Nothing But Shooters reviews Left 4 Dead 2, Valve's zombie slaying fest currently available on the PC and Xbox 360.

Those who are still boycotting the game may be disappointed by our verdict.

Left 4 Dead 2 was released last Tuesday (11/17), a mere one year after the first one, and the level of improvement that Valve has added is pretty impressive. Everything that has been added to the game has been done so to increase the mayhem that your team has to go through. I’ve always been of the opinion that the best times in L4D1 were, ironically, when you were getting beaten to a pulp. You needed to REALLY work together as a team when your team was getting pounced by a hunter, pulled by a smoker, fighting a horde off while trying to stay away from a tank… ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

The feeling of never being completely safe made each experience a nail biter, a feat few games can match. However, the more you would play L4D1, the more you would get its tricks. When a horde came, everyone ran to a corner and spammed the melee trigger, a tank brought out the molotov cocktails everyone had, followed by a mad dash backwards to get out of his monkey arm-range. Boomers? Please, throw a pipe-bomb. It grew into a game that you almost HAD to play on Expert difficulty or Versus to get the charm out of it. L4D2 has fixed this and then some. Simply put, there are no tricks. This game is hard, and it constantly puts your teamwork skills to a test, and we’re not talking 1st grade spelling test here, this is more like senior year of college, theoretical physics final exam. Even if you’ve been through each campaign the amount each single one deserves, the next time you play you’ll have to adapt to the changing environments, the different weapon choices you’ll have, and, most importantly, the very versatile special infected.

diseone via nothingbutshooters.com »