Left 4 Dead 2

Dude, haven't we been here before?

Less than a year after Left 4 Dead came Left 4 Dead 2, and there's probably some pun we could make about dealing with one group of zombies only to turn around and walk right into another, or that the dead aren't easy to kill, or that's always more where that came from.

I have a history of not liking it when this 1001 list says we need to play what are essentially identical games, especially sequels. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a sequel to Metal Gear Solid, but despite their similarities, you can find a whole bunch of reasons to put both forward as must-play titles. Halo 3 is a sequel to Halo 2, but we've got a harder time of things now, though 'finishing the fight' might be enough to sway it. Left 4 Dead 2 is a sequel to Left 4 Dead and it has, let's see... daylight, melee weapons, a few new monsters.

So who should we leave behind, this game or the first one?

Fun Times

Left 4 Dead 2 is a case of 'same shit, different day', only the shit happens to be an absolutely ravenous horde of zombies that want to tear your limbs off, and the day happens to be the actual daylight of the world that exists one week after the events of the first game.

We've a new cast of survivors to play as this time out, and the random number generator Gods have decided that I'm going to take on the role of this youngun here, Ellis, only things aren't looking too good for us when we find the evacuation helicopters leaving the evacuation zone without us.

Despite its short development time,  the game has (I read) been greatly improved over the first Left 4 Dead, and one of the things I was highlighted to was the variety of melee weapons now on offer. I don't know what you could possibly do with a crowbar, but a firefighters axe is a tool I can get stuck into...

And get stuck in I did. Whether armed with a melee weapon or a firearm, the game is much the same as the previous one, where your best bet is to stick together, working your way through the level room by room as the AI Director, now on version 2.0, decides when and where to hurl a whole bunch of zombies into your immediate surroundings and watch you panic.

It's a first-person shooter from Valve, so you know it's going to feel and sound like every other Valve FPS title. You're in capable hands, and the controls are nothing to worry about.

The vast bulk of the undead forces are standard zombies, shambling, menacing, but drop in seconds (usually after flailing for a little bit and getting you to waste ammo thinking they're not dead (again) yet), but the special infected mini-bosses from the first game return, as well as having new friends in the form of Chargers, Jockeys, and Spitters, each giving you another thing to worry about on your travels.

As ever, I was really good at finding these bad guys at the worst time imaginable, getting covered in zombie-attracting Boomer bile, or slowly dissolving in the Spitter's acidic spit.

Wiping the much from my eyes though, I spot a new tool that I would very much like to take for a test drive on some zombies...

It looks like it'll run out of fuel eventually, but so long as its chain is still whizzing, this chainsaw is going to be introduced to everyone who dares stray too close to me.

Luckily, your AI buddies (if you're playing single-player like me) don't like to take the lead, so it was usually a case of me walking into a room, holding down the fire button to spin up my chainsaw, and watching my buddies' bullets fly past my ears until the floor was covered in zombies.

I only show this stat because it was the most favourable. Finding a safe room to restock on ammo, swap equipment, heal up and get ready for the next level is the only piece of guaranteed downtime you'll have, so make the most of it before moving on.

The next level would have us meet up with the voice of a gun store owner, hiding in his safe room, who had the means to destroy the fuel truck that was blocking our progress through the level but obviously wasn't going to just hand over the high explosives necessary to get the job done.

His request was simple: Some Cola from the nearby supermarket. As soon as you open the doors, though, an alarm will go off. What happens when alarms go off?

I will admit that my Molotov cocktail didn't really help matters, making it much harder for me to even see who was in the flames, even if my partners are highlighted and have names above their heads. It just goes to show that you've got options for dealing with your problems. Machine guns or melee weapons? Explosives, or pistols with infinite ammo? What can you get away with before it becomes a problem? How good are your teammates at working together?

Again, if you're playing single-player, you're going to be the one to get stuff done. I didn't see anybody else willing to pick up these bottles, and picking them up meant not using any weapons so long as you were carrying them.

In a multiplayer game, that's a problem to solve as a group. Protect the Cola carrier. It's not hard. In my single-player run, these AI buddies wouldn't do anything useful unless I took the lead and walked forward into the dark unknown, my only attack being to push a zombie back a couple of feet with these bottles.

It wasn't too tricky, and now we finally had a path open to the one place you can guarantee is in a zombie-apocalypse - the shopping mall.

We had to set more alarms off to get through it, which again meant wave after wave of zombies rushing towards us from all angles, even dropping on our heads at one point. Party members fell, usually me, but there were enough health kits and adrenaline shots to go around and keep us all alive and kicking, though as the level went on, things would start to look less favourable.

After getting hit by multiple special infected, I was on my last legs, and Rochelle might well have turned into a zombie herself, such is the state of her health bar, but we eventually found and stumbled into the saferoom ready for our moment of recovery before doing it all again in the next level.

Only I didn't, because much like the first Left 4 Dead, I'd seen enough and wasn't too interested in seeing the rest.

Final Word

It's not that it's a bad game, quite the opposite. This is fun and would be more enjoyable with human companions both arguing amongst themselves and helping each other out, but I don't know any of them who care for either video games or zombies enough to want to play Left 4 Dead 2 properly.

Could I play with strangers? Sure. Not likely to happen, though. Would I come back to finish off this run, or at least seeing how far I could get? Well, last time out I said probably not, because I'm not a fan of zombies, but the improvements made in Left 4 Dead 2 does make it a little more likely.

It's a good looking game that keeps you on your toes by playing differently every time to approach it, and there are now many more ways to play it than the first game, even with a 'Realism' mode for those who want to go at the zombie-apocalypse in a hardcore manner. But even though it is a clear (one might say night and day) improvement over Left 4 Dead, it's still not knocking my socks off.

As far as I understand it, the campaign of Left 4 Dead is, in some form, playable within Left 4 Dead 2, which makes its inclusion in the 1001 list a little more of an oddity. The first game was like nothing else, yes, but a year later you'd see an improved sequel which would have the same content and then som, and play identically too. Why play Left 4 Dead when Left 4 Dead 2 exists?

A question for the fans, I guess. For me, there's only one I'll bother returning to - if I bother at all - and that's this sequel.

Fun Facts

Fans were still creating content for the game ten years later, with a large community-made scenario seeing an official release as DLC in 2020.

Left 4 Dead 2, developed by Valve, first released in 2009.

Version played: PC, 2009.