Left 4 Dead 2 Demo First Impressions

We’re all familiar with Left 4 Dead.  We loved the play style and the characters and the maps.  We loved the zombies and their special abilities.  Well get ready for more.  Left 4 Dead 2 is much more dead.  Much more and more.  I’ll cover the new features and the familiar ones.

The demo comes only with campaign mode for the first campaign in the game.  It feels like a short version of the campaign also.  There were three safe houses total.  I hope this isn’t the length of the campaigns in the final game.  Nevertheless, the playthrough was enjoyable and the other players were all experienced.

First up is the characters.  You have the smart-mouth coon-ass Ellis, the tubby black coach, the tara-esque rochelle, and the sly suited nick.  They are all as individual as the first four characters we grew to love.  Rochelle has a reddish shirt which makes you think she’s a black zoey.  They should really change her shirt.

There are new weapons in addition to the melee weapons we know about.  There seems to be three types of guns in this game.  There are shotguns, SMGs, and assault rifles.  We all know about the uzi, but there’s now a silenced mac 11 which seems to really pack a punch.  The new assault rifle looks and acts very much like a galil.  It’s fire rate is lower than the m16.  The new shotgun is quite useful and packs a hell of a punch as now it blows limbs off zombies.

The melee weapons are fun, but there’s bad news.  They replace the pistols.  You cannot have two pistols and a melee weapon at the same time.  Or even one pistol.  Yep it replaces the pistol.  In the demo, I saw a cast iron frying pan, a nightstick, a machete, and a guitar.  They work effectively, though some more than others.

There are new types of zombie specials as well.  The charger looks like a baby tank and rushes you to knock you down.  He dies easier than the tank thank goodness.  The jockey jumps on you from nowhere and rides you like the bitch you are.  He will steer you into the horde if you don’t fight back by trying to move in other directions while he’s teabagging you.  The spitter looks like the farmers daughter on meth.  The pigtails are freaky.  She spits an area acid attack.  When she dies she also explodes with an area acid attack.

There are new pickups in this game as well.  There is an adrenaline shot which toggles with the pills.  There is a boomer bile grenade.  It does what you think.  There is also a defibrillator which toggles with the health pack.

Since this is Left 4 Dead 2, the mapping is excellent.  The detail is far more exquisite than the first game.  The character sounds are also quite excellent.  There are only a few issues that I had with the demo.  The first is a bit of stuttering with the engine.  The second is sometimes if you’re getting ridden by the jockey, he can steer you somewhere you can get stuck.  Then you’re stuck.

Other than that, I was thoroughly impressed.  Valve didn’t seem to change anything major that we’ll miss.