Happy Halloween, readers, and with Halloween comes Left 4 Dead 2’s demo for everyone who pre-ordered it.
Just in case you haven’t been paying attention to all the info that’s been released, let’s go over the new things shown in the demo. Scavenger and Realism are sadly not available in the demo, and the same is true of Versus and Survival. Again, it’s the first two levels of one campaign, and I suspect that once again the second is cut off early.
First off, there’s three new infected this time around. The Spitter, the Charger, and the Jockey are all new to Left 4 Dead 2.
The Spitter spits acid at the survivors, and the acid stays on the ground, injuring anyone who stands in it. This does eventually go away. The survivors call this “goo”. The main role of the Spitter is to stop survivors camping in corners and such, because it can cause them to quickly scatter away from a safe position. Additionally, it can stop survivors protecting or reviving a downed player by spitting on them, as anyone who tries to rescue them will of course be injured by the goo laying around.
The Jockey has already sky-rocketed on my hate list as an infected, as it hops on to you and rides you around, taking control away from you and leading you in the direction it wants you to go. This is hugely annoying. It also does some damage to you, and when you’re incapped hops off to ride someone else. You can try to move to make it so you move less in the direction it’s leading you in, but it doesn’t make much difference. Obviously it can be very helpful in splitting up survivors, or leading them towards a car or witch.
Lastly, the Charger will be the last thing you see in plenty of expert runs. It can, like the name says, charge, smashing through your whole team and doing damage. It then pins and hurts one player, much like a hunter. On expert, it has a habit of coming out of nowhere and smashing through everyone, dooming you to failure.
The Tank, Smoker, Hunter, Boomer and Witch all return, and all work mostly the same, except for the Witch, who now walks around instead of sitting in one place. They also look slightly different, although it’s not very pronounced for the Tank or Hunter.
Uncommon common infected also show up, although the only one present is the one wearing riot gear, who is immune to attacks from the front and must be shot in the back. This is very, very annoying.
Along with the uncommon infected comes a new damage system, wherein you can injure common infected. Blowing an arm off is no longer fatal, and they can still attack you. You can also cut them up, blow holes in them, blow off legs, blow off heads, etc.
Also, when you kill an infected with a melee weapon, blood splatters on your screen, which can make it very hard to see.
There are also more guns in L4D2, such as the AK-47 and military sniper rifle, combat shotgun, chrome shotgun, and Silenced SMG. Some of these guns are so much better than normal guns (such as the military sniper rifle and the Desert rifle) that it seems like there might be a third tier of weapons. However, weapons are a bit more random than in L4D, so they aren’t as clearly laid out in tiers.
It also will tell you that a gun has full ammo and recommend you switch if you’re on low ammo.
More interestingly, there’s ammo and gun upgrades, and a grenade launcher.
Even more interesting, however, is the addition of melee weapons. These replace the pistols, and the ones available in the demo are a police baton, a frying pan, a machete, and a guitar. These one-shot normal infected and do serious damage to others, but obviously are very short range. Another pistol replacement available is the magnum, which has only 8 shots but does much more damage, although I never found it without using cheats, so either it’s not supposed to be in the demo (like the grenade launcher, which has been patched out) or is simply very rare.
There are also some other additions, such as boomer bile (which lets you attract a hoard to whatever you throw it on, and takes up the grenade slot), adrenaline (which speeds you up for a short time, and takes up the pills slot), and defibrillator (which brings a dead teammate back to life and takes up the health pack spot).
Now that the information side of this post is done (although check the comments, as I am SURE that I have missed something which will be leapt upon by the good folks there), we can go on to other contributors sharing some of their experience.
Secret Agent Clank:
- Main thing, I REALLY wish there was a versus demo. The game seems more geared towards that, and it would be nice to get a look. Apart from that, the demo is too short. Wish there was more meat for the pre-order demo.
- While a bunch of weapons don’t differ drastically, the different designs and minor changes makes for good variety, something lacking in the original. Detection seems much better than L4D1, plus the Kalashnikov and SPAS12 are just badass.
Defibs are useful no matter who’s carrying them.- Special Infected don’t seem too smart (on expert) like in L4D1, although this is hard to judge from only this. ALSO, they don’t stay on for more than a second before being shot off, so either that’s a problem or I/we’re just that good
- Expert seems easier than in L4D1, but again, hard to judge.
- The blues slide guitar tunes are fookin awesome (already transcribing and extracting). Also, the guitar makes an awesome twang when you hit something with it.
- Do they really need to play that ad after finishing the demo? I mean we already pre-ordered by virtue of… well, we have it.
Drexer
I have to note that I specially loved the new musical scores. While keeping to the tone they give off a whole similar vibe that is extremely well adapted to the game environment. They keep adding that perfect sense of urgency/panic at the exact moments.
The jukebox was a very nice touch, although now after some experimenting it seems that it only has 3 songs(at least on this map), and they loop always in the same order(RE:Your Brains is the second by the way).
There was a moment which I do not know if Zorg noted, where the Jockey grabbed Coach or Ellis and it almost succeeded in driving them against the witch, it was really a moment where the AI Director shined through and I fortunately managed to hit it with some lucky shots.
The adrenaline shots were life savers, Zorg having used one to reach the alarm. I was downed at the time and I just saw him rush past me like some kind of zombie apocalypse Flash.
Like Zorg said I managed to hit a tank with the bile bomb, and seeing that at the moment I was out of ammo I attacked it with the machete. Quite suicidal, but also quite fun. There seems to be a huge increase in the quantity of weapons spread around, but the existence of ammo stashes seems extremely reduced.
Phoenix
There seems to be less ammo carried, more weapons lying around. The ammo stashes in the saferooms are more important, simply because you’re FAR more likely to be carrying a gun that isn’t there (and you might want to keep it)
Tactics tip: if you pick up a melee weapon, then you drop whatever pistol(s) you had (if you weren’t carrying another melee weapon)
hence, at the start, if one person takes the melee weapon then another can have dual pistols.
I tested out the defib; it’s one use, you need to get to helping-up range and it takes some time to use.
Aside from that, mostly what’s been said.
Hopefully, that gives you a nice taste of what’s in-store for the demo, so enjoy your Halloween and look forward to when the public demo comes out!
