I've always wondered what the best way to train for the zombie apocalypse was. Short of having real-life re-enactments and weapons training, the original Left 4 Dead was about as close to what I'd imagine the real-life shit-stink would be like, but Left 4 Dead 2 just raised the bar. And not just by a few steps either.

Left 4 Dead 2 takes all of the elements of the original game and makes a show out of each of them. Shipping with five, very diverse and creative campaigns is a good start, but once you start playing you see all the brilliant additions to the game. First and foremost, the new cast of survivors. Most people who played the original game got very attached with the fully-realized, witty, and endearing cast of the original game, who bantered with each other with in-game dialogue, revealing their personalities indirectly to the player, but sensible to the situation. I'm not the only one who is going to miss Bill, Zoey, Francis, and Louis, but you'll warm up to the next cast pretty quickly. The amount of dialogue from the characters in this game is far more extensive and area sensitive, so you'll be hearing the characters talking quite a bit (when they are not shouting more useful things like 'THERE'S A WITCH OVER THERE GODDAMNIT!'. From Nick's cynical remarks and sarcastic view of their survival odds, Coach's humorous comments, Ellis' stories about his redneck (possibly imaginary) friend, and Rochelle...well, honestly, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to Rochelle sometimes, but I'm sure she has her points too. I did catch a few funny tidbits from her. But overall, my point is, Valve has kept their characters varied, entertaining, and with very distinct personalities as always. So even if you have a hard time letting go of the survivors from the first game, you won't feel too bad when you hear about how Ellis' friend Keith ended up trying to deep-fry a turkey and got burns on over 90% of his body...twice.

A few complaints have been addressed, namely the lack of weapon and equipment variety. There are PLENTY of guns to choose from - two submachineguns, once SILENCED for fighting around witches. Three types of assault rifle, three types of shotgun, two types of sniper rifle, a grenade launcher (FUCK YEAH), Dual Pistol, a Magnum, and the most important addition - the meele weapons. Wether it be a baseball bat, an axe, or a frying pan, the melee weapons will be your new favorite thing - in skilled hands, these things knock the heads off the infected by the truckload. A single-player wielding a melee weapon can stand at a chokepoint, alone, and kill everything without breaking a sweat. Their limited range means they're dangerous to use without some back-up, but when you have the opportunity to use these, you can end up saving hundreds of bullets with minimal damage incurred to you and your friends. And yes - the chainsaw is here. Limited use, but it'll literally mow down everything in your path. Hell, if you have the guts and opportunity, even a tank can be seriously hurt or killed with the chainsaw (wouldn't recommend it on expert though). Add on top of this the ability to add explosive of incindieary ammo to your guns (deployed from ammo crates that take the place of your health kit), defibrilators to bring back dead teammates (now dying in the finale won't mean the end for you), Boomer Bile bombs that can make a Tank the target of the horde and not you, and Adrenaline shots that boost your movement speed and actions (less health restored than pain pills though), and you've got a LOT of variety when fighting off zombies.

Of course, all this gear comes with something new to fight. There are new special 'boss' infected - the mutated zombies that make your life hell - and something else called the Uncommon Common. The Uncommon Common are a unique zombie-type that appears in a specific campaign. They are just like the average zombie and terms of speed and damage, but are a bit trickier for a number of reasons. For example, the first campaign has Hazmat zombies that are immune to fire, which would otherwise instantly kill a normal zombie. swamp Fever has mud-man zombies that crawl under the bog and attack when you least expect it, completely out of sight. The Parish campaign has SWAT zombies that are IMMUNE TO BULLETS. An explosion, a meele weapon, or a shot to the back are the only way to kill them. These add extra challenge to the normal horde, but what about the new guys to come and help out the already dangerous, Smoker, Boomer, Hunter, Tank, and Witch?

First up we have the Spitter. Nasty bitch that spews a nasty ball of acid goo that spreads upon impact, causing LOTS of damage VERY quickly if you stand on it. It's very subtle, so it'll be on you before you realize it unless you see the goo coming at you - which is hard, because the spitter really keeps its' distance like a smoker, and the goo doesn't make any alarming noises until it's actually burning you. The Charger is deadly addition to the team of boss zombies. It does what its' name implies - charges at you. With it's one huge arm, it closes the distance between you and your team aarmingly fast. It pretty much blasts everyone away, dealing some serious damage, and whoever was at the front of the attack gets pinned and repeatedly pile-drived into the ground by the charger until someone kills the damn thing. This special infected can bring down an entire team in a moment if you're careless. Lastly, and easily the MOST irritating special infected of all, is the Jockey. A little mini-me of a zombie that crawls around and jumps onto a survivor's head. It hangs on and obscures your eye-sight, then starts steering you wherever it pleases, completely out of your control. It can guide you into a horde of zombies, into a witch (fuck), or off a ledge. It's very very bad.

And although she is not new, the Witch needs to be mentioned because now we have the Wandering Witch. Whereas a Witch always stayed in place unless disturbed, now, anytime you are playing in a daylight level, the Witch walks around the level. She is still zoned out and cries, so you can still tell when she is nearby. But this adds extra tension, since it's not uncommong to round a corner, knowing a witch is nearby, only to find her walking right into you. She LOVES to obstruct paths you HAVE to go through even more so than before, and given her already high lethality, she is a much more dangerous creature now that she can (unknowingly though) follow you without you knowing it.

But of course, we also have all-important campaigns in the game. The last game shipped with four campaigns. This game ships with 5, and they're all longer and a lot tougher. The campaigns in the first game all had a very distinct flavor, but sometimes you couldn't help but feel that their locales weren't being used to their fullest extent, and that the first ones were always tons easier than the last one. Now, that's not to say they don't get progressively harder...but they don't ramp up too much. From the first campaign, Dead Center, you'll realize right away that the starting point for the difficulty is HIGH. The very first level has you fighting your way down a burning apartment complex, amidst smoke and fire, making your visibility really low and the danger high. Even on advanced, the first few levels of this campaign proved far more menacing than even the later levels of No Mercy in the first game. This is thanks to how much more situations you are usually in - in just the first campaign, I escaped said apartment complex, fought through a grocery store to get soda for a crazy redneck gun-shop owner, and ran like hell to disable alarms across two floors of a mall. All of these things mentioned are Crescendo Events of their own - events that you MUST trigger to progress in the level, but summon a horde of zombies because the make noise like hell (like, in the mall, the alarms trigger all over the place because you HAVE to break some windows to get out of the room you're stuck in), and there are a TON of them around. And all of them are quite a bit harder than almost anything in the first game. And they only get worse and worse: Dark Carnival is riddled with traps that can attract the horde, including clown zombies that honk their noses. Swamp Fever has 'Mud Zombies' that crawl under the bog, out of sight, till they're pretty much right on top of you, and low mobility thanks to having to walk through mostly watery, muddy terrain.

Now Hard Rain is where it starts getting REAL interesting. The campaign is unusual in that you start where it ends. The first chapter of the campaign is a clear-sky level in which you are dropped off by a boat to secure more fuel to stay afloat and away from the zombies longer. From the beginning you are warned not to take too many supplies from your starting point - which is loaded with ammo and health - because you'll need it on the return trip. You fight your way through the suburbia, then a sugar mill that has, mark my words, DOZENS of witches in it (AND I MEAN DOZENS), that leads into a field towards a gas station. There you fuel up, and get ready to return. Now, between the streets and the sugar mill, as you reach the gas station, you start noticing the weather is changing. Rain is starting up as you go, but once you exit the gas station with the diesel fuel, a literal shitstorm ensues. The whole weather goes to hell and it's like you're stuck inside a hurricane. You have to go back the same way you did before, but now the whole damn place is flooded, and high winds and hard rain make visibility piss-poor outside. Re-treading the same path you came from is a completely different story when you can't see shit and you move as slow as a turtle. Any high-ground you can gain is prized like you wouldn't believe it.

Lastly, the Parish campaign. It looks innocent, actually, at first glance. It's a sunlit campaign in a city, ruined, but at least looks like there are enough supplies and barricades around, what with the military presence and all in the distance. Unfortunately, this is easily THE most hellish campaign of all as soon as you reach the second half. Literally every bad situation, every kind of event, every kind of goddamn evil thing you could imagine happening to you can and most likely WILL happen here. Entire parking lots and highways full of car alarms that could go off with just one stray bullet. Sewers like bogs, long and dark. Giant clown-parade cars that go off and bring every conceviable zombie your way in an instant. Multiple drop points of no-return...the only thing it's missing the frightening weather of Hard Rain. But this campaign alone took a whooping 4 hours and 5 minutes to clear...on ADVANCED. I haven't even played Expert yet, but it's already taken more time to clear this ONE campaign than it does to clear two of the original game's on Expert difficulty. Most of this is due to the insane finale, however.

Which brings me to something very cool - the game's Finales. They did a serious make-over for these. Instead of the original game's idea of a finale, in which the finale locations were basically loosely fortified areas to defend until rescue arrives, all apparently themed after horror movie classic ideas, they've made sure you'll have to fight for every bitter moment of your survival by making you an active participant for your rescue. Don't read further if you don't want the awesome game-ending levels spoiled.

Dead Center throws you into a massive atrium with a single, out of gas vehicle. You have to run all over 4 stories of this mall getting gas-tanks to fuel up the car and escape, with the horde constantly attacking you.

Dark Carnival reaches a stadium were a rock concert has been set-up with an amazing pyrotechnics display. A helicopter cricling above MUST be signaled by triggered the massive amplifiers and the fireworks. The more noise and fireworks you set off, the more attention you bring to yourself. This means both the helicopter and the zombies. Fortunately the fireworks can be used to light up the horde...if you don't burn yourself first.

Swamp Fever has you stuck inside a massive Plantation mansion. Each floor and room is open for you, with many blocked off paths or collapsed sections making supplies very out of the way to reach. Just like in the original games, a rescue vehicle arrives after some time to pick you up, but the distance between you and the vehicle is GREAT, and this is the only finale in the game that will throw TWO tanks at you at the same time. AT THE SAME TIME. TWICE.

Hard Rain has you stuck on top of Burger Town waiting for rescue with the whole flood and stormy weather shit going on. The roof has a huge hole where you can drop down into or be DRAGGED down into, and trust me, fighting in waist-high water is suicide. You'll be trying your hardest to keep your position, and keep the infected away, but the visibility which goes from okay to shit in seconds makes it hard to pick off approaching infected.

The Parish. The Finale of Finale's. None of the previous Finales compare to this this one the. The safe-room is literally two steps away from the radio to contact rescue. However, instead of having to wait for it, you have to fight your way TO it. You start off on one end of a wrecked bridge, falling apart. You gotta re-connect the bridge to you, then fight for dear life as zombies barrel down in a practically INFINITE number from the other end, where a rescue helicopter is waiting. You basically gotta run and gun through wreckage and every zombie type running down at you. There are medkits and ammo scattered all over the place, but you'll hardly ever have even a second to breathe, much less apply a health-kit. It's the very definition of a mad-dash, and the tank at the halfway point makes it even worse. Remember - this bridge is littered with wrecked cars, which tanks like to TOSS AT YOU. It's like its' personal playground. This is easily the single hardest part of this game.


Bigger levels. Nastier enemies. Better weapons. More explosive finales. Everything the original game brought to the table has been shined to perfection. And although the visuals are not a huge step up, looking relatively dated, they are still nice and offer a lot more gore and dismemberment in zombie bodies, making each kill and shotgun shell far more satisfying. Nothing like firing into a crowd of infected and watch their limbs and heads get torn off, or blowing them up to watch their entrails shower across the road and bodies flinged off into the air. It may turn the heads of parents and people who just absolutely abhor violence, but hey - it's just a game. It's nothing but morbid, disgusting, virtual satisfaction.

Whenever the next game comes out in like 3 or 4 years (they released Left 4 Dead 2 only a year after the original. That's a miracle we won't see repeat itself for sure), I'm sure Valve will give me plenty of reason to jump back into the zombie apocalypse, but for now this game is the best in zombie survival there is. I freaking love it.