Finally, it is here. The most hated and most expected game. The launch was delayed, like usually, but fortunately only few hours, not months or years The game is here. And ready to be played. Are you ready to survive?

Left 4 Dead 2 has new and really cool features, but game itself is filled with several bugs. You may get stuck inside a wall/table or and cannot move! Your AI controlled team members are morons of the year and do not always stick with you, so can happen that if you are incapacitated, you’ll watch your player to be totally wiped out, because AI bots cannot calculate the right way and will not come to rescue you! When somebody starts a fire, your AI controlled moron may walk right inside that fire and start screaming in pain and lose hitpoints! You probably remember that video that was posted here before, where human player fell over the edge of balcony and team of morons came to “help” him up, two of them stumbled and fell over the edge too and then the last AI idiot jumped over the edge and fell down, I mean totally down. And similar things happen very often. I think that Valve polished their Director so much but didn’t even try to make AI controlled bots smarter and competitive.

Single player (also multiplayer, if teammates are AI controlled) drives you nuts because of those idiot bots and bugs. Multiplayer is pretty okay, it has 5 of different multiplayer game types (co-op campaign, realism, versus, survival and scavenge) and it’s fun to play.

The game is definitely worth owning/playing. If you’re in Tier 1, then ask your Tier 2/UK friend to make a Christmas gift or simply wait for the weekend deal or other good deals. Or if you really hate your wallet, you can buy this game for 50€. But just look at the screens or play the demo and you will see, it is a pretty damn good game.

But enough of whining, let’s get to the cake!

Hint: Click on the images to see them bigger.

Quick run-down

The helicopters are still searching survivors from the infested cities and take them to the safety when found. But unfortunately you and other 3 persons were late and now are witnessing only how helicopters take off and leave you behind. But there is no time to waste, must go to south, where helicopters haven’t picked survivors up yet. So you have to get a vehicle. You go to shopping mall and “steal” a car. But as american cars eat so lots of gas, you can’t get too far and must continue on foot. You will arrive at the Circus, like in Zombieland (damn I’m in love with Wichita ) and start rock concert (of the Midnight Riders, rumored DLC content for L4D2) to signal the helicopter. Unfortunately the helicopter pilot, who picked you up, turned to zombie and had to be shot. So you fell down (or what happened?) and find yourself heading to swamp. New “mud-zombies” are introduced, but they are nothing special. After going through swamp and plantation, you manage to call a boat and get on the it. In next campaign you have to go and get extra gas for boat. But you will kicked out soon on the shore and you have to go through city (which is under bombardment) and reach the other side of huge bridge and get on the chopper. If you manage to do it, then you’re done with all campaigns Well done!

Cool features

Nice environments

   

Rock’n’roll!

Colorful melee fight!

 

And what do you think, did I kill that hunter with chainsaw or yes?

More details

 

Santa’s little helpers

 

Achievements

Check this nice 104.6% of all players stats.

Check here Total Playtime vs Past 2 weeks playtime Two weeks playtime is longer than total playtime

Mods

Still in love with Zoey? Get her back from here!

 

Other mods are available here – http://www.l4dmods.com/

DLCs

Valve announced on 14th December, that early 2010 will come game add-on, where L4D2 chars meet L4D1 chars in Georgian rural town. There will be a new co-operative challenge mode of play. Also it includes new “uncommon common” zombie class, a melee weapon and a firearm. It’s called “The Passing”. So there goes another 50€ Pricing will be announced closer to the launch.

Also there are some rumors about Midnight Riders DLC but this is probably only a speculation

Multiplayer games

Multiplayer – Co-op campaign

Well as you can understand from the name – it is co-operative campaign play. Start wherever you like and play it through with friends or strangers! I believe that your team members will be much smarter than AI controlled morons This mode can be switched to REALISM.

Multiplayer – Realism

This is probably one of the hardest playmode. You may choose any episodes of campaigns or play even full campaign (must be switched to campaign). In this mode you must have visual contact all the time otherwise you will lose your teammates because they are not seen through obstacles, no outlines and no names hovering over their heads.

In regular game, you will see outlines and names hovering above their heads, but as you an see on following pictures, there are none.

 

Multiplayer – Versus

Old good PvP deathmatch – Survivors vs. Infected. Who gets more kills? This mode can be switched to SCAVENGE.

Play Boomer, Hunter, Smoker, Tank, Spitter, Jockey or Charger when in Infected team (class is randomly chosen AFAIK).

Multiplayer – Survival

Prepare the battlefield – throw the flammable items around so you can light them on fire when infected horde is attacking. Prepare the weapons, deploy Santa’s Little helpers, start the show and survive! Another more – fun game mode and also requires little bit tactics.

Beat the survival records! Get bronze medal for 4:00 minutes, silver medal for 7:00 and gold medal for 10:00 minutes of staying alive.

Playgrounds: Bridge, Mall Atrium, Concert, Sugar Mill, Bus Depot, Burger Tank, Gator Village, Motel, Stadium Gate, Plantation.

       

Multiplayer – Scavenge

Scavenger mode is a probably most funniest type of a game. Survivor team must fill their goal and Infected team must do everything that the other team cannot fulfill their goal. There game/lobby leader can define the win conditions – single match, best of 3 or best of 5.

Sample goal – fill the car with gas cans. There are 3 rounds and team, who has most cans in the end, shall be winner.

 

Playgrounds: Dead Center – Mall Atrium, The Parish – Park, Hard Rain – Sugar Mill, Swamp Fever – Plank Country, Dark Carnival – Motel and Hard Rain – Milltown.

    

Screenshots

       

Bad features

* AI moronity. This VG Cats comics summarizes the AI Team member “intelligence”:

* All of your computer controlled team members are morons, who can’t follow.

Sometimes few of them doesn’t follow and take a break to watch the stars or jerk off, I don’t know exactly, what the hell they do when they must run for their lives. Situation: everybody were in safe room and Ellis was just standing outside the house, in the middle of the parking lot and guess what, doing nothing! I went and kicked his ass, shot him in the face, but nothing. Then I lured Boomer or Hunter on him and only then, after killing horde and reviving him, he realized, oh, there is a god damn safe-house, where he must go! And there was no Charger to punch him inside the wall, from he cannot break free. Unfortunately I didn’t do any screenshot then…

* AI controlled team mates are simply idiots. Yes, run straight to the fire and scream “awww! awww! awww!”, you moron!

 

* All of your computer controlled team members are morons, who can’t shoot.

 

* Buggy Charger AI: Charger can charge and run with you into a wall, so you will be inside that wall and you cannot move. What a stupid bug, huh? Fortunately, a friend Boomer helped me out there – it spit and then small animation began (as usual), where my character was shown in 3rd person view for few seconds and then switched back and fortunately out from the wall Note: The bugfix was released on 27th Nov.

* Another Charger AI bug that causes such buggy reactions by your morons: when walking on the roof, Charger comes and charges me off the roof, then 2 morons who are on the roof, will try to reach me from the roof and of course they will fall and will be hanging on the edge of the roof. And the third moron can’t decide whom should she help and which way to choose.

* Also was annoyed by the not balanced level lengths. Some of them are so long and some are so short.

* The bitch-witch is blocking the way all the time! Sometimes even safe-house!

  

* Shooting ladies, who may be dead but not so ugly like the other monsters.

 

* Stupid AI for mobs.

 

* When I say something, then I am one of those 4 players, but when I do something, then I am called with my own nickname (slay). So why to confuse people? Just choose one god damn name to call me!

 

 

Still hungry?

Check my Left 4 Dead 2 Demo post here, it contains screenshots and info about The Parish first 2 levels. There are also pictures about new features that weren’t covered in this post.

Creation trivia: Live Writer draft: 116mb, screenshots in post: 105, publishing: 15 minutes, first screenshot on 17th Nov, last screenshot on 08st Dec, screenshot size: 1680×1050, total screenshots made: 1140, total screenshots weight: 446mb; playing time to make this post:  15h 25m 41s (total), total bugs found: several

Review – Left 4 Dead 24.058

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