It’s difficult to believe it was only last fall when Left 4 Dead first impressed upon us the importance of the buddy system when faced with B-movie inspired zombie uprisings. A year to the date later, we’re presented with a sequel that is bigger and more fleshed out than its campy predecessor. There are more missions, more infected types, more weapons, more items, and more game modes. The quantity of content is an obvious plus, what with the impending zombie apocalypse looming in our not so distant future. Sure, we’re going to need all the practice we can get, but does Left 4 Dead 2 sacrifice quality for quantity?

The gameplay in Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t vary much from the original game’s winning formula of shooting down zombies with friends. Your four person team still wades through thousands of undead, progressing from safe house to safe house en route to a tense stage-ending crescendo, followed of course by the part where you run like little girls in hopes of reaching the escape vehicle. It’s all about working together as a team and this is still one of the best co-op experiences out there. I’ve played no other franchise where gamers so actively rush to aid fallen teammates and call out weapon and item locations. Many of those items will be the new zombie killing tools at your disposal, including new ammo-enhancing upgrades that allow you to shoot explosive or flammable rounds, and new firearms like more powerful combat rifles and grenade launchers. However, the most game-altering addition to your arsenal comes in the form of melee weapons. No longer are you limited to simply pushing the infected away with your arm or butt of your weapon; now you can take their heads clean off (as well as any other extremity that strays too close) with a chainsaw, katana, electric guitar, cricket bat, or any number of swing-able pick-ups found within the levels.

The game’s five campaigns are set entirely in the dirty south (who knew Louisiana and Georgia were so into cricket?), and each well-designed level is visually unique ranging from carnivals to swamps to shopping malls. There are a lot of great set pieces. One in particular involves a non-stationary crescendo event where you are crossing a bridge and another has a fantastic sequence of pouring rain that truly tests your sense of direction. The ragtag bunch of survivors from the first game has been replaced with four new equally stereotypical archetypes. There’s the southern hillbilly “Ellis”, the white-suited gambler “Nick”, the girl “Rochelle”, and the overweight football coach named… “Coach”. Ellis and Coach are the driving force behind most of the humorous and interesting dialogue, while Nick and Rochelle are overshadowed by the stronger personalities.

Your four heroes are challenged by three new Special Infected types (added to the five found in the original title), and each has their own unique way of separating members from the group. The most diminutive of the trio is the Jockey who piggybacks upon a survivor in order to spur them towards groups of zombies and away from their human teammates. The Charger (a combination of a Hunter and a Tank) can ram into and knock down multiple survivors and can repeatedly slam a single unlucky person into the ground until they are a bloody pulp. Perhaps the most frustrating of the new enemies is the Spitter who vomits puddles of acid that quickly deteriorate your health and can cause even the best laid plans to go awry. Also thrown into the mix are “uncommon common infected” which are level-specific and include clowns, swat members, and hazmat-suit wearing zombies.

The driving force which truly made the first Left 4 Dead work was the A.I. Director – a seemingly supernatural being that deployed zombies in a manner that promised to adjust to your team’s ability and style of play. With an uncanny ability to alter the experience to just the right level of tension, I generally left a session of Left 4 Dead with a sense of satisfaction even if the whole team didn’t make it out alive. In fact, the moments where I lay helplessly on the ground yelling for everyone to go on without me were often the most exhilarating. The A.I. Director is back in Left 4 Dead 2, but based on the sessions I’ve played, he’s a tad more unreasonable this time around – seemingly not only wanting to eat my brains, but my eyes as well. Rarely in the original game did I encounter instances where my entire team was eliminated over and over again, but that seems to be a common occurrence in the sequel. With eight, instead of five, Special Infected types at the Director’s disposal, the game is more challenging and his itchy trigger finger routinely deploys two or three Specials at a time. This can quickly incapacitate your entire team. Since the levels are longer and the safe houses are farther apart, this leads to repeating large portions of the game. In one instance, my party had to replay the same section seven or eight times (it took us over 2 and half hours to finish the level) before finally dropping the difficulty from Normal to Easy. At that point the game had crossed the line from fun to frustrating and the familiar Left 4 Dead feeling of satisfaction was replaced with a universal “Thank God that’s over”. The balance just isn’t as spot-on as the original and, while we were able to complete some campaigns in an hour to an hour and a half, the time commitment to play and actually beat the longer levels actually makes me less likely to replay them. Strangely enough, playing through levels on my own with three computer-controlled teammates was consistently easier on the Normal difficulty than in the multiplayer, but, understandably, was not as enjoyable as playing with friends.

On a smaller note, the game has also shipped with some graphical glitches. There were a few times when my character’s hand would be stuck in an outreaching manner like he was trying to pick something up. Firing a shot returned the animation back to normal, so it’s a small annoyance but one that happens frequently. More concerning to the game play is the clipping. Not only do zombies frequently clip through walls but I encountered a few instances where my human teammates would get stuck inside of walls.

The main campaigns are supplemented with other multiplayer modes that all offer quick bites of fun. Versus mode is back and allows four players to play as the survivors while four others play as the Special Infected. The new fast-paced Scavenge Mode extends upon that idea having the humans try to retrieve gas cans to fuel a generator in a sort of capture the flag manner. There is also an enemy wave based Survival Mode that plays similarly to the crescendos from the campaign.

Overall, Left 4 Dead 2 certainly justifies itself with a load of new content and creative ways to cooperatively take out zombies. The new weapons, levels, and Special Infected offer fresh experiences, but there are some balancing issues that need to be tweaked. I’m convinced there’s more fun contained in this game than I’m currently having, and I hope it can be addressed somehow with patches. If the real-world zombie outbreak turns out to be this frustrating, I’m hosed. Go on without me!

Very Good
Outstanding | Very Good | Fair | Poor | Awful

Recommended Buy Price: $40.00
Current MSRP: $59.99

Left 4 Dead 2 was provided for review by Electronic Arts. The five campaigns were completed over the course of nine hours and an additional two hours were spent playing the other multiplayer modes. I currently have amassed 9 Achievements worth 155 Gamerscore. Left 4 Dead 2 is also available on PC.