While I will reserve final judgment until I have played all the campaigns, all I can really say right now is that it is lots of fun, and DIFFICULT. Amateria, 3N3MY and I are/were pretty good at the first game (at least I think so) and we got rocked on Normal difficulty last night. I didn't even make it out of the 2nd campaign alive, dying at the hands of a Tank in the finale.
It seems like there's almost NEVER a lull in the action. Zombies seem to constantly be streaming from somewhere, whereas in the first game there would be a huge mob come, you'd pause to wipe them out then waltz through a big section with no resistance. With the addition of new Special zombie types, I think there was almost always one on my screen somewhere.
I'm undecided about melee weapons. They're great to have when you're getting surrounded, but ideally you never want to let enemies that close to you. However, I think based on the above section, it's nice to have them in the game since you WILL get surrounded.
I was a little frustrated playing last night. I think this is due to a combination of new maps and not knowing where to go, bad communication, lacking a 4th human player (oh good one brjahu), and certain people (COUGH...3N3MY) worrying about achievements. Don't take that too harshly. You know I'm all about getting achievements, too, but I just feel like we should try to learn the campaigns and survive them rather than "trying" for achievements when many of them we'll get by simply playing through the 5 campaigns naturally.
Final word.......
It's probably not as good as the first game, but in my opinion, not many games are. I've said for a while that Left 4 Dead is my favorite game to play on XBox Live. It may even be my favorite XBox 360 game, period. At the time, that game was like nothing else I had ever played. Now that the sequel is here, it can't match the initial "WOW, this is awesome" factor, but they've certainly tried. I've only had it for one day, so maybe I will grow to like it more than the first. Who knows?
p.s. I kinda miss being Louis.
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I don't think I could make any serious arguments against any of these points.
ReplyDeleteLeft 4 Dead was a groundbreaking experience, and the changes and additions to the formula in the game we played last night are gonna take a bit of time to grow on me. One change I do enjoy (said with baited breath as we haven't finished the all the campaigns) is the more objective based finale moments. In the same way that Lead Salad described the perpetual zombie action in the levels, the finales seem to require the player to move around a bit more. (i.e. filling up a race car with gas cans hidden throughout a section of the mall).
I can't not be a fan of this game, and maybe it's just me still being on a pretty strong COD high, but this one definitely won't be the high point of the gaming season for me. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure I'll love it... just give it time.
(FYI, we did do the gnome achievement after you left - definitely not as hard as it seems)
Well now that I've played and survived all the campaigns I can say that the game grew on me much more than I thought it would after the first night. I am going to have to say that Amateria, Lead Salad and I were VERY good at the first game, but we never found the Versus mode to be enticing.
ReplyDeleteThe game is definitely harder than the original and the campaigns are bigger as well. The final campaign, "The Parish," I found to be particularly drug out, but that may also be because I had just finished playing the 2 before it.
I really like the game a lot, but it's so hard to view as a "sequel" and not an expansion pack. The melee weapons are fun and work best when completely surrounded, but the only really helpful one is the chainsaw. I'll take two pistols over a police baton any day.
Going for the achievements was definitely a distraction for me, but you'll be happy to know that I scored a ton of them yesterday so it won't hold me back any longer.
Overall it's a great game that is gaining momentum for me personally (how the hell do you top the first one?). I think once we learn the campaigns fully and what works best for us as a team and individually (just like we had to learn in the first) that disc will rarely leave the trays.
P.S. Amateria and I concluded that Valve somehow made the partner AI fully retarded. They were at least helpful in the first, but this time around you'll be in the shooting match of your life and Coach will hand you pain pills or heaven forbid you need them to get a Jockey off you!
What are you talkin' about, crappy AI? I did all the campaigns last night, on Expert, with Realism enabled and 3 bots, no problem. I also switched my control scheme to "Lefty" just so it wouldn't be too easy.
ReplyDeleteACTUALLY, yes, they are monumentally worse than the AI in the first game. I've been pinned or jockeyed multiple times already with the AI standing RIGHT next to me and it takes them at least 5 seconds (roughly 50-60 points of my health bar) to save me. The AI in the first game was all over the Special zombies. A lot of times, I would just read on the captions that a smoker exploded and be thankful that Zoey sniped it before I even saw or heard it.
All this means is that it's that much more important to have 4 people in the game at once.
"Monumentally" was definitely the word I was looking for last night.
ReplyDelete3N3MY and I remember a time before L4D came out and they were advertising that they would have AI that would be impossible to distinguish from a human player. Well, apparently everyone who play tested this one was partially blind and born without thumbs. Maybe Valve's definition of "human" is a little bit different from mine... maybe they thought human meant, "intelligent mammal", like a dolphin, or a puppy. More likely, they probably just did some quick research on how the average xboxlive user plays, and copied it verbatim.
http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/left-4-dead-2-daring-bot/334962?playlist=featured
ReplyDeleteHaha, this is a great example of the "human-like" AI in this game. I frequently do stuff like this.