In the same sense, a game so focused on expertly paced cooperative action might well star a group of nameless, voiceless characters who only exist to wield shotguns, so it's further testament to the fine characterizations in Left 4 Dead 2 that I want to even bother introducing Nick, Rochelle, Coach, and Ellis. Considering how many other zombie games are out there these days, that ought to tell you something. And yet with no plodding cutscenes or even a hint of real exposition, Left 4 Dead 2 remains the most chilling, believable image of undead armageddon I can remember seeing in a game. From the panicked scrawling on safehouse walls to infected riot cops and hazmat-wearing emergency management zombies who assault you, it's apparent at every turn that this has gotten bad. Well, what else would you use to kill zombies onstage? Valve has once again spun an eminently convincing yarn of the zombie-fueled end of mankind, with innumerable subtle but cumulatively effective ways to tell you how bad the outbreak has gotten. You get everything from elevated swamp houses to a soundtrack filled with slide guitars and "When the Saints Go Marching In" to drive home exactly where it is you're fighting through. Valve has given this sequel a more coherent cultural backdrop by setting it entirely in the South, with an arduous trek that leads you from Savannah, Georgia through a rundown old theme park, the bayou, an antebellum plantation, and right on into a New Orleans so overrun by the undead menace that it's also under assault by what remains of the nation's uninfected emergency military forces. Left 4 Dead 2 is still all about the plight of four unlikely survivors brought together by the rigors of the zombie apocalypse, battling their way through a series of loosely connected scenarios rife with dramatic scripted action sequences and unpredictable undead attacks. If you're neither of those people, let me fill in some gaps. Based on those two statements, you might already know whether or not you'll want to bother with Left 4 Dead 2 at all. If the first one didn't do much for you, this sequel won't make a significantly different attempt to win you over, either. ![]() Conversely, this is very much an incremental improvement over Left 4 Dead, with more campaigns, more enemy types, more multiplayer modes, more and better weapons-more of everything but, in essence, the same game. ![]() If you're the sort of person who loved the unique cooperative action and eerie undead trappings of the original-but may have felt that game was a little thin on value-know this much-improved sequel has more than enough new content to justify its status as a full-priced standalone package. There are a couple of things you should know about Left 4 Dead 2.
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