Left 4 Dead 2 Demo impressions

After some minor delays, the PC version of the Left 4 Dead 2 demo was finally available yesterday evening to those who’ve pre-orderd the game.  The Xbox 360 demo was also available, it’ll be another week or more before it’s available for those who haven’t pre-ordered.  I fired up a local server so Dr Squid and myself, along with a friend, could give the two map co-op experience a whirl or two.  Some of the points mentioned in here were originally made by Dr. Squid during gameplay.

Right off the top I have to say that it looks like it will be a worthy sequel that adds more granularity to the gameplay.

Graphics and Audio:

Valve has set the sequel in New Orleans, and the demo maps are bright and crisp. Instead of being set at night, the sun hangs low in the sky (I’d guess evening), and tints things with a golden hue. Everything in the game seemed a little sharper, as the film grain plays less of a role in the lighter environment. From a performance level, although my graphics card technically isn’t supported, it managed to run at about the same speed as the original, so whatever changes were made to the engine, it doesn’t appear to affect performance. If you can run L4D, you can probably run L4D2.

As for the audio, I loved it.  Each of the new characters is well voiced, and if the demo is any indication, a wider variety of dialogue.  The ambient and weapon sounds are equally good.  Once of Dr. Squid’s faves was the occasional ‘twang’ when whacking a zombie in the head with the electric guitar.  Many of the music cues are the same as the original, but composed with an emphasis on trumpets, giving it all a Cajun tinge of jazz and blues. For example, when a horde is incoming, the familiar three note sting is delivered by a trumpet.

If you don’t want any more spoilers, I suggest you don’t…

Gameplay:

The mechanics are identical to L4D, with the real changes being to the variety of weapons, items and infected.

The ‘regular’ infected seem to have more variety to their movements and appearence.

The standard pistol can be replaced by a Magnum, which also can be used Chow Yun Fat style with unlimited ammo. If you want to make things more personal, you can replace your pistol slot with a variety of melee weapsons scattered throughout the levels.  These include everything from frying pans and electric guitars to police batons and machetes.  Though we didn’t have enough play time to suss out all the details, it’s clear that each melee weapon performs in a unique manner, as you would expect in real life.   The guitar is better at keeping a greater number of opponents at bay than the police baton.  We never encountered the katana, chainsaw, cricket bat or baseball bat (the latter reserved those who pre-ordered the game).

List of melee weapons (only encountered first 4):

• Machete
• Police Baton
• Electric Guitar
• Frying Pan
• Baseball Bat
• Cricket Bat
• Crowbar
• Fire Axe
• Katana
• Chainsaw

All the 2nd slot weapons from the original are also here, and there have been some additions that add to that granularity.  There’s what looks like a DIY’ed up silenced Uzi that holds more ammo, but doesn’t do quite as much damage as the original Uzi.  The M16 gets a sister in the AK-47, and there’s a new sniper rifle that doesn’t make you feel quite so vulnerable at close range.

List of Known ranged weapons. (L4D) indicates carry over from original:

• Pistols (in L4D)
• Desert Eagle
• Uzi (in L4D)
• Silenced Uzi
• Pump Shotgun (in L4D)
• Chrome Pump Shotgun (in L4D)
• SPAS-12 Semi-auto Shotgun
• Hunting Rifle (in L4D)
• Sniper Rifle
• Assault Rifle with Burst Fire
• M16 (in L4D)
• AK47

There’s a new addition to the ranged weapons in the form of a vial of boomer bile (bile vial?), which when thrown attracts the infected, doesn’t explode but lasts longer.

There’s new medical items as well.  In the pain pills slot, there’s a second choice if you come across it, and that’s the adrenaline injector.  This gives you a temporary health boost along with extra speed, which is especially handy with a melee weapon.  The new choice in the health pack slot is the defibrillator, which allows you to revive dead comrades.

As for new infected, the ones we came across were the Spitter, sister to the boomer, whose acidic bile doesn’t attract infected, but does damage.  When shot, she leaves a big puddle of the stuff, so like the boomer, she’s best shot from a distance.  Riding the coattails of the Hunter is the Jockey, who hops on your back and rides you instead of hurling you to the ground, and there’s the Tank’s little brother the Charger.

There’s what can best be described as the uncommon infected as well.  The only one I encountered was the infected swat team member.  It’s just a regular infected, but because he’s dressed up in riot gear, he’s only really vulnerable to damage from behind.

Speaking of damage, the location based damage on your foes seems well-defined, and there’s nice touches as well.  Using the sniper rifle on a regular infected, I targeted it center mass, and when I pulled the trigger was rewarded with a gaping hole through which I could see the picnic table beyond, at least until it collapsed to the ground of course.

All in all, the demo was a good taste of what’s to come next month when the game is officially released.  One more level would have been nice, as after finishing the first two maps, I wanted more.  It’s understandable why Valve would release a sequel so soon though, as the collision model must have taken some major overhauling of the engine.

Let’s just hope that this time round it’s not so locked down that when they get new ideas, it’ll require a third game.  I also hope that there won’t be much difficulty for user generated maps to be converted over to the sequel, once the software tools are available.