Nerd Mentality

PREVIEW – Left 4 Dead 2

Posted October 31st 2009 by J Edison Thomas.

Happy Halloween, N-Philers!  I've put in some time with the early Left 4 Dead 2 demo for all good little girls and boys who reserve their video games, and I've got a spooktacularly long and tangential gob of impressions for you.  Plus, pics from Gareth's run through the demo!

Now, I needed no boner fluffing for the game's Nov. 17th release.  I've been on board since it was announced, but playing through the two stages of the Parish scenario has put aside any doubts I had that this game would swallow all my free time in 2010 and beyond.  By now, interested parties have had plenty of opportunity to find out what's in the game.  As far as how well new ideas are implemented, there's not much reason to worry.  In fact, the only reason I think people should even play the demo is because it's fun.  There shouldn't be much if any doubt that this is a game that deserves some attention this holiday season.

The new Special Infected types feel like a natural evolution from the first Left 4 Dead.  Because Valve created each new Special Infected to address specific gameplay concerns, nothing feels thrown in or extraneous.  Rather, you kind of wonder how the original game managed to work so well without creatures like the Spitter, whose projectile burning goo does a lot more damage that I'd expected.  I was anticipating something like the Molotov's slow-damage wall of fire, but standing in the Spitter goo for more than a second is suicide.  Any teams who plan on getting through a finale scenario by planting themselves in a safe location are going to have a rough time in this game.

Maybe it's the novelty, but all the newcomers seem to outclass the old Special Infected a bit.  If the Spitter's style is a mix of the Boomer and Smoker, the Charger and Jockey are both offshoots from the Hunter's ability to leap on a single survivor.  The Charger changes things up by knocking down any nearby survivors and smashing the shit out of whoever they grab.  The damage he does is ridiculous, so he instantly commands your attention once he's on the scene.  Reason being, unlike the old Special Infected, the Charger has the opportunity to deal some serious damage even if you catch him fairly early.  The Jockey doesn't do much damage on his own, but walking a Survivor farther and farther from their buddies has a huge potential for mischief in Versus matches.  The Jockey lets the Survivor drop once they've been "downed," so it'd make most sense to target the most healthy player so he could walk them the farthest away, a twist from the conventional wisdom of the first game.

Even the smaller changes, like suiting up some Infected with riot gear, or having the Witch wander around during the day, make pretty good sense to me.  You can't just fire randomly into a crowd, because the riot gear Infected will just keep getting back up unless you hit them in their exposed areas.  There were none of the mudmen Infected in the demo, or the hazmat Infected, but the more variety they put in the general horde, the more it mixes things up during the more general zombie-clearing.

On the Survivor side of things, the demo doesn't do a great job of illustrating the need for things like the defibrillator paddles or melee weapons.  I had kind of hoped the emergence of melee weapons meant that pistols would no longer be unlimited and careless players would eventually have to fall back on fighting off the army of undead with nothing but a machete.  Unlike the new Special Infected, the melee weapons don't appear to address a specific problem with the gameplay – they're fun to use for the novelty, but there doesn't seem to be much reason to run around swinging a guitar instead of using your pistols.  Maybe to knock around the riot gear Infected?  Anyway, it reminds me a bit of being the Tank, because a lot of the time I'd swing at an Infected who seemed to be right in front of me, only to completely miss and cause no damage.  That always frustrates me when playing as the Tank, and I don't have much desire to extend that feeling throughout the rest of the game.

One cool aspect of the melee weapons is they're somewhat reified in that once someone picks up a frying pan, the pan is no longer there for others to use.  Again, this seems like a concept that could really push the desperation aspect of wading through a zombie holocaust – if ALL the weapons were singular, you wouldn't have entire teams running through with AK-47s.  Some people would have to make due with an uzi or pistols until they happened onto another weapons cache.  As many people noted with the emergence of Resident Evil 4 and its boundless ammo supplies, there's something about the zombie survivor ethic that feels betrayed when you're packing too much heat.  But with only two stages of one scenario in the demo, there's no reason to think the threat doesn't justify the liberal distribution of weapons.

As an aside, though, it seems non-infinite weapons would flex the tenuous loyalty aspect of the game, adding a little more sense of competition to the mix.  The dynamic between helping your teammates and looking out for yourself is the core of what makes the game so interesting to me, so it feels like a missed opportunity to capitalize on that.  I hope the rest of the game creates more scenarios to test players' loyalty to each other, because more than anything else it's the clash of individual survival vs. teamwork that makes the game mirror zombie movies so well.

The defibrillator paddles, on the other hand, completely fit into the success of the first game.  In essence it adds another ticking clock to a game full of ticking clocks, giving Survivors another fleeting opportunity to save their friends, this time right after they die.  It also puts a tough choice on players, who will have to decide between carrying a life-replenishing health pack or a life-saving defibrillator.  It seems like a smart idea that adds variety to the game without changing the core game dynamics.  The only chance I had to actually use the defib paddles was at the very end of the demo, shooting a partner in a moment of safety just so I had a reason to zap them back to life.  Any chance in the full game where the defib paddles are called for is bound to be much more hectic, so I look forward to trying to using them in the real game, where I'm much more likely to fail and let my friend die.  Friends dying is what makes Left 4 Dead so fun anyway.

The enhanced Director isn't obvious in the demo, but there were a few times when pathways I'd used previously were boarded up or otherwise blocked on a later run-through.  It didn't affect how I played that much, but it's clearly a move to keep players from getting too savvy and ruining the game.  It definitely makes it a much bigger disadvantage to have your team play as Survivors first in versus, which might make for more balanced games (whichever team is winning plays as Survivors first).

The little details like music and the characters are things I didn't really pay much attention to in the first game, though I recognize that they're a big part of what brings the whole package together.  That said, it's pretty awesome to play in New Orleans, and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the Deep South in the full version.  There's something about the music and the rural ambiance of the South that enhances the creepy factor in a way that the generic city from the first game couldn't.  There's so much history of horror films in the South, and specifically such a history of zombies and assorted mysticism in New Orleans itself, that it's the perfect setting.  Plus, the Katrina allusions are pretty hard to miss, with desperate survivors attempting to escape a disaster scenario as CEDA (the fictional Civil Emergency and Defense Agency) bungles their rescue.  The cast overall feel more interesting than the Left 4 Dead group, but that's just my opinion so far. I wouldn't say it's a reason to buy the game or not, but I enjoyed my time with them.

In my opinion, you could rule out the possibility of Valve adding too  much and overbloating a good thing, like many people think Nintendo did with Super Smash Bros. Brawl.  On the other hand, I think people who flipped out over the idea that Valve would add too little (making a sequel out of something that could have been a free or small-change update) are a little off base.  Even from what the demo showcases, this is a full game that has the potential to completely eclipse the first Left 4 Dead and swallow your free time whole.  I hope this preview has been helpful to anyone still sitting on the fence, because there's certainly a lot to look out for next month.

Oh, and it's definitely most fun to play as Coach.

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Tags: left 4 dead 2, Left-4-Dead

Posted in: Gaming, Features

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