Left 4 Dead 2 - the first few hours

After a sudden switch in decison from Dragon Age Online to Left 4 Dead 2 for my next game purchase, I am happy to say it was a good choice (though I plan on getting Dragon Age at some point still). My first play on the game involved playing through the first chapter/campaign on single player. This was an interesting affair as I found on normal I was running out of health packs quickly and also the AI seemed shocking. At times it will help you and other times it drags behind taking out every single enemie. Now thats pretty good but when you are having to rush due to low health and respawning enemies and your team mates do nothing it starts to get frustrating.

I managed to get to the rollercoaster with the AI for those who have played the game. Overall I was left with mixed feelings, whilst it felt an improvment on the first game, I felt the AI was not up to scratch and lack of checkpoints and health packs made the game more challenging but rewarding at the same time. The next day I finally got online (not due to lack of players, due to lack of internet connection where I was playing on the xbox). When putting this online the game felt alive all of a sudden, having other people who know what to do is great but having people who wont help you is a pain in the backside. I managed to get online with a friend though by pure chance as I was not aware he had the game until it came up friend playing game at loading. We had a blast doing achievments and even managed to rescue a certain gnome so I am happily sporting a pink t-shirt award (which the game gives for avatar awards, such as X ammount of zombies killed, story completion to more challenging things like carrying a gnome through 3 chapters). Versus also was an interesting experience, the game rotates which type of zombie you are each time you die to keep you on your toes. Again with this mode you need to have good planning and communication with your team.

So far this has been a great game with a few problems such as checkpoint issues and health packs being too spread out. However if you have friends with this and can play online, its a blast, but if you only want to do single player, you will have to really consider the AI issues before choosing. If you have any questions let me know, this is purely a first impressions blog and not a review.

Also for those interested, the "Hey Ash What are you playing- Left 4 Dead" video got me interested in Left 4 Dead 2, man the music was catchy on it.