
Graphically, the Source engine looks a little dated, but to say this game looks bad would be the opposite of the truth. The facial animations look as spot on as they ever have on the Source engine, even though the details and general “crispness” is a little lacking all around. The animations of the character models are much improved over L4D1. Where in the first one zombies would kind of stagger and jerk when you shot them, everything seems a helluva lot smoother now. Additionally, the zombies will… break apart… a little more realistically. Hell, you can blow a hole in a zombie with a magnum and see through the area where his torso used to be, and as a kicker, he’ll still be running right at you! The melee weapons, which include an axe, a cricket bat, and yes, even a chainsaw, all do horrible, nasty things to the zombies, and really, what more could you ask from a zombie game? From an audio standpoint, L4D2 continues the excellence from the first one. It’s creepy stalking through an abandoned town hearing the grunting and groaning of zombies, broken by the guttural growl of the hunter, the wheezy cough from the smoker, and don’t even get me started on the charger’s sick-cow bellow (laugh now, you won’t be when he’s charging your butt half way across the map as you round a corner).
The game comes packing with five huge campaigns. The levels are A LOT longer now, only adding to already increased difficulty. Even the campaigns that have four instead of the normal five levels last longer than any of the campaigns in L4D1. What’s even cooler is that each has it’s own “thing” regardless of the fact that they’re all based in the southern US. A shining example of the new campaigns is the Hard Rain campaign. For this campaign, your goal is to, throughout five levels, collect gas cans at the end of town and trek back. So as you move through the town, you’ll have to ration your supplies. If there’s four health packs in the second safe room and you take three of them, on your return trip you better hope you’re all in pretty good shape, because there’s only going to be one left in that safe room. The AI director will also alter the weather condition in the second half of this campaign. Heavy (and I mean HEAVY) rain will kick in periodically if you’re having too easy of a time and make the visibility reduced to almost zero. Turns out I had no idea what “tense” was until I was huddled around my team mates in the middle of a flooded street, being able to hear the zombies rushing in at us from all around us, and not being able to see a damn thing until they’re swinging at us with their gaping wounds and glowing eyes. The finale of the final campaign (if you’ve read up on this game at all, you know that you have to cross a bridge) is epic. It is, without a doubt, the most intense five minutes in a video game I’ve ever experienced, each time I play it! You hit the button and see the bridge lower in front of you, off in the distance you can hear the zombies scream, and the metal divider drops in front of you once the bridge gets into place. Once it slams on the ground, it immediately reminded me of the first Medal of Honor game (or really any WWII game after that) when they had you play the storming of the beach of Normandy. Call it far-fetched if you will, but your heart will be pumping once you begin that long run all the way till the end… that is, if you make it!
True to Valve’s word, there is a story in L4D2, though most will probably overlook it their first time through. A word of advice, take your time in the safe rooms, check out the posters and memos on the wall, there’s actually a pretty interesting story unfolding before the survivors, as well as a few easter eggs tying it all into L4D1. It’s pretty clear why people are missing the story, though, as the game requires you to move quick in order to succeed. And in true Valve fashion, the story is not told through cut scenes, but rather through the environment and the characters themselves. Luckily, you can care as little or as much attention to the story as you want to and still have fun with this game, just some added pleasure if you choose to seek it out. Speaking of which, the characters all have their own personality and really add to your immersion into the game. Players will find their favorite characters, and it’s hard to hate any of them. Though it’s impossible to top L4D1’s cookie-cutter perfect zombie apocalypse survivors, if you head into this game with an open mind, these characters will fill the void very nicely.

So what we have here is a sequel where everything is improved upon. Because I try to keep my integrity with these reviews, I set aside a paragraph before I began this review to state the cons with this game, hoping something would come to me before I got to the end. Alas, nothing did. All I can say for all of you looking to bash this game is to try it out. Some people may not like the increased difficulty. Some people may not like the longer campaigns or the more wide open maps. Some people may really hate the characters. I am not in any of these groups. If you had asked me to make a list of changes I wanted to see in this sequel, I would have named probably half of what I got, the extra (and I’ve barely begun to discuss them all with this wall of text) is just the bloody frosting on this upside-down brain cake.
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