Comments on: Review | Left 4 Dead 2

By: Martin Gaston

Martin Gaston — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:39:38 +0000

Sheriff Denby should really organise a game night to address that concern.

By: Christos Reid

Christos Reid — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:56:06 +0000

Nice review, Dan. Seems like an improvement, but ultimately a formula I tired of out of never playing with friends, only random 13-year-old French kids :(.

By: Persus-9

Persus-9 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:44:56 +0000

Many thanks for the reply. I guess the time I really felt the melee weapons were really useful was the Dark Carnival when you’re trying to get into the last saferoom. Although I’m sure a good team could handle that bottleneck in different ways. I have to admit I’m mediocure at best at L4D and I don’t really have many friends who play it so the teams I work in our generally pretty awful public groups so I guess we’re looking at the melee weapons from very different perspectives. As a fairly poor player typically in a fairly poor team I found myself shoving quite a lot in L4D and I really liked the fact that with the melee weapons I can basically do a shove like move where everything I shove dies. I guess as a good player who plays in good teams you find pistols are more the thing since you can hold a horde back away from you more easily. They ultimately feel like a useful alternative to me because whilist zombies shouldn’t be that close in my experience they all to often are.

By: Daniel Lipscombe

Daniel Lipscombe — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:13:13 +0000

I’ve played the original every week since release, the smoker comment was based more in the fact that Valve have added detail and the character model has been changed. It may also be the fact that a lot of the game is played in daylight and it highlights the models more. In respect of the CEDA comment, thank you for pointing it out, I didn’t notice it in the first game, as you said it’s less prominent.

To address the melee weapons, I found them underwhelming. Yes as you say you can fend off hordes of zombies with them, but you can also still shove them back and if you’re working in a good team, you shouldn’t really need to do more than shove them and shoot. If the weapons had perhaps been used as part of moving through the environment or otherwise implemented better, I would have enjoyed them more.

They ultimately feel like a gimmick to me, anyway, the zombies shouldn’t be that close ;)

By: Persus-9

Persus-9 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:04:57 +0000

I’m amazed Daniel found the melee weapons disapointing. I’ve been playing on the PC version admittedly so maybe they aren’t as good on the 360 but on PC they’re very useful and I’d pretty much always pick one of the good melee weapons over a single pistol. They’re by far the best weapons for fighting at close quarters and unless the 360 version is a very different beast then fighting at close quarters isn’t an optional activity since at times the AI director will send zombies at you faster than you can shoot them, that’s kind of the point of a zombie horde otherwise you’d never lose any health.

Please forgive the pedantry but I’d like to point out that CEDA stands for Civil Emergency and Defence Agency and it’s the L4D equivilent of the real world US government agency FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. CEDA also featured in L4D, all be it less prominantly. Also the smoker always had sores and boils. Admittedly they’ve grown larger since L4D but pointing them out as if they’re a new feature almost makes me wonder how recently Daniel played the original…

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:06:23 +0000

I loved the first L4D, but don’t really play it any more. I had scribbled L4D2 down on my Christmas wish-list, as I was keen to play it but not desperate – but now I really want it! I’m still not quite sure about paying full price for it (though I was never caught up in any sympathy for the angry boycott), but now I really want to play it. Maybe I will trade L4D, as it’s unlikely I’ll ever go back to it now…

By: NokkonWud

NokkonWud — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:21:19 +0000

Glad to see it’s an all round improvement over the original, but still slightly disappointed that it’s more of an evolution than a revolution. I am still not sure whether this really required a new, retail release, especially as Left 4 Dead was so woefully developed upon by Valve when it came to DLC. A series of 800/1200 point chapters would have been so much more appealing.

After all is said and done, very little actually measures up to the thrills and spills of a campaign co-op that is provided by Left 4 Dead and that alone is why I am still very intrigued by this sequel.