Left 4 Dead 2's much awaited arrival is in less than 7 hours time...
Official Release Date: 17th of November 2009
Gameplay: Like its predecessor, Left 4 Dead 2 is primarily afirst-person shooterwith a heavy emphasis on cooperative gameplay, with some cutscenes presented in the third-person or using pre-rendered movies. The game presents five new campaigns, each composed of five smaller maps. In the first four maps of any campaign, the survivors attempt to reach a safehouse, while the final stage requires the survivors to call for rescue and hold against a large horde of infected while they wait.
Each survivor can carry one main weapon and either one or two pistols or one of several melee weapons introduced in Left 4 Dead 2 such as frying pans or chainsaws. Though melee weapons will cause extra damage to the infected when struck, the survivors can use any other weapon or item for weaker melee attacks and to temporarily push the infected back. They also carry a flashlight, which can be used to maneuver in dark areas but may startle the infected; a first aid kit or defibrillator kit which can be used to heal or revive other survivors respectively; pain pills or adrenaline shots that give a temporary burst of health recovery and agility; and a throwable weapon—a Molotov cocktail to set an area on fire, a pipe bomb modified with Smoke alarm to attract a large number of infected before detonating, and new to Left 4 Dead 2, a vial containing Boomer bial, which can be thrown at infected to cause them to turn on each other. A supply of these weapons and items and additional ammunition are generally found at the start of each campaign and within safehouses, but may also be found scattered about the level.
As the survivors make their way through the campaign, they must work together to make their way to the safehouse and rescue. Players are shown the health and status of their fellow survivors, and should they not be in sight, will also be shown the silhouette of the other survivors. Taking damage from the infected will cause the survivor to lose health, and their actions will become slower as more damage is taken. If a survivor takes too much damage, they will become incapacitated, and forced to fight off the infected using pistols until rescued by another survivor or dies from further damage; the character remains dead until the next level, or, in Campaign mode, reappears in a "rescue closet" to be freed by the other survivors. Many of the special infected can quickly finish off a survivor if they are not rescued, and thus the game encourages players to stay as a group and work together to traverse the level safely. Should all the survivors be killed or incapacitated, the game is over, and players will have to restart that level. While most events the players experience are semi-randomly generated by the game's AI Director, some levels feature staged events which, when triggered by a survivor, will cause the players to be rushed by a horde of infected.
Left 4 Dead 2 retains the three game modes of the original game—Campaign, Versus, and Survival—and adds a new game mode called Scavenge. In Campaign mode up to four human players fight against the computer-controlled infected to make their way between safe houses and eventually to rescue; any survivors not controlled by a human player is controlled by the computer. In Versus mode up to four other human players take control of the various Special Infected who try to prevent the Survivors from reaching the next safe house. The two teams swap sides once per chapter and are scored based on their play through as Survivors, with the scoring based on factors such as health, distance traveled and the number of Survivors alive at the end. Survival mode is a timed challenge where the survivors are trapped in a section of the campaign maps, and try to survive as long as possible against an unending onslaught of infected. In the new four-on-four Scavenge mode, the survivor players are required to collect and use as many of the sixteen gas canisters scattered about a level to maintain fuel in power generators, extending the time in the round, while the infected players attempt to stop them, or at times, detonate the canisters themselves. New maps specific for this mode will be distributed with the game.
The game will feature a "realism" mode, which can be enabled at any difficulty for any of the game modes. The realism mode removes some of the video game artifacts from the gameplay: survivors will not be able to see the silhouettes of their teammates, and should they die, they can only be revived with a defibrillator kit and will no longer respawn later in the level. Damage dealt to Infected is also changed, with headshots dealing more damage to enemies, rather than limb or body shots, making gameplay even more of a challenge. The realism mode, which is designed to force players to work closely together and rely on voice communication, was created to give players a way "to be challenged as a team" without having to increase the difficulty level of the game, according to Valve's Chet Faliszek.
