To begin with, there is actually a coherent story tying this game together. But even though this game shares the same concept as its predecessor, almost everything is done much better this time around. This often includes freeing teammates from attacks, helping out whenever someone gets overwhelmed, and even selflessly giving up health items when it could mean your own untimely demise. To do this, all four players need to work together and cover each other's back. Players control one of four disparate zombie apocalypse survivors trying to make it from one end of a map to the other without being killed by hordes of fast running and sometimes mutated infected. That being said, the basic core of the L4D experience remains intact. And those are just the modes, not to mention all of the other vast improvements made to the gameplay itself to make the sequel feel much more varied and complete. This time around the disc comes overflowing with content including five campaigns plus their Versus counterparts, a host of survival challenges, and the all-new Scavenge mode. This is one of the major areas where L4D2 outshines the original. Now I'm not trying to bag on L4D because it is still one of my favorite games of all time and I've spent more hours playing it than perhaps any other game before it, but even I thought the game felt incomplete. It wasn't until months afterwards that the other two Versus campaigns and Survival mode were made available through a free batch of DLC. On the disc you were given four campaigns and only two of which could actually be played in Versus mode. Perhaps all of the rabid fans of the first game, myself included, who are lashing out and threatening to boycott L4D2 have simply forgotten what a laughably incomplete package the original title really was.

While I can understand the feelings of apprehension at being faced with buying a sequel so close to the original title's release, after playing the game for a good amount of time I can say that L4D2 needed to be a sequel and deserves its full price tag, even more so than the first L4D. The common resounding complaints were that Valve was just trying to quickly cash in on the success of the first title, it wasn't a true sequel, and instead of boxing another game everything being put into L4D2 should have just been made into DLC for the original.

When Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2) was unexpectedly announced at this year's E3, the cries of outrage were almost deafening.

Left 4 dead 2 review