Before I go on my trip I figured I had to do this. SO,
Left 4 Dead 2Where do I start? Well, let me just say this.
This game is awesome.
Awesome.Although I have a few complaints.
All in details...The game itself is probably the most difficult Valve game I've ever played. This game is so painfully difficult that it spits out SI everytime you kill one. The original didn't have this amount of difficulty. For example, I kill a Hunter. The EXACT MOMENT I killed a Hunter, 2 Chargers appear near me, 1 takes down my team member (Keep in mind we just got back from a Tank battle on Hard, and before that somebody through a molotov at a Witch). And don't even get me started on Expert Realism. Christ...
The optimization itself in this game is just purely fucking weird. Hard Rain should require twice as much as Swamp Fever and yet it doesn't. Swamp Fever is such a lag fest for me and I don't know why. The Parish runs decently for me except for the Finale which is just *UBAR* lag. Which is understandable, since the finale for The Parish is just *UBAR* epic. Anywho, Hard Rain, which is the most visually impressive chapter, runs smoothly on all fronts. Even on a server with 152 ping. Dead Center also runs smoothly all around, carrying a 30 FPS with me wherever I go. Firing a Automatic Weapon drops my FPS by a wide margin, along with turning on a Flashlight, which drops your FPS by 10. I wonder if somebody will make a mod that gets rid of all these visual effects to help the user get a faster FPS. Finally, Dark Carnival lags in some areas but plays decently for the most part.
What really icks me though is that the weapons feature very little originality from eachother. You have about 10 melee weapons that do the exact same thing. *Hint* It's a myth that the Katana can crown Witches. Along with 20 other weapons that do the exact same thing as well.
**Now the good stuff!**
First thing I can say about Left 4 Dead 2 that's good. Gore, gore, gore gore gore. You shoot a zombie in the gut with a Desert Eagle and you watch his lower intestines fall out. You slice a zombie with a Katana and you watch his limbs fly off. You shoot a multitude of bullets from your SCAR, emptying your clip into the zombies and watch as their faces fly off, as they still run at you. It's so sad that the same can't be said for Special Infected though.
The mini challenges are great as well and provide a change of pace (Gauntlets, for example I had to go and grab a bottle of soda for a weapons-guy-thing).
And the finales are as epic as ever. I think I got a bit of semen on my hard drive after playing the Hard Rain Finale.
Score - 9.5/10
XeroCore
