Game Review: Left 4 Dead 2

Hello Ladies and Gents!

Whats better than to spend Halloween by reading a review about a zombie shooting game?
Today I'll be writing a review of the best zombie shooting game made so far, called Left 4 Dead 2.

A bit about the game and developers.
Left 4 Dead 2 was made by a pretty famous company called Valve. Valve are the same developers who made Left 4 Dead, Half Life series, Counter Strike series, Team Fortress series and Portal series. They also run the worlds best gaming application called Steam (even thought i'm pretty sure that you know all of this already.)

 About Gameplay.
In Left 4 Dead 2 you take a role of one of 8 characters. Those 8 characters are divided in two groups of 4. Each group has three guys and one girl. Original L4D2 group contains: Ellis, Rochelle, Nick and Coach. After some time Valve decided to add a DLC which added all L4D maps and characters into the game, so "new" characters are: Bill, Zoey, Francis and Louis.
There is no any boost to any of the characters, It's just your personal look throught that campaign. Players can't change their character unless they return to the game lobby again. There are all together 13 Campaigns in L4D2 ad each campaing has about 3-4 maps. So yea, that's a lot of maps to go throught!

There are few different game modes too. There are Campaign, Survival, Versus, Realism, Realism Versus and Scavenge.

In Campaign you only beat the campaigns. Nothing too hard nor too new. In Survival you are on just one small map and your mission is to survive as long as you possibly can while hordes of zombies keep attacking you over and over again. And no, it is not in waves. They all attack you at once.

In Versus you play against other players, 4 vs 4. One team gets to be survivors while the other team gets to be infected. Infected players can't chose which zombie do they wanna be, its always random. Survivors mission is to get to the very end of the map as fast as they can and in as big number as they can (all four would be the best), while infected team needs to do everything they can to stop them by killing all of them.

You may think that It's easy but you're wrong. There is low chance that you get awesome zombie combo on the very beginning such as Jockey, Charger, Smoker and Hunter. But If you get that combo, if the team is trained well and if your timing is awesome, you can stop survivors within the first ten seconds. Charger charges at one guy, Hunter jumps on the other, Jockey does the same to the other survivor while smoker pulls the fourth. And Woala! You have won. As soon as the survivors reach the safe room or infected kill all the survivors, teams change sides. They re-do the same map again, but infected are now survivors and survivors are now infected. The team who finishes the map with most points start out as survivors in the next round.

Realism mode is the same as campaign mode but just a bit harder. In Realism mode you do not see glowing outlines of your friends when they are behind a wall or somewhere far. If you get separated, you will be lost for quite a while since you can't see where did they go.
Realism Versus is Versus but in realism mode (duh o-o)

In Scavenge mode your mission is to gather gas tanks as fast as you can and pour them into a car / generator / where ever, while hordes of zombies attack you non-stop. Yea, these zombies only make your game harder...

And final mode which is very un-needed is called "The Mutation".
Mutation is actually just a mode which Valve changes every month or two. They put up new modes in it and let you test it out. If community likes it, Valve leaves it in L4D2. If community dislikes it, they remove it and forget about it. They changed that mode now thought. Now you can play all the old mutations without needing to download any mods for it. I like that because I really liked the head shot mode. You could only kill zombies by head shooting them. Very hard but very real as well!

In Left 4 Dead 2 there are various weapons as well. There is Ak47, M16, Uzi, two different types of handguns, two snipers and few more weapons. Don't worry, there are various melee weapons too such as Katana, Chainsaw, Axe, cooking pot and a cricket bat. There is no better feeling then hitting a witch with a cooking pot! If you are lucky you might even run into an MP5 which is saw only once so far in my 100+ hours of gameplay.

Graphic and Audio
Graphic in Left 4 Dead 2 is nothing special but I love it. It's not something that looks too realistic, but it is also not something that looks cartoonish. And the blood looks great too! The maps are great, scary, dark and sometimes even slightly confusing which makes the game even more fun.
Music in L4D2 is also nothing special, but it's very catchy! I often find myself mumbling the beginning screen song over TS when I'm with my clan.

Story
Don't read this if you are against few spoilers!!!!! Awesome thing about L4D2 is that all the missions are connected to each other. The end of your first mission is the beginning of second and so on and on. The latest campaign in L4D makes Bill die. And one of newest missions in L4D2 (The Parrish) makes you meet the L4D survivors and they help you survive while you put down the bridge that L4D survivors raised.  You can also find Bill's dead body in the generator room.. Poor Bill.. He was my favorite character...

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Zombies.. And a lot of them.
- Various weapons.
- A lot of missions, maps and an official add-on support which allows you to add custom made maps.
- Great story.
- Versus mode which makes this game rather unique.
- New, totally free DLC's.
- All L4D maps and characters have been added to L4D2 fully free of charge.

Cons:
- NPC survivors are kind of stupid sometimes.
- There are often no official dedicated servers, so you gotta play on best community one. And sometimes those are just terrible.

Final grade: 9/10

Extra notes
Left 4 Dead 2 is really not expensive and It's one of those games which you will play over and over and over and over again until your death. It's very addicting and fun game, and if you meet some new friends or if you join a good clan the game will be even more fun to play! So really, if you can spare few €, buy this game! And L4D2 is on 75% discount very often, so i suggest you to wait until then if you can't afford the full price.

Thank you all for reading and commenting on my blog!
Have a great day,
Wolfie