Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2 (abbreviated L4D2) is a single-player and multiplayer cooperative survival horror first person shooter game developed by Valve Corporation. It is the sequel to Left 4 Dead, and was built using Source engine. It was first announced on June 1, 2009 by Valve Corporation at Microsoft's E3 2009 press conference. The game is available on PC and Xbox 360.

The Left 4 Dead 2 multiplayer demo was released on October 28 for those who pre-ordered. It was made available to the public on November 3.



Plot
The story takes place in Savannah, Georgia, after the events in The Sacrifice. The four survivors climb up the roof to witness the last rescue helicopter leave the rooftop of The Vannah. They decide to go to a mall, where a second evacuation point is located. While on their way, they learn each others names: Ellis, Coach, Rochelle and Nick. After an encounter with Whitaker, the survivors enter the mall to discover that it is overrun, with all CEDA agents at the center either dead or infected. The group enters the mall's atrium to discover Jimmy Gibbs Jr.'s stock car and, following Ellis's plan, fuel up the car to break out of the mall where they head to New Orleans, rumored to be the last standing city in America.

The four then arrive at the raised bridge in Rayford, where they meet Francis, Louis and Zoey. The late Bill sacrificed his life to raise the bridge, and Louis had been wounded by a Witch as the group explored Rayford. Because the new survivors need to cross the bridge, they must find another way across and refill the generator. After battling through a wedding, the streets, and a "historical sewer", they meet up with the original survivors again, who help cover the new survivors while they fend off the Infected in order to fill the generator and lower the bridge.

They continue driving until they reach Griffin County, where they find the highway is completely blocked by abandoned vehicles, thus forcing them to proceed on foot through miles of abandoned cars where they find a distant search light. The lights are revealed to come from Whispering Oaks Amusement Park. As they fight their way through the Park and navigate to its stadium, Coach comes up with an idea to use the concert equipment in The Peach Pit, abandoned by Midnight Riders, to attract the helicopter pilot's attention. The plan works, and the Survivors manage to evacuate in the helicopter as the masses of Infected swarm the stadium.



After being rescued, the helicopter pilot becomes infected, prompting Nick to shoot him and cause the helicopter to crash. The Survivors exit the wrecked helicopter to find that they have landed in a bayou. They discover a small village, where the villagers decided to fend for themselves, but ultimately failed as they were overrun. Working their way through the swamp, the survivors come across a crashed plane, dead military paratroopers, and infected swamp villagers. The previous survivors had informed any passerby to head to the Plantation House. When the survivors head there, they find a radio, which they use to contact Virgil for rescue. After fending off the horde, Virgil blasts the Plantation gate open to allow the survivors to escape on his boat before the horde could overwhelm them.

On their way to New Orleans, Virgil's boat runs low on fuel and drops off the survivors at Ducatel, Mississippi to find gas. The survivors forget the gun bag, and the local gas station is out of gas which forces them to go to the next gas station two miles away. After passing through an abandoned sugar mill infested with Witches, they find the gas station. After collecting their fuel, they begin to head back when stormy weather hits. Going all the way back to the Burger Tank, Coach comes up with the idea to use the Burger Tank's sign to signal Virgil. They succeed, and Virgil arrives to pick them up before the Survivors are overwhelmed by the Infected.

Virgil drops the group off at New Orleans, where Coach is immediately reinvigorated as they see fighter jets in the sky, revealing that the military has not abandoned the city yet; Nick however is skeptical about their presence. They decide that the bridge in the distance is the best chance of survival, but discover the corpses of non-infected people on the way. The survivors suspect that the military took over CEDA's pitiful attempts to contain the situation as they find themselves in an area being bombed by the military, and quicken their pace to the bridge. They interrupt a transmission on the bridge between the two military personnel: Papa Gator and Rescue 7, who suspect that the Survivors are Carriers. Rescue 7 is prepared to carry the Carriers, and Papa Gator informs the Survivors that they are lucky as the Military had just left the area, and that they must reach the other side of the bridge for rescue. The Survivors fight through the Infected amassed on the bridge and reach Rescue 7. As he carries the Survivors out, the fighter jets bomb the bridge to prevent the Infected from leaving the city and the pilot takes the Survivors out to a military cruise ship at sea.

The Cover and Rating


The cover of Left 4 Dead 2 is almost identical to the original Left 4 Dead cover. The hand was modeled once again by a hand model named Andrea Wicklund.

The idea was to create a hand missing another two fingers along with the famous original missing thumb, resulting in a hand only holding up two fingers, further signifying the number two. The background's color was also changed to a lighter shade of green.

Around June 2009, the ESRB told Valve that the new cover is unacceptable and the idea was changed to tucking the two unwanted fingers behind the hand to attain the desired effect, yet still keep the missing thumb.


 * The ESRB was asked why they still allowed the new cover with only the missing thumb, yet not accepting the two unwanted fingers and the thumb. The ESRB declined to comment.

Around July 2009, Valve decided to change the cover once again, making the two tucked-away fingers slightly more visible. The hand drastically changed as the background did which is now yellow.

In the United Kingdom, the cover was changed to show the hand facing the opposite direction, as the two-finger sign towards the viewer is considered an insult. This cover design change does not apply with the New Zealand and Australian versions of the game even though the direction of the two-finger sign applies in those countries as well. In addition, the German and Japanese version of the cover features all of the fingers intact as it did with the first game due to the same censorship reasons that applied to the first game's cover.

Australia and Germany censored Left 4 Dead 2, removing some features generally to do with violence:
 * Blood and gore: Virtually no blood is found after killing the Infected and it's impossible to remove any body parts by using weapons on them. Despite this, achievements for dismemberment were still included and can be awarded in the Australian version.
 * Fire and Explosive Effects: The Infected can no longer be set on fire and no damage is visible when hit with Explosive Ammo or the Pipe Bomb. Infected that the game registers as having been set on fire act in the same way as they would if on fire except that no fire is visible.
 * Bodies: After dying, the Infected disappear, often before they even hit the ground.
 * Infected: The Riot Infected is removed from the game because it "encourages violence against official authority". In the Australian version, the Riot Infected was eventually put back in with minor alterations to remove any connection to the official authorities.

Controls
These are the default controls of Left 4 Dead 2 for both the PC and Xbox 360 versions.

Context sensitive controls

 * The X button is used to interact with other things. Using it, you can pick objects up, open doors or help the other Survivors to their feet.
 * Select the first aid kit, target a teammate and press and hold LT to heal them. It has the same effect as them healing themselves. (It will therefore take 5 seconds and heal damage depending on the current HP of the person).
 * Select the pain pills, target a teammate, press and hold LT to give the pills to them.

Refer to health for further tips. Make sure that your teammates know how to revive you and give first aid kits and/or pain pills to you. The Survivors need to look out for each other.

Reception
Left 4 Dead 2 was universally acclaimed by critics, with a Metacritic score of 89/100 on both PC & Xbox 360 based on 55 critic reviews and 76 critic reviews respectively.

Awards
Left 4 Dead 2 was featured as one of Game Informer's top 50 games of 2009. Game Informer had this to say:
 * "Ever wonder how far you could make it through the zombie apocalypse with just a chainsaw and a grenade launcher? Left 4 Dead 2 has your answer. Everything about Valve's sequel to last year's intense co-op FPS is amplified, with gratuitous gore, tons of melee weapons, intensified finales and even more zombies. If you still think that this sequel came too soon, then you haven't cracked a clown zombie in the face with a cricket bat while protecting a lawn gnome."

The Drunk Tank Podcast by RoosterTeeth named Left 4 Dead 2 the best game of 2009.

Boycott
Shortly after Valve's announcement of Left 4 Dead 2, many fans were shocked of the idea due to the short period of time after the first Left 4 Dead and the fact that the long promised SDK (which is essential to making new levels for Left 4 Dead) was being held back because of this. Hours after the announcement, fans gathered together and formed a group called L4D2 Boycott (NO-L4D2); the group reached 10,000 members in one week and 35,000 members in three weeks. The group believed that Left 4 Dead 2 should not be a separate game in order to keep the community whole, claiming that releasing a sequel would split the community. Their suggestion was to make Left 4 Dead 2 either an expansion pack that is either free downloadable content or not full-priced, citing a lack of new content and also voicing their preference to keep the original Survivors and maps. Many fans were also disappointed that Valve had yet to deliver the free DLC that they had promised.

Valve informed the fans that they have been tracking their comments ever since the first announcement on June 1, 2009 and their response was that Left 4 Dead will continue to be supported with downloadable content. This announcement caused some fans to believe that Valve saw the fans of Left 4 Dead as boycotting the sequel only to get more free updates and save money. Valve also said that they are discussing the matter and are considering importing the original maps into Left 4 Dead 2; nothing regarding the original Survivors was mentioned.

The boycott was not especially effective because the pre-order sales of Left 4 Dead 2 were 4 times larger than the pre-order sales of Left 4 Dead.

The boycott has since been officially disbanded as the founders themselves said that they have done what they set out to do and are now sympathetic with Valve's work on Left 4 Dead 2, but however still maintain that they themselves will not buy the game. Despite stating this, one should note the irony that on the leaders' profiles it is noted that they both own and play Left 4 Dead 2.

As of 2011, Valve has ported all six original campaigns from Left 4 Dead to Left 4 Dead 2, playable with the original survivors. No Mercy and The Sacrifice were ported to the game on October 5, 2010, while the rest were ported with the addition of Cold Stream on March 22, 2011. The campaigns are virtually identical to their original versions besides the addition of melee weapons (which were absent from the original game) and updated character icons.

Major changes from the original

 * New Main Characters.
 * More Infected per level.
 * Revamped gore system.
 * New Common Infected textures and models.
 * New Special Infected textures and models.
 * New Special Infected (The Charger, the Jockey and the Spitter).
 * New Uncommon Infected enemies.
 * More guns.
 * New weapons tier.
 * Melee weapons.
 * Gauntlet crescendos.
 * New Gameplay Modes.
 * Upgraded Graphics.
 * No running animations (P220 Pistol only).
 * Counter Strike: Source weapons (German users were originally the only players who had this due to censorship, however, as of the last stand update, these weapons are available for everyone.).

Downloadable Content

 * Baseball Bat upon pre-order (Now available for everyone).
 * The Passing.
 * The Sacrifice with No Mercy.
 * Cold Stream with original Left 4 Dead campaigns.
 * The Last Stand.

Split screen
Split screen play is fully supported on the Xbox 360, allowing the players to play both online and offline with a friend by using one console. On PC, split screen is unsupported, but still possible. Using an Xbox 360 controller for PC and some console commands, one can play only offline with a friend. Due to changes in the console, split screen online for PC is not possible, unlike Left 4 Dead where split screen PC can be done both online and offline. Doing this requires a higher-end processor.