Did anyone else pick this up? I enjoyed playing the demo and I broke down and pre-ordered it about an hour before release so that I could get the 10% discount and freebies (baseball bat in L4D2 and Bill's hat in TF2).
I find that campaign modes tend to oscillate between "immensely dull" and "absolutely thrilling," especially on the first campaign (Dead Center) where the odd-numbered chapters are dark, cramped, and confusing and the even-numbered chapters have really wild crescendos. I consider this a definite improvement over the first game, where "crescendo" usually meant "hiding under a pipe spamming autoshotgun and melee." There's also an option to play campaigns in "realism mode," which disables the glowing outlines around teammates and items. (There are also some other tweaks to this game mode, examples being that bodyshots do reduced damage and the witch can instantly kill players regardless of difficulty.) I've actually come to enjoy realism mode quite a bit, as it doesn't allow you to just breeze through levels: if you want to find items in realism mode, you really need to comb areas looking for them, rather than just having the team scatter and glance through rooms before moving on.
The new toys (both for survivor and infected) are quite fun to play with, especially the new melee weapons. It's really nice to have a larger number of usable weapons, as in L4D the hunting rifle was absolute rubbish whereas in L4D2 both sniper rifles are actually quite useful. The new special infected are also quite a lot of fun and offer the infected team a myriad of options in versus, which is refreshing after L4D in which there were really only two infected configurations that you got to play with (playing around the boomer, or trying to get a third hunter). The scoring for versus has also been heavily adjusted so that scores are primarily based on distance (with a small bonus for making it 100% of the way through the level), which is nice since wiping right before the safe room still gets you more points than wiping at the level start.
There's also a new versus mode, scavenge, in which the survivors run around a static map looking for gas cans to fill a vehicle at the center of the map. Rounds are usually short (it typically takes less than 30 minutes to finish a best-of-three game) and incredibly fast-paced. My favorite scavenge map is Death Center, which takes place in an open, multi-tiered mall. Here, you can have part of the team run to the upper tiers to obtain gas and run it part of the way before tossing it down for teammates on the ground floor to finish the trip. This gas tank relay seems reminiscent of old-school capture the flag. In my mind, the new scavenge mode alone is worth the price of admission.
If you haven't bought yet, you have several options. The game sells for $50 on Steam and at most retailers. Newegg sells boxed copies for $40. Retail copies still need to be activated through Steam, but they're a good option if you like having a physical copy or are on metered bandwidth (the game is a 6 GB download if you get it through Steam). If you're looking to acquire the game for considerably cheaper, you can go in with three other people and buy the four pack on Steam, which gets you four copies for the price of three. If you split the cost evenly between four people, it works out to $37.50 per person. DirectGameKeys is also selling the game for $35, although they're currently out of stock and they tend to sell out quickly when they do get the product in stock.
Feel free to add me on Steam if you'd like. I'm a L4D vet and I prefer to play with people who have mics (especially when playing versus games or realism mode) but don't mind playing with people who are inexperienced, especially in campaign mode. You can also join the Smogon Steam group.
I find that campaign modes tend to oscillate between "immensely dull" and "absolutely thrilling," especially on the first campaign (Dead Center) where the odd-numbered chapters are dark, cramped, and confusing and the even-numbered chapters have really wild crescendos. I consider this a definite improvement over the first game, where "crescendo" usually meant "hiding under a pipe spamming autoshotgun and melee." There's also an option to play campaigns in "realism mode," which disables the glowing outlines around teammates and items. (There are also some other tweaks to this game mode, examples being that bodyshots do reduced damage and the witch can instantly kill players regardless of difficulty.) I've actually come to enjoy realism mode quite a bit, as it doesn't allow you to just breeze through levels: if you want to find items in realism mode, you really need to comb areas looking for them, rather than just having the team scatter and glance through rooms before moving on.
The new toys (both for survivor and infected) are quite fun to play with, especially the new melee weapons. It's really nice to have a larger number of usable weapons, as in L4D the hunting rifle was absolute rubbish whereas in L4D2 both sniper rifles are actually quite useful. The new special infected are also quite a lot of fun and offer the infected team a myriad of options in versus, which is refreshing after L4D in which there were really only two infected configurations that you got to play with (playing around the boomer, or trying to get a third hunter). The scoring for versus has also been heavily adjusted so that scores are primarily based on distance (with a small bonus for making it 100% of the way through the level), which is nice since wiping right before the safe room still gets you more points than wiping at the level start.
There's also a new versus mode, scavenge, in which the survivors run around a static map looking for gas cans to fill a vehicle at the center of the map. Rounds are usually short (it typically takes less than 30 minutes to finish a best-of-three game) and incredibly fast-paced. My favorite scavenge map is Death Center, which takes place in an open, multi-tiered mall. Here, you can have part of the team run to the upper tiers to obtain gas and run it part of the way before tossing it down for teammates on the ground floor to finish the trip. This gas tank relay seems reminiscent of old-school capture the flag. In my mind, the new scavenge mode alone is worth the price of admission.
If you haven't bought yet, you have several options. The game sells for $50 on Steam and at most retailers. Newegg sells boxed copies for $40. Retail copies still need to be activated through Steam, but they're a good option if you like having a physical copy or are on metered bandwidth (the game is a 6 GB download if you get it through Steam). If you're looking to acquire the game for considerably cheaper, you can go in with three other people and buy the four pack on Steam, which gets you four copies for the price of three. If you split the cost evenly between four people, it works out to $37.50 per person. DirectGameKeys is also selling the game for $35, although they're currently out of stock and they tend to sell out quickly when they do get the product in stock.
Feel free to add me on Steam if you'd like. I'm a L4D vet and I prefer to play with people who have mics (especially when playing versus games or realism mode) but don't mind playing with people who are inexperienced, especially in campaign mode. You can also join the Smogon Steam group.
