Loading ... 
Valve’s co-op survival horror shooter Left 4 Dead became an instant classic when it burst on an unsuspecting public last year. So could such an eagerly awaited sequel exceed expectations? Read our full, entrailed, Left 4 Dead 2 review and see if the hairs stand up on the back of your neck!
This time around we’re in the Deep South of America with four new survivors taking on the zombie hordes. The characters in Left 4 Dead 2 are much more rounded than in the first game, with plenty of humour and banter to help relieve the tension.
The five new campaign scenarios in Left 4 Dead 2 are highly imaginative and are also linked more closely to a central storyline. What begins in the overrun urban centre spreads out to a creepy carnival, through swamp lands and torrential downpours to end with a breathless dash for safety over an endless wreck-strewn bridge.
Both monsters and weapons for dealing with them have expanded in Left 4 Dead 2 too. As well as your run-of-the-mill zombies (the so-called common infected), the special infected now include the acid-spewing Spitters, the Jockeys that jump on your back and steer you towards damage and the ramming Chargers who hammer you into the ground.
Read our Modern Warfare 2 review now
To combat them you have all the usual guns and rifles plus some fun melee weapons including a chainsaw, cricket bat, frying pan and samurai sword. There’s even an air guitar you can wield during a furious final battle on the rocket concert stage at the carnival! Defibrillators have been introduced to revive dead survivors and bile bombs lobbed at special infected will make the common zombies attack them like a wolf pack.
Left 4 Dead 2 is a much bloodier affair than the original game – body parts get hacked off, guts drip out, ribs are exposed and heads explode, splashing the screen in vile liquid. The pace is faster, too, and more relentless, which means your team skills have to be sharper when working together.
As for Left 4 Dead 2’s multiplayer mode, the new Scavenge mode gives you the chance to play alternately as infected or survivors as you desperately gather gas tanks to pour into a generator. This is much more exciting than the mere Survival time trial and fans will also appreciate the super-hard Realism mode that removes all the helpful highlights while increasing kill difficulty.
Forget the wannabes like Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Killing Floor – Left 4 Dead 2 is THE blueprint for an undead apocalypse…
[...] Left 4 Dead 2’s first downloadable content has been unveiled. It’s pretty sensational bringing the Survivors from the original Left 4 Dead together with the characters from its sequel. The first Left 4 Dead 2 DLC is called The Passing and occurs after the Dead Center campaign. It’ll show the meeting of the two groups of survivors from Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. [...]