Left 4 Dead 2

13 December 2009 in Gaming Leave a reply

Like anything zombie-related (or horror, in general, for that matter) – sequels are always a good time. Whether or not they blow the original away or are so terrible you can’t help but laugh your ass off in enjoyment; sequels in the realm of the macabre seem to always be a sure thing one way or another. So it would only stand to follow that Left4Dead 2, the sequel to – you guessed it – Left4Dead, would be a grand slam for video game fans. But what the hell makes it so enjoyable? To understand that, you have to take a look at the beginning of the franchise.

Where It All Began

Left4Dead (the original) had a very simple premise behind it: the world is in a post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested reality. While you aren’t the only humans left on the planet, you are a part of a party of four survivors. Your mission is to fend off the zombies (a.k.a. the infected) by any means necessary in order to ensure your and (if possible) your team’s survival.

The game is broken down into 5 “episodes” and each episode is broken down into multiple stages; delineated by the “safe house” at the end of each stage, and your rescue in the final stage. The game takes on the standard FPS role with a wide array of guns/weapons at your disposal. But the real beauty lies within the game’s AI.

Left4Dead was unique from most other popular games on the market for its time due to the way the game “thought” and “reasoned”. The game developers simply called it: The AI Director. See each episode in the game takes on the feel of being like a movie; so much so, that at the end of the final stage “credits” are scrolled up the screen with an absurd amount of statistics pertinent to that episode: most damage done per player, total zombies killed, which player used the most health packs, etc. So it makes sense then that the AI in the game be called The Director. And what makes The Director so unique is that if at any point it thinks your party is having too easy of a time it will suddenly ramp up the game’s difficulty by sending a horde of zombies, or more challenging zombies known as “special infected.” The Director also controls where and what types items appear/spawn in the game. By using this type of approach, The Director essentially makes for a unique playing experience every time through the game; nothing will ever happen exactly the way it did during a previous play. This helps the game to further shed that “programmed” feel that a lot of other games seemed to be suffering from lately.

And other half of what made the original such a success was the well-balanced game play. Killing zombies didn’t require the aim of a trained marksman nor were players ever given the impression that what they were doing was “easy.” The characters and storyline were well-developed and unique; and at the same time the game tapped into the universal basic human instinct of survival. All-in-all a very well-crafted game with definite re-playability and an appeal to a wide audience. So how were the makers of the original going to outdo themselves for the sequel?

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

The game developers knew they had a successful game on their hands, and they were looking to turn it into a successful franchise. This, traditionally, could have gone one of two ways; either they make a carbon copy of the first game or they make something so completely different that the only thing connecting the two is the title. Thankfully, the people at Valve (the game studio behind the series) opted for a blend of the two options, and leaned more towards the original than making it different.

The premise is the same: a party of four survivors trying to survive, a plethora of guns (some different from the first), and The Director is back making sure the survivors don’t have too easy a time. But where the sequel shines are in the tiny differences that really make it its own game. The cast of survivors are different. There are some new types of “special infected” (along with some of the originals). The player can interact more with their environment; like picking up a frying pan and bludgeoning zombies to death. And the game play includes subtle mini-game type challenges to add an extra bit of difficulty. The sequel also follows the format of having 5 episodes set across a varied collection of locations – though thankfully the sequel does a better job than the original of interconnecting the episodes and alluding to how the characters got from location to location.

Overall, Left4Dead 2 is rapidly following in the footsteps of its predecessor and is shaping up to be another successful release for the people at Valve. I highly recommend giving this game a play, along with the original if you haven’t already! The real trick will be seeing if the game developers will be smarter than their film-making counterparts and know when to bring their franchise to a respectable close.

Left4Dead / Left4Dead2 Official Site: http://www.l4d.com/
Valve Website: http://www.valvesoftware.com/