Left 4 Dead 2

Today at E3, we got to play an entire campaign in Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to Valve’s recent new hit Left 4 Dead.

“A sequel?” you ask. “A mere six months after Left 4 Dead? What happened to Valve time?” you may wonder. And you wouldn’t be remiss. These were very popular questions in the Valve press lounge.

We asked Valve’s Doug Lombardi about the exceptionally short development time and why they even considered a sequel to a game that essentially just came out.

As it turns out, many of Valve’s developers were so into Left 4 Dead that when the whiteboards went up, the L4D2 board filled up with so many ideas that the internal enthusiasm for the project was evident; this game had to get made… now.

The short development time is partly thanks to procedural nature of the AI Director system. It allowed Valve to essentially focus on content rather than tech, and–let’s be fair–there’s not much story to worry about. The benefits of this particular system, unique to this game, all point to one thing–very short development time.

There were a few engine tweaks, such as the physics. The ragdoll and physics systems had to be tweaked to accomodate new melee weapons, such as a hatchet and a frying pan. The damage system had to be enhanced to compensate for hitting zombies with hatchets, for example.

I asked if any of the development refinements made in Left 4 Dead 2 would make their way into any other Valve games, and perhaps even contribute to streamlining the development times. Of course, we made copious mention of Valve Time, and Mr. Lombardi made no promises.

The three of us that got to play L4D2 all noticed one thing almost immediately: this game is harder, the zombies are smarter, and the controls are tighter. The AI has definitely improved. It would be great to see this AI in other enemies… such as the Combine.

UPSLynx, Jokerz4fun, and prime get to choppin' zombies.

Besides more content such as bigger maps, more weapons, and new enemies, Valve has made some tweaks to game mechanics such as the mini-finales. In L4D, each episode had a static mini-finale where you could camp out and defend a position (such as the roof of the hospital, or the docks). They are essentially static positions that, with practice and coordinated teamwork, can be held relatively easily. In L4D2, finale objectives involve more movement. In the map that we played, entering a safe room triggered a loud siren alarm. As long as the siren was going off, zombies were rushing in from all directions. It took a lot of teamwork and a lot of scary moments to rush over to the alarm control box (which was through a maze of broken down busses, broken fences, and up many scaffoldings) and shut it off so that we could move on. The entire “mini-finale” was almost a mission unto itself, and required us all to pay more attention to what was going on. It got tense.

Lombardi mentioned that this was one of their goals; to make the players move more, open up the worlds more, and force more tension and encourage even tighter teamwork.

The new weapons are great; the sniper rifle feels more powerful, and bullets will travel through multiple foes. It now has a 30 round clip. The starting SMG is also way better than the Uzi. The starter shotgun is essentially the same. I didn’t get to try the new auto-shotgun or the new assault rifle. Of course, the big news on the offense front are the melee weapons. I only got to wield the axe, but it was awesome hacking zombies into pieces with it.

I noticed right as our round was ending that my shotgun had an incendiary alt-fire mode, and just as I was about to try it, the round ended. I noticed too that incendiary ammo was an item pickup.

To sum up Left 4 Dead 2, Doug Lombardi said one key word: “More”. I’d say that covers it. Take everything that was great about L4D and add more, make tweaks, and roll with it; it’ll be a blast.