Zombies. Is there anything else that provides nerds with such unrelenting glee than zombies? The shuffling undead make us go wild, hence the constant stream of films and, more recently, video games featuring the living dead. They even managed to update the zombie movie; the film 28 Days Later introduced a newer, faster zombie to replace Romero’s creepy, shuffling monsters. Then of course, Valve made the hugely successful Left 4 Dead, introducing co-op to a genre littered with single-player games. Well, now it’s time for you to grab your shotgun and torch, because Left 4 Dead 2 is on its way.Of course, you probably already knew this. Even without Valve’s extra effort at advertising this time around, the masses on the Internet have voiced their concern about a sequel within a year of the original, throwing out phrases like “it’ll be rushed”, or “why couldn’t they make it DLC”. And yes, they’ve got a point. But equally, if they started throwing in the new additions into the original Left 4 Dead, it might be a little jarring. I guess. Whatever.

Gameplay is identical to Left 4 Dead; you and three others, computer-controlled or human, fight through a horde of zombies to get to a safe room, rinse and repeat until the climactic scene where you hold off the horde in one location. So, let’s move onto the new and cool stuff. For starters you’ve got four new characters, although as before they are purely for aesthetics and have no variety, but that’s ok. I believe that there’s actually a story behind this game, rather than the completely unconnected scenarios seen in L4D. Thrown into these environments are new Special Infected, who are the Charger, a large monster that collides with you and keeps running until it hits a wall, where it proceeds to smash your helpless body into the ground repeatedly, the Jockey, who is very similar to the Hunter, except that he rides you round instead of pinning you to the ground, and the Spitter, who likes to spit acid all over you, and upon death leave a nice pile of acid around.

Of course, it would be unfair to fight these guys off with nothing at all, so new weapons have been added. The standard shotgun and machine gun are still there, along with their upgraded counterparts and the sniper rifle, but joining them is an AK-47, a shotgun that looks an awful lot like a SPAS-12 and a semi-automatic rifle with a scope, which is pretty similar to the sniper rifle. There’s also a grenade launcher, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to get my hands on that. Also, there’s now the inclusion of more than one pistol type, as you can grab a magnum to replace your standard pistol, which is pretty sweet. The main addition, however, is the melee weaponry.

Now, close combat with the undead may seem a little strange, but actually it works quite well. The melee weapon slot is the same as your pistol, so you can’t carry both at the same time, which is annoying. However, melee weapons are one hit kills, so it’s actually more useful to have than a pistol, especially since you’ll probably get surrounded by ravenous zombies all the time. The weapons come in all shapes and sizes, including a nightstick, frying pan (complete with comedy frying pan smashing noise) and a guitar (complete with comedy guitar string twanging sound effect). I love this new addition, as it’s way more fun to be able to clock a zombie in the head with a guitar than it is to just keep shooting them.

Also available is new items, such as Boomer Bile, which attracts zombies to one area where they kill each, which is awesome. There’s also Adrenaline, which makes you run faster, and defibrillators, which revive dead teammates. This does, however, raise the question as to whether re-spawning is still in the campaign.

Graphically, not much has changed from the original. The level of New Orleans that was available looks pretty, and is brightly lit, in contrast to every level in L4D. The new infected look pretty cool, and blood flies around the screen gloriously. The HUD has changed slightly, the black splatters replaced with simple green boxes, but it’s not that much of a change that you’ll notice it.

Sounds haven’t changed much either, although it appears as though each “movie” (as I believe they’re still called) will have it’s own different style on the background music. For example, the New Orleans level has plenty of jazz and drums being played, along with the typical orchestral score that made the original a joy to play. One minor annoyance is the strange beeping noise that occurs when the game is trying to tell you something, or when you start to go into really low health. It’s not game killing, but it makes the experience less engrossing, which is a shame.

Maybe it is too soon for a sequel to a game that people are still playing, but at the end of the day you can just choose to not buy it if it really offends you that much. Having said that, I’m fairly certain I’ll be picking this up at some point, as long as Assassins Creed 2 isn’t as good. Fans of the original will love this, as well as fans of the shooter genre or just anything zombie.

Left 4 Dead 2 hits stores on the 17th November. Hey, why not pre-order it now if you haven’t already? There’s links below that could help with that.