Introduction

Nowadays, many games such as CounterStrike, The call of duty, Battlefield have become the most famous, enjoyable games in the First Person shooting (FPS) game industry. For almost all the FPS game players, being a soldier in game and holding a gun or a grenade to fight with your enemies who also holding similar weapons as you seem to be the major trend in the FPS concept, sometimes also includes team fighting. However, being a survivor and holding a gun with limited bullets to fight a number of zombies, or on the other side being one of the zombies and attacking survivors have never been considered until the first version of Left 4 Dead had been released in 2008. To stand out from other shooting games, different races (human and zombie) and fighting styles, special AI system and also a heavy emphasis on cooperative gameplay make Left 4 Dead 2 a very successful to be a "Canon Game". So like some players mentioned before to play as a zombie, now the dream has become true. Therefore in my opinion, Left 4 Dead 2 will make a huge effect on later game productions and developments.


Developers

Left 4 Dead 2 was developed by Valve Corporation and was released on November 17, 2009, for the PC and Xbox360. Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company, it was founded as an L.L.C. based in Kirkland, Washington in 1996, and after incorporation in April 2003, it moved to Bellevue, Washington.

When Value made it so successful in Half-Life, the team started working on mods, spin-offs, and sequels. All current Valve games are built on its Source engine, which owes much of its success to mods and sequels. The company has produced six game series such as Half-Life, Team Fortress, Portal, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and Day of Defeat. It made Counterstrike, Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead by its distribution software, Steam, which is used to distribute games and related media online, from small independent developers to larger software houses. The company is also famous for their Source engine, one of the best 3D game engine in the world, and long development cycles.


Desinger


Mike Booth, the Left 4 Dead series designer, is actually not a crazy zombie fan. He talked about how him and his team came up with the early idea and how they designed the game: they did not started out with making a zombie game, but they actually started out making a shooting game just like CounterStrike, two counter strikers armed with machine guns fighting against a number of terrorists with knifives. And they came up with the idea -- making zombies, and the zombies will beat you until you can not move. However, the zombies who have rabies are not like like those ones that walk slow from old zombie game like Resident Evil, but run really fast. Likewise, the players will not be worried about the effection by the virus because for some reason they are immune to the virus, the only thing they need to do is to survive until they get to the safety.



Game overview

Four new survivors must work together to make it through the zombie apocalypse in the Southern United States, facing new threats and traversing new terrain as they fight their way through until they get rescued. It is a first-person shooter set in a post-zombie-apocalypse New Orleans. The game is cooperative multiplayer-focused first-person shooter, but also includes the option to play single-player with AI teammates. Furthermore, when in Vesus mode, it is possible to play as zombie side as well. 


Plot / Game Story



Left 4 Dead 2 tells a story about four new survivors, whose backstory is provided through dialogue within the game. Unlike the first version Left 4 Dead which had no significant story development, Left 4 Dead 2 tells a story arc positioned in the Southern United States which starts in Savannah, Georgia and ends in New Orleans, Louisiana. The four survivors have to fight their way through the hordes of infected, Special infected, using safehouses along the way to rest and having supplies, in order to get ready to enter the next scene.

The game story started from the four survivors climbing to the roof of a hotel in Savannah and waited to be rescued, however the survivors find themselves left by helicopters, then they find out they have to find their way to the local mall. ("Dead Center"). After a brief encounter with a gun store owner Whitaker (voiced by Dayton Callie) on their way, the survivors discover that the mall is overrun, and use the Jimmy Gimbs' stock car to bust out of the mall and travel towards New Orleans. On their way there they encounter the survivors featured in Left 4 Dead at the portside town of Rayford ("The Passing"), before finding the highway completely blocked by wrecked vehicles. (The first version of Left 4 Dead 2 does not have this scene.) The survivors are then forced to fight through a still-operating amusement park called Carnival Park, and start a huge fireworks-and-lights show used by the rock band, The Midnight Riders, in order to attract the attention of a helicopter pilot to rescue them("Dark Carnival"). After being rescued, they notice their pilot has been infected too. Nick is forced to kill him, which causes the helicopter to crash into a Swamp ("Swamp Fever"). They find brief shelter in a plantation house and make radio contact with a boat captain named Virgil who can get them to rescue, but he needs additional diesel fuel to make it to New Orleans. So the survivors go ashore, make their way through an abandoned sugar mill to a gas station to get fuel supplies, and return to the boat ("Hard Rain"). Virgil takes them to New Orleans where the military appears to be evacuating other survivors. The group head to the extraction point, but discover that the military is actually bombing bridges to cover their retreat ("The Parish"). The survivors then make their way across a lift bridge amid a massive of infected and board the last military helicopter leaving the city before the bridge is destroyed.

After the four survivors board on the chopper, the whole story of the game is over.


Gameplay

Left 4 Dead 2 has six campaigns: Dead Center, The Passing, Dark Carnival, Swamp Fever, The Hard Rain and The Parish. Each campaign consisted of three to five small maps. During their journeys, players traverse different environments as they cross the southern United States, looking for refuge (saferoom) from the zombie apocalypse. The four survivors must work together as a team level by level to advance to a safe room, and eventually to a rescue vehicle (car, boat or helicopter depend on which level). At the beginning of each level, players are armed with a health kid, pistol (or melee weapon), and primary weapon. They must fight all the way through the zombies to reach the next safe room, and on their way they will find new weapons and supplies, and of course new zombies too.

Instead of single player, Left 4 Dead 2 also has some other game modes such as Versus, Survival and Scavenge.  In Versus mode up to four other human players take control of the various Special Infected who try to prevent the Survivors from reaching the next safe house. The two teams swap sides once per chapter and are scored based on their play through as Survivors. This is one of the popular modes nowadays played online. Survival mode is a timed challenge where the survivors are trapped in a section of the campaign maps, and try to survive as long as possible against an non-stop onslaught of infected. In the four-on-four Scavenge mode, the survivor players are required to collect and use as many of the sixteen gas canisters scattered about a level to maintain fuel in power generators, while the infected players attempt to stop them( This mode is new in Left 4 Dead 2).


The basics


Each survivor can carry one main weapon, either a melee weapon, or single/double pistols as a secondary weapon. Melee weapons cause extra damage to the infected zombies, but the survivors need to get close to the zombies so it is more dangerous. Players can use any other weapon or item for weaker melee attacks and to temporarily push the infected back (maximum 5 times and then have to wait for cold down). Players also carry a flashlight, but may startle the infected (especially witch). They may also carry a single first aid kit or defibrillator, Ammo packs, Pain pills or adrenaline. They may also carry a single throwable weapon — Molotov cocktails to set an area on fire, pipe bombs, or "Boomer" bile, which can be thrown at infected to cause them to turn on each other.All players are shown the health and status of their team survivors. If a player does not have direct sight of another survivor, they will be shown the survivor's highlighted silhouette. If a player's health bar reaches zero, he or she will become incapacitated, leaving the player extremely vulnerable to further damage. When incapacitated, players cannot move but lay on the ground with their pistol out only as the new temporary health bar slowly runs down, leading to death. Now one of the other teammates have to revive incapacitated allies by helping them up, and the revived player will gain back a little bit amount of health. Players can only be incapacitated 3 times before their vision becomes blurry. If incapacitated again, the survivor will die straight away. Players also have the option to heal teammates by healing them with health kit or giving them other medical equipment, such as pain pills or adrenaline shots. When the health bar's colour turns yellow then the player will move slower than normal status, and if it turns red than players will move extremely slow which can cause troubles to the whole team.


Crescendo Events


The same as in Left 4 Dead, survivors will periodically come on "crescendo events," where they must activate an object, to lead some sort of event to happen (such as calling an elevator), which in turn summons hordes of zombies that the players must fend off for a period of time before they are allowed to move forward. In Left 4 Dead 2, crescendo events come in greater variety than just the old "hole-up and defend" type.  So-called, "rolling crescendos" require the players to activate the event and then run a gauntlet while being assaulted by zombies to reach an end point where they can deactivate the event (such as turning off an alarm), otherwise the zombie horde will come non-stop.  Another type of new crescendo is the optional one, such as the alarmed cars, which, if touched or shot by the players, will alarm for a period of time and draw hordes of zombies. These new and more dynamic types of crescendo events were motivated by Valve's desire to reduce the effectiveness of popular and very effective Left 4 Dead strategies like closet camping or corner stacking, meaning players crowd into a small defensible space and wait out the event, easily killing all of the common infected toward them.  And some of the new special infected, such as the Spitter and Charger, can easiliy beat the camping strategies and warn the players camping or corner stacking does not always work.


AI Director 2.0

The artificial intelligence system in game called the AI. Director drives gameplay by procedurally randomly spawning enemies, weapons and supply items based on the players' performance. For example, if most of the players are hardly injured and have no healing items on them, health kid will be found more often. An improved AI Director is featured in Left 4 Dead 2 that dynamically changes the game experience more so than Left 4 Dead's Director. AI Director 2.0 has the ability to change the layout of certain areas of levels, making each play through more unpredictable, as well as being able to change weather patterns. For example, AI Director 2.0 can rearrange crypts and tombs in a cemetery in different times of playing, making it impossible to know in advance the exact route that the survivors must follow. AI Director 2 can also change the weather to create flash thunderstorms, dramatically reducing visibility and muffling voice chat, forcing survivors to hunker down and wait it out. All those unpredictable random phenomenons make the whole game more replayable, players will not feel bored always.


Survivor Characters



Left 4 Dead 2 features a new cast of human survivors, which include Coach, a portly high-school football coach; Nick, a stoic gambler and conman; Rochelle, a low-level production assistant reporting on the evacuation for a local television station; and Ellis, a laid-back mechanic, whos talks a lot. While the game is intended as a continuation of the original, occurring one week after the first game begins, Valve decided to create a new group of survivors because of the change in location. In addition to the four playable characters, Left 4 Dead 2 also features a supporting character in the form of Virgil, a rescue boat captain, who appears in the game's final three chapters only with sounds. This differs from the original Left 4 Dead, where NPCs made little more than a single appearance.


Affected Characters

 
With the regular infected, basically the game’s cannon fodder, Valve did a lot of generic jeans-wearing male and female zombies. But often enough they added some diversity in look and gameplay by varying the clothing and former occupations of the infected. While some of those infected just stood out from the crowd visually, like the ones in hazmat suits or the construction workers with their bright yellow helmets, others even asked for new strategies to beat them. The security guards in riot gear were tough to shoot down but only to shoot them in the back, because of their armor, and the clowns made funny squeaky noises, that would attract more infected, so the best way is to take him down first.

The special infected are a more advanced zombified mutation. Their bodies mutated in a way that would give them special powers and they are named accordingly. They are:
Charger: he charges towards the player to attack him. He puts his right side forward and starts to run, crushing everything in his path.
Hunter: instantly jump and pounce down one of the survivors, once get pounced, the player will totally lose the control and keep taking damage until other friend's help.
Spitter: a crazy woman shoot her burning spit from long distance away, the more time players stand on the spit, the more damage it will cause.
Jokey: jumps on the backs of survivors and rides them, causing survivors lose the direction of walking.
Boomer: spit bile onto survivors to attact more hordes of zombies towards them.
Smoker: can drag a survivor away from the team with its really long tongue, good for hiding on the roof or dark corner.
Witch: a walking fly trap. She lures humans close to her, by pretending to be a scared and hurt girl in need of help and comfort. When you get to close and get her attention, she enters a vicious rage mode, biting, scratching and slashing.
Tank: the big hulking mutant from the bunch. He is all about punching, smashing an throwing things. Basically all action happens in his upper body section.


Graphics and sounds

The graphic in Left 4 Dead 2 is very bloody and violate, that is why this game is only for 18+. In the game, players can slaugter zombies with guns, melee weapons, fire or bombs, zombie bodies can be cut into pieces, head, arm, leg and even stomach intestines can be removed away from the body. When close to zombies, players' screens will always get much blood from the zombies. Therefore, in some countries like Australia and Germany, the game is modified to reduce the level of violence. Left 4 Dead 2 has been a central issue in a number of critical discussions regarding its timing and its graphic and mature content.

In Left 4 Dead 2 different infected will have different kind of sound, especially special infected. When a special infected spawned in the game, there will be a unique sound track for him/her, so it can warn the survivors to be aware that which special infected is nearby them even the infected is not in their sight.


Development

Left 4 Dead 2 was released not long after the release of the first version -- Left 4 Dead, it is building on ideas from the development team to make the next game "bigger and better". Valve had created a full story for the cause and effects of the infection pandemic, including terms that they have used for the AI Director. Each campaign was purposely designed with a different feel. However, all 6 campaigns were mapped out at the same time by the entire team to provide the narrative flow and ensure the uniqueness of each campaign. The team used a Left 4 Dead dictionary developed to describe level design and flow within the game to provide a common language for developing the levels.

Left 4 Dead 2 contains about 7800 unique lines of dialog, a 40% increase over Left 4 Dead. The writers designed the characters and selected appropriate voice actors who had natural accents for their lines, and allowed the actors freedom to help authenticate the roles. Players will not only enjoy the gameplay but also entertained by the funny various of lines of dialog.

Sales for Left 4 Dead 2 is very good. On December 1, 2009, Valve reported that more than two million retailed copies of Left 4 Dead 2 were sold in two weeks, which represents "more than double" the sales of the original game's two week debut. According to the NPD Group, the Xbox 360 version was the fifth best-selling retail title for consoles in November 2009, with over 744,000 copies sold. In February 2010, Electronic Arts, Left 4 Dead 2 retail distributor, announced that the game had sold 2.9 million on retail so far.


Conclusion

Left 4 Dead 2 has made its own way to stand out from other FPS game with its unique character designs and gameplay. The Advanced technology dubbed "The AI Director" drove Left 4 Dead's unique gameplay - customizing enemy population, effects, and music, based on the players' performance. Left 4 Dead 2 features more co-operative gameplay that enables plays not only enjoy the game but also learn to always work as a team, emphasis the importance of teamwork. I believe that Left 4 Dead 2 has centainly become a milestone of the future cannon game.


Reference:

http://www.ea.com/games/left-4-dead-2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_4_Dead_2
http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=5448
http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/14423
http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/
http://au.xbox360.ign.com/objects/143/14352241.html
http://howtonotsuckatgamedesign.com/?p=982