flaws with the level design in terms of conventionality, however it seems with l4d2 they wanted you to choose your own way of playing the map, trying to increase the atmosphere of you being the actual survivors in the situation and eliminating the idea of it being a linear path with waves of zombies. For example, Hard Rain gives players a lot of options to chose how they want to get through a segment. Due to the weather events, players have to either get shelter every now and wait for the storm to calm to allow better sight and movement, or players can rush through the storms and try to reach the house as fast as possible. This way of giving players their own routes is interesting, however everyone who plays a campaign for the first time sits and wonders "where the hell do we go next" because there's not really a clear sign of linear route in the map... Though some of the level design ideas are interesting, where in hard rain to you from point a, to b, and back to point a for the finale. And the zombie gauntlets and such can be interesting, even though sometimes they break the atmosphere. (Who the hell puts a bunch of fences in a maze pattern?)


The melee weapons are ok, I think it's a good replacement for the pistol, but now the pistol is nearly worthless unless playing on expert where you can't have zombies hit you at all or else you will regret it.

There are a few bugs with doors opening and closing, in which opening a door will sometimes have the door be shut once the door reach the full open position.

Flame Bullets are a bit inconvenient (replaces health pack) and they don't really make it up in terms of use.

Scavange mode is still awesome, this is the multiplayer I wish L4D had!

Characters are great, but often break the mood with their jokes. I've heard rochelle crack a joke about coach dying, almost as if she didn't care. Can't remember specifically what she said though.

Already have addon support, which would seem to mean mapping tools aren't too far away!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Now here's the deal breaker. I think l4d2 will only be worth it IF THEY ALLOW THIRD PARTY MODS using the l4d engine as a base. There's plenty of potential multiplayer and co-op mods that could use the L4D2 engine, so to not allow any l4d mods at this time is completely ridiculous!

[Zipfinator]

I thought that L4D2 used the L4D Author tools. Do they need to update them first though? I recall Chet saying we'd have them on release.

And I'm kind of disappointed to hear that a lot of you don't like it, I don't have a full opinion on the game yet because I haven't been able to play it. I don't have extremely high standards though so I think I'll be fine with it. At the very least it will give a lot more content for custom campaigns.