Left 4 Dead 2: 9.0/10

This game took quite a bit of heat, coming out a mere year after the first Left 4 Dead, and this from a developer known for it's long production cycles. Perhaps the complaints are justified, but once you get the product in your machine, one can't deny how fun this game is.

Valve did not change the overall formula of the game. Once again, four survivors in a zombie apocalypse must work together through various campaigns in order to reach the rescue vehicle on at the end. As before, on-line co-op is what this game is all about with emphasis on the co-op. Players who don't work with their teammates are destined to be punished cruelly, either by opposing players in the case of versus, or by the AI director, that sadistic bit of coding that decides how enemies, weapons and gear will spawn. If anything, this games demands even more of its players with new special infected specifically designed to try and split players up. Valve definitely watched how players played the first game and designed this game to combat their tactics. For example, once again alarms and loud machinery will generate what Valve calls crescendo events where waves of infected rush the players, but instead of the normal digging in that players did to survive these events before, many of them can only be stopped by travelling to another location - evil indeed.

But the survivors are better armed now too. The variety of guns has about tripled. Also added are powerful melee weapons (who doesn't enjoy conking zombies with a frying pan?). The amount of gear is also increased from speed inducing adrenalin, defibrillator kits for bringing back dead teammates, to incendiary and explosive ammunition. The thing is, the number of inventory slots has not changed. Carry a melee weapon, then no pistols. Carry special ammo, then no med pack. No one can carry it all, so once again team work is what is emphasized.

The environments are better detailed now and there is more variety to the campaigns than before. Instead of everything being at night, the time of day changes as does the weather. Indeed, the storm effects become a factor in the game in more than one campaign. The campaigns link together better now too, with each beginning where the previous one ended. Some might miss the four survivors from L4D1, but the four new ones should get them over it pretty quick. Once again, the characters are unique, well written and voiced, and enjoyable to listen to. As in the first game, dialogue is generated differently each time through. The variability in play-throughs not only extends to placement of enemies and gear, but some maps even change pathways through them now. The new game type, scavenge, is also a lot of fun.

Overall, L4D2 doesn't feel like a replacement to L4D1 but rather a complement to it. Although both follow the same essential formula, there is enough differences between the two that I suspect the community of players will more bouncing back and forth between them rather than leave L4D1 on the shelf. If I have any knock against this franchise, it would be that it is already feeling a bit old. I for one do not wish for a L4D3 and, I hope, there are no immediately plans to develop one. Despite that, if Valve continues to support the community that has developed around these two games, this is a franchise that will have people still playing it years from now.

Story: 4
Interface: 5
Game Play: 4
Challenge: 4
Fun: 5

Reconsidering Story Part of Rating

I'm realizing that "story" is not the right word for what I am trying to rate in my reviews. As described in the post of my rating system, I'm trying to measure the degree of investment I have in the world that the game creates. Story can certainly be a big part of this, as can characterization, but so does the overall atmosphere, mode and setting. How much do these environmental factors, outside of game-play, cause me to want to continue to progress through the game? Do I want to see what's coming up next, not because it is going to be a fun challenge, but because I just want to see where the environment of the game is going?

What's got me rethinking this category is my currently playing of Left 4 Dead 2 (yes, I know, I'm rather late to this party). Valve uses such an unconventional way of telling the story of these characters that it's hard to say it is even a story, but the mood, characterization and general atmosphere of the game is just about perfect. There is a deep sense of immersion and an investment in the world that is created.

I know what I'm rating, but I'm having trouble searching for a single word to categorize it: environment, world, atmosphere? - they all seem lacking.

Bioshock 2 - 8.5/10

I've gotta admit, I was a bit nervous about Bioshock 2. I loved the original, but when I had heard that it was being handed over to a new developer and that, gasp, on-line multiplayer was going to be added to the mix - well, I feared the worst. It turns out my fears were unfounded, mostly.

Bioshock 2 returns to rapture about 10 years after the original. This time, you play a big daddy, those lumbering brutes from the first game that protected the little sisters. However, your little sister was stolen from you and you were left for dead. Now you've returned with the mission to retrieve her.

Of course, there is more to it than that. Once again you are thrust into the middle of the power struggles in the crumbling underwater city of Rapture. This time the chief antagonist is one Sofia Lamb. Like Andrew Ryan from the first game, Lamb's ideology is absolute in her quest to make Rapture a utopia. However, where Ryan believed in the strength of the individual unfettered by the constraints of government and religion, Lamb believes in the power of the collective - the family.

The story unfolds using the same mechanisms as the first game. There are very few cut scenes (with the ones you have being first person). The narrative unfolds through your interaction with other characters and your discovery of audio diaries left scattered about - again, just like the first game. The world of Rapture feels the same. Graphically, it may have been stepped up a bit, but Rapture is still that damp, moldy, art deco hell that it always was. The atmosphere is once again perfect, intense, creepy, but not overpoweringly so.

Game play is, well - this is becoming a familiar refrain - just like the first game. Indeed, that would be my chief knock of the game. It almost seems like the developers were afraid to change too much and pretty much followed the same formula. Okay, you can now go two fisted with plasma powers in your left hand and weapons in your right, but really, is this much of a change? You could always switch from plasmas to weapons so fast that giving you both at the same time barely changes game play at all. The plasma powers have been more tweaked than rewritten. The new weapons and ammo types all work well and are very satisfying to use.

What is different is the way in which you harvest adam, the gene altering substance that gives you your powers. Before you wrestled with a big daddy and then took your adam from the little sister it was protecting. Now you have the option to adopte said little sister and cart her around looking for dead bodies - "angles" - for her to harvest. While she's sucking out the adam, it is your job to protect her from the horde of splicers (the adam junkies that populate Rapture) that will be coming. This new element is fun, especially with powers and weapons having a more trap options than before. Also new are the big sisters. These are former little sisters that have been genetically modified by Lamb and are out to stop you. They pop up once per level and generally make the big daddies look like wusses. The big sisters are fast and powerful, and fun to fight.

The campaign feels shorter than the first. I would guess it took me about 20 hours of playing, though I'm a complete scrounge and other could likely finish in about a dozen hours. Although brief, the pacing feels about right. If it were much longer, I think the familiarity of it would begin to drag it down. There is also multiplayer - the usual fair of capture the flag, territories, and the like, with a Rapture twist of course. This kind of thing doesn't really float my boat so I didn't give it a whirl. I can't see it dragging too many people away from Halo or Modern Warfare.

Overall, if you like the first you will likely enjoy this one too, though the overall familiarity and shorter campaign makes it feel more like large expansion pack as opposed to a stand alone game.

Story: 4
Interface: 4
Game Play: 4
Challenge: 4
Fun: 4

Overall: 8.5/10