Christmas is coming early for me this year, November 17 to be exact, the day that Left 4 Dead 2 drops.
For years and years I have loved killing zombies in video games because, frankly, they scare the hell out of me. While the Resident Evil games managed to hold me over for a while, I got tired of having to find three keys, two jewels and a crest to get into another area with even more traps and puzzles and about 100 zombies and me with only 13 rounds left. That’s why I was uber psyched when Left 4 Dead came out last year and all you had to do was shoot and survive. While the monsters in L4D aren’t exactly zombies but mutated rabies infected humans a la 28 Days Later, it’s all the same to me.
Now, L4D2 carries on a number of similar elements to the original game: from four immune survivors to multiple hour or so long missions modeled as movies to “common infected” and “special infected”. But there’s a couple of changes, including one you may notice in this trailer.
That’s right… melee weapons! I personally can’t wait to use the chainsaw because Dead Rising didn’t do it for me in the melee weapons department. I think it is because the focus wasn’t so much on the weapons and the damage they can do as the wide variety of them.
Set a few weeks after the original game and in New Orleans, this time our heroes are Coach: a high school football coach. Rochelle: a local TV news reporter. Ellis: a mechanic and Nick: a gambler and conman.
The game keeps the AI Director that changes up game play every time you log in to keep it fresh and continues the awesome feature of each mission being it’s own movie complete with poster during the load screen.
In addition to the oldies but goldies, there are three new classes of “special infected”; The Charger which can plow survivors out of its way; The Spitter which projectile vomits corrosive phlegm at the survivors and The Jockey which jumps on your back and steers you toward other infected. There are also new common infected roaming around who got infected while wearing clothes that give them an advantage against the survivors. Those bitten in riot gear are more resistant to bullets and those who were in Haz Mat suits won’t catch fire.
Here Coach tries to fight a flame-retardant infected.
There are also a few new weapons and types of ammunition available including silenced machine guns and incendiary ammo. Check out the trailer for the new incendiary ammo.
Personally I’m not sure those would be practical in real life. As we’re told in the Zombie Survival Guide, flames don’t kill zombies, they just create flaming zombies that come straight at you.
Check out the game’s official web site for more info and screen shots. Oh and if you want to play the original L4D with me while we wait, I play under the name rphutton.
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