Exactly what you need from a sequel to the original Left 4 Dead.

While the original Left 4 Dead was a lot of fun, running from safe room to safe room killing hordes of zombies, an argument could be made that it was lacking content from the release. That is clearly not the case here, however, right out of the box Left 4 Dead 2 features almost double the content of the original game. It is still the same concept though, four survivors who have somehow avoided being turned into a zombie during an outbreak must work together to live. 
 

There are 4 new survivors though, all with their own personalties and relationships to one another. While the lone female, Rochelle, is fairly boring and rarely talks throughout the games five campaigns the other three characters: Nick, Ellis, and Coach all have entertaining comments about what is currently going on around them. Especially Ellis who is constantly telling ridiculous stories about his buddy Keith that more often that not have you questioning if Keith is even real. Along with the change of cast comes a change of setting as the game starts in Savannah Georgia with the survivors trying to make it to a military base in New Orleans. This means instead of those typical city based settings you will also be traveling through a swamp, a sugar mill full of witches, and even a fairground.  
 
The settings and characters aren't the only things to change, however, as Left 4 Dead 2 features a slew of new items and weapons. While the basic game play stays the same the ways to kill zombies has doubled. Probably the most exciting new feature is the use of melee weapons such as the crowbar or even a katana. Melee weapons act like the pistol taking your secondary weapon slot and have a huge advantage in hordes of the infected. Some of my favorite moments while playing involved being trapped in a horde of zombies only to mow them down with the melee weapon as all of them are instant kills. Another new fun item comes in the form of a shot - adrenaline. This causes the survivors to move faster and gives some strategy on when the right time to use it as in addition to moving faster you can resurrect downed team mates quicker or use other items in half the time. 
 

Keeping the trend of more and better stuff Left 4 Dead 2 adds a bunch of new zombies to kill. For starters there is a new group titled uncommon infected who die as fast as the normal zombies but have gimmicks and clothing that separate them from the crowd such as the clown infected whose popularity attracts other normal infected to follow him around. The real news here, however, comes in the form of the special infected with three more joining the ranks of the tank and the smoker. The good news is they are all playable in versus mode unlike the witch (who still isn't playable, by the way) and even better they don't feel like they are repackaged ideas from the first set of special infected. They consist of the charger, the jockey, and the spitter. While you can probably get a good idea of the charger and spitter from their names it's probably not as easy with the jockey. This small quick moving zombie can jump on the back of a survivor and take control on their movement which is great from separating players and better yet, quite fun to do. 
 
Just like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 has a variety of modes structured in the same format. Multiple campaigns split into chapters (which this time around are tied together much better) ending in a grand finale that usually involves escaping onto a boat or helicopter. Valve has made some great changes this time around to the finales that add some variety to the simple "stand around and kill stuff until rescue arrives". My personal favorite involved running across a destroyed bridge to a helicopter as a never ending stream of zombies tried to kill me. While it kept the spirit of killing a near endless amount of zombies it was far more active than standing around waiting for them to come to me. 
 
Aside from the normal campaigns all of the past modes, including the DLC survival mode from the first game, make a return here. You have the versus mode where teams swap between infected and survivors trying to either reach or stop the other team from reaching the safe room. Survival has you fighting an endless stream of zombies until you inevitably die, earning medals for surviving certain periods of time.  
 

There is one new mode though, my personal favorite, called scavenge. Like versus this mode has the teams swapping from infected to survivors each round. The general goal is for the survivors to place as many gas cans into a car or something similar as they can until the time runs out while the infected are trying to cause the survivors to drop the gas cans and hopefully cause them to explode. Each gas can recovered by the survivors adds 20 seconds to a clock and continues until either the survivors use every gas can on the field or the time runs out. Teams win a round by using the most gas cans as survivors. As fun as this mode is it really starts to show some unbalances to the special infected classes. The spitter for example can never cause the survivor to drop a gas can, only destroy dropped ones. The boomer, however, is the worst; he has no ability to cause survivors to drop their gas cans nor an attack to blow them up which means he can be pretty useless. I often found myself purposefully getting killed just to come back as something more useful next time. 
 
One year may not seem like much but it has done wonders to the look of the series. Character models and environments look sharper and more detailed than the original game and it just much more polished. A lot of care was put into zombie death animations as well since they are gruesome and sometimes disgusting to watch. Saying that the first thing that pops into my head is watching a pipe bomb explode a zombie in half only for it to fly in my direction as its entrails oozed from its body. Shooting specific spots of an infected will result in different deaths such as shooting a hole right in its stomach or blowing off a limb. I found myself quite addicted to shooting a zombie in the leg just to see the limb explode and the zombie fall down unable to move (sorry, no crawling zombies here). 
 
About the only complaint I have with this new zombie apocalypse is that you really need a lot of friends to truly enjoy it. Sure you can go through the campaign or survival mode alone but anything else requires more people to play with. This wouldn't be a huge issue if not for the fact Left 4 Dead 2 uses a lobby system in place of match making. You can't simply join a party with a single friend then hop into a game together, the closest thing to this is 4v4 team versus/scavenge which is impossible to even join without 3 other friends. This is a noticeable blemish on an otherwise amazing multi-player game. Still, if you have some friends that love killing endless amounts of brainless zombies this is the perfect game to do it in.