Left 4 Dead 2

Deadly

You only need to peek at EA's immense marketing spend for Left 4 Dead 2 to see what all the fuss is about. Last year's affair was comparatively muted, spurred along by word of mouth, adulation from the gaming press and a communal respect for Valve's pedigree as a developer. Left 4 Dead 2 begins with the success of the original, creating a sequel born out of dedication, a shrewd understanding of the online market and the realisation that the first one of these was pretty dang good.

It seems funny at first, then, that after acclimatising to the new daytime environments and peeling back the veneer of a new cast of survivors, the initial steps the sequel takes in the big wide world is to tie the game's campaigns together into one connected narrative - the first game's standalone campaigns were critically championed. But, as seems to always be the case, Valve knows best. My eight-hour day one binge, and the personal eradication of 3,218 infected, started with a single stray zombie and the cast of Left 4 Dead 2 meeting each other for the first time.

Dead Center is where the four player co-op tale starts, with Nick, Ellis, Rochelle and Coach being - appropriately - left for dead by an evacuating helicopter. The detailed minutiae is still adorable: nobody knows the proper names for the special infected yet, for instance, so you hear cries of "hoodie" and "fat man" when the AI director throws its fancy lackeys in your direction. As you move through an apartment complex, which culminates in forcing the team through a burning floor of the building, the survivors have made their introductions to each other and the player. When Rochelle tells the group to "axe her a question" after picking one up, you'll be ready to let Zoey, Bill, Francis and Louis take the backseat for a bit. Later, as you frantically scamper through a convenience store to grab bottles of coca-cola to fulfil a barricaded man's bizarre request for refreshment, you'll have just about forgotten they ever existed in the first place. Poor Louis.

Valve's aging (but still competent) Source engine shows its age from time to time, but their ability to imbue character and atmosphere is constant. Plus they've upped the zombie gore technology, turning the pleasant scenes of Southern American surburbia into snapshots of unfettered crimson viscera. The five campaigns, between them, have a variety that the first game lacked: Dead Center's finale sequence, for instance, makes you to run around in a mall collecting petrol tanks to fill up an all-American muscle car. Hard Rain takes you through a riverside town, including a witch-infested Sugar Mill, and back again, requiring you to retrace your steps through a vision-impairing rainstorm before defending off waves of zombies at a burger bar.

But it's Dark Carnival, chronologically the second campaign, which shows the game at its best. Starting on a highway at dusk, the survivors work their way through a motel complex and, eventually, into the Whispering Oaks carnival. Here you travel through a tunnel of love before kicking off panic events by playing with fairground rides, with charming mascot Moustachio, and eventually running a lengthy, nail-biting gauntlet event over a rollercoaster track. Nothing, however, tops the finale: the team stumble upon a stadium and decide to attract a helicopter by staging their own rock concert, setting off fireworks, turning on the lights and cranking the music all the way up to eleven. Voluminous hordes of undead nasties quickly follow, of course.

Any game that lets you honk the noses of zombie clowns isn't going to be taking itself entirely seriously, and Left 4 Dead 2's moments of quirky aesthetic decadence help pepper each campaign with enough intriguing nooks and crannies to keep you amused across multiple playthroughs. Those questioning the direction only need to know the following: as splendid as the first game is, the sequel makes its single night-time setting look limited in scope.

Left 4 Dead always grounded itself in a very definable set of rules. It didn't fuss about with things like weapons, for instance - you had either the good or better version of an assault rifle or shotgun. Or the hunting rifle, which was a bit duff. Left 4 Dead 2 opens up somewhat, initially by presenting you with mid-tier guns, such as the AK-47 and silenced SMG, for your primary weapon. But it's the secondary slot that's undergone the most radical makeover, with the game offering up a selection of melee - cricket bat, katana, fire axe, et al - tools alongside a potential high-calibre magnum pistol.

Smooshing a zombie's head with a frying pan, with beautiful accompanying clang, is an irresistible prospect and, thankfully, sequences primed for close combat are served up with abandon by the new campaigns, which frequently toss you opportunities where it's easier just to soldier forward with melee weapons flailing aimlessly. There's also an achievement for battering a Tank to death, if you're feeling insane. Overall, though, these additions don't, as might be feared, overcomplicate matters: they're still just instruments to remove zombie heads, arms and legs from zombie bodies. What they do allow, however, is for the game's strict rule-set to be turned into an apocalyptic playground, chucking in a whole load of new, entertaining options whilst keeping the core gameplay near-identical.

Teamwork is still the most useful tool in your arsenal - that's kind of the point - and that fundamental tenet of sticking together to get the job done is always in full effect. And, for those bands of four who consider themselves a cut above, there's a Realism mode which removes most of the handy on-screen information (such as the location of your teammates) and makes zombie torsos more resistant to bullets. Headshots still work, thank God.

The AI director, who handles the spawning of nasties, has a few new tricks up his sleeves, notably in the addition of three new special infected. The Charger (rushes at the team and pummels one to death unless killed first), Spitter (flings balls of noxious acid) and Jockey (jumps on top of a survivor and steers them into peril) are seamlessly integrated into the experience - to the point you wonder how the game ever worked without them - and, even more surprisingly, work with the existing lot to set up some convincing traps. Their AI is a bit smarter this time around, too; they're more likely to hold back and co-ordinate rather than rush one-by-one to their imminent second demise.

It's still more than prepared to kick you when you're down: the Director is like the undead version of Deal or no Deal's nefarious Banker. I've gone through multiple finales where it chose to spawn Tanks right next to the escape vehicle, which is disheartening and must be a form of abuse. I might complain. But it certainly does keep you on your toes.

Further masochistic delights can be derived from the game's new Scavenge mode. On paper it's a simple arena-based multiplayer feature; a best of three where Survivors try and collect gas tanks to fill up vehicles and the Infected attempt to stop them. In practice it's phenomenal, giving you a concentrated Left 4 Dead experience in small bursts. Because, let's face it - as good as Versus mode is, it always takes a very long time to get all the back-and-forth out of the way.

It might offer more of the good stuff, but the same issues that affected the first creep their way back into the sequel. It's not a game for everyone, for a start, and anyone that even thinks about playing it single-player will be sorely disappointed. And the Campaigns, on your first time through, can still be confusing mazes, twisting and turning around dead-end nooks and crannies intended to give the Infected a place to hide in Versus mode. Levels are designed to push players the right way by design, but even the very best of design intentions cannot compensate for time and experience with the game. But, as one of the most endearing 'hardcore' titles on the market, it's questionable if you'd want it to be any other way.

It's better than the first game, then. The biggest achievement, however, is that Valve - who are known to take their time - have managed to put such an enormous wealth of content out in a single year. Left 4 Dead 2 doesn't just add a few new levels and features, it fiddles and increments a formula that few thought needed changing in the first place. The team have managed to infuse their sequel with the exact same kind of nuanced creative energies that usually takes them years, and in doing so they've made last year's accomplished Left 4 Dead look like a simple mod in comparison.

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By Martin Gaston