Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360)

Animations

A few times the animation fails to synch up properly, notably when healing other players and so on, but it can be forgiven. The rest of the animations are good quality with a high level of motion detail paid to the various infected, the survivors and the special infected. The quality of the infected death animations when shot or when struck by a melee weapon is great, you will actually see some of them poke at the big hole a shotgun or high powered rifle leaves in their gut before falling over.

The level of gore isn’t really anything to be concerned about, I mean its zombies. We see far worse in news reports.

Physics

Source has always had good solid physics and in the case of L4D2 it has been tuned again, explosions are suitably impressive and the environment feels more reactive now, especially in the first campaign when you’re inside a building that’s on fire and collapsing. You can feel each crash and shake as the roof comes in above you. Melee physics has a nice feel to it as well, the frying pan makes a beautiful defensive and offensive weapon smacking zombies to the ground.

AI

The survivor AI is pretty solid for the most part, though sometimes it will go and do something completely idiotic, rather like a human player. I’ve not seen too many bad path-finding moments in the sequel though compared to L4D. The infected AI is good, it runs the gamut from blindingly stupid zombie AI to cold and calculating Hunter AI and the teamwork between several core infected sub-types can be quite scary to see in action. Being dragged off by a Jockey into the arms of a Smoker or a Hunter for instance whilst the Spitter coats you in acidic goo, can be most unfair. It is also pretty awesome too.

Sound

Valve have done a good job here on the audio, it’s extremely atmospheric and the use of key audio signatures for the various infected can provide a valuable clue as to what kind of bad guy is about to rip your head off. Or try to eat your brains. Weapon sound-effects are great as well as the sound of the frying pan as it dongs off the face of a zombie, it’s comparable to the awesome moment in Psycho where Norman Bates first hits someone with a shovel.

Music

There’s a variety in the music of L4D2 that isn’t present in other games, suffice it to say that the music is excellent and the strings for When the Saints Come Marching in totally nail the ‘shiver down the spine’ factor. It’s utterly superb stuff and extremely chilling.

Voice/Dialogue

The voice artists do a great job with their lines and whilst the new characters lack the appeal of the old 4, you can find yourself warming up to the various characters over time thanks to their performances. The dialogue itself is very well written and fills in various background details as time passes.

Multiplayer

Adversarial is back, tweaked and better than ever with the new infected and Valve’s patient balancing. It’s a literal blast to play as the new types and fans of the original will find a heck of a lot to love here. You can play with friends over system-link, or rock out online and join the carnage. Not content with the original adversarial, Valve have made the game even more frenetic by adding Scavenge to the mp game type. This is a special mode where you must collect gas cans to fuel up a generator before the 2 minute timer expires. Each can add 20 seconds.

Your enemies, 4 special infected, will do their level best to stop you. The best two out of three matches wins, at half-time the players switch sides.

The main crux of the matter is that Valve have taken multiplayer and tweaked it from L4D, they’ve made sure the new maps and modes work well with the new survivors, new weapons and items as well as the new special infected, basically, it’s pretty much the best adversarial fun you can have in a zombie apocalypse yet.

The bottom line

Left 4 Dead 2 isn’t Left 4 Dead 1.5 since there’s a wealth of new content, new features, tweaked A.I. Director 2.0 and more changes than you can shake a stick at. I have a feeling if this game came out last year, people would have been really happy with L4D but without the former you can’t enjoy the latter, just the same as with Assassin’s Creed. If you loved L4D and you are boycotting L4D2 then you are missing out on some great follow-up action, 2 is the sequel that we hoped it would be and more.