The first L4D was a modest breath of fresh air in FPS gaming; L4D2 felt like an expansion pack that was trying to pass as true sequel. I understand why so many fans are annoyed. There's nothing new in L4D2 that doesn't feel like it could have been modded into the original. A lot of little things indicate hastiness and lack of quality control, a failing you never expected from Valve after their years of fanatical attention to quality. For example, melee weapons are an interesting addition, but when you fall down carrying one, you suddenly have a pistol, and when you get up it disappears again. What!?
Some of the new features don't add anything to the game for me. The melee weapons are interesting, until you've worked through all the weapons, and you realize they provide no benefit over the standard pistols. Same for the new visuals. The gore when you shoot zombies is much more realistic, I guess, but it doesn't add anything to the previously established atmosphere. It just feels like something were able to add, so they did.
The voicework is mostly flat and adds little. The new crew is competently voiced, but the writing behind the lines is cardboard thin. The new witch vocalization sounds sadder at first, but soon comes off as just wailing. The original witch voice was more poignant - I could feel the pain of the witch's knowledge of her lost humanity; now its just some whiny kid to avoid.
The new special infected don't do much for me. I understand they were mostly added to help even out the multiplayer game, and prevent the survivors from camping out in one spot too long. So I can't really fault the addition for not adding much to the single-player game, which is treated like little more than a trainer for multi play. I have to mention the jockey though as just ridiculous; what a way to ruin what's left of the dark atmosphere. I think the voice actors even acknowledge this with seemingly purposefully bad line reads of their reactions to the jockey - they just phone it in like they can't even believe where this franchise is going. It doesn't help that the jockey is hard to counter if he gets anywhere near you. All the other specials have a narrow window in which you can counter them, if you're fast and skilled enough (which is a good reward for your attention and skill). But if the jockey gets within 10 feet of you it has you; you can't punch him away like you can the hunter, dodge the charger, dodge the spitter or smoker, etc. Silly and annoying.
I like the bio grenade, as implausible as it is. It does kind of hint of secret government shenanigans, but they didn't really go anywhere with it in the story. Speaking of not going anywhere, the story is not advanced at all. Wasn't the first game "Two weeks after infection", so when are we now? The two hero teams meet at The Passing, but then move on. I felt like I was being teased with hints of a story that was probably never going to be resolved.
I'm willing to let all that go, because I finally got what L4D was all about. The goal is not story and personal glory, but teamwork. In the original game, the campaign The Passing bloodily underlined that the team is more important for survival than any one person in it. You can debate that premise, but they made a solid case, and a solid game based on it. I didn't get it at first. I fumbled along, trying to apply my old FPS RPG tricks, failing again and again until it was beaten out of me. When I play these kind of games I'm used to looking out only for myself, and slowly plodding along until I know I can safely overcome obstacles with little risk. L4D taught me that I need to stick with my teammates at all cost, even at great cost to myself, or everyone loses. And it also taught me that you've got to keep moving, because the wolf is at your heels almost all the time, and you just don't have time to sit and think. This is painfully obvious in online play, but its a testament to Valve's skill that this also conveyed this in single player mode.
I always took every L4D game seriously and in character, even though my teammates were usually bots. This was lost in L4D2, as I couldn't care less about the characters. The new team, through some combination of lack of character and story, and probably voice acting, just don't grab me like the original survivors.
I always took every L4D game seriously and in character, even though my teammates were usually bots. This was lost in L4D2, as I couldn't care less about the characters. The new team, through some combination of lack of character and story, and probably voice acting, just don't grab me like the original survivors.
The lack of story shouldn't affect an action game, but it does. If you're not interested, and not invested, then the action becomes meaningless, and pointless, and boring.
I almost wonder if Valve did this on purpose, pushing a poor sequel out the door quickly on purpose to disappoint the fans, so they can now justify their incredibly long development times as a necessary evil. There are a lot of parallels between Valve fans and Apple fans for the amount of mistreatment we'll put up with for our fix.
I'm glad I played both the Left 4 Dead games, but it probably wasn't worth all the time it took, especially near the end. I also regret missing out on it when it was popular, as there were more people online to play with. This is a failing of my bargain bin gaming.
P.S. This is more a collection of rambling thoughts than a proper review; maybe I'll come back and edit it sometime. Probably not.
