Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2 is a sequel to one of the most defining cooperative shooters in history, and it manages to build generously on that formula and polish up some weak areas without ruining the magic balance that made the original work. And while the engine and the graphics may be showing their age at this point, the formula is still fresh and new. Numerous imitators have tried to expand on that blueprint, but none have managed to succeed quite as well.

That's thanks in large part to the thoughtful creature design at work here. Left 4 Dead 2 leans hard into zombie aesthetics that have since come to dominate the entertainment landscape. The fundamental narrative is pretty rote. You play survivors trying to simply survive in the wake of an undead apocalypse. And while the zombie milieu may not exactly be fresh these days, the monsters themselves are still characteristically distinct. There are eight unique monsters - known in the game's parlance as "special infected" - and their design is truly gruesome even by modern graphical standards. This design also makes them easy to identify in a crowd and easy to identify what sort of tactics they'll employ.

Bloated beasts that explode upon death, roaring hulks that charge you like rhinos, and shrieking witches that teleport across the battlefield are just a few of the creatures you'll face. The designs and power sets are cool in their own right, but Left 4 Dead 2 really utilizes those monsters to the best of their abilities. Powers complement each other well, creating devastating threats that can only be overcome by smart tactics and a lot of teamwork. Even the more basic zombies can prove a credible threat when things go bad. They're fast, capable of causing a large amount of damage in a short amount of time, and capable of gathering together in hordes.

While a small army of grotesque creations may dominate the screen space, the arguable real star of the show is the Director. The Director is the name for the artificial intelligence that runs the moment to moment events in game. The name sound pretentious, but it's a small marvel that really lends Left 4 Dead 2 much of its dramatic tension. Traditional survival horror games lose much of their scare factor as soon as players know where enemies spawn, but the Director ensures that every experience will be unique. It takes into account a wide selection of vectors that include health levels, ammo, and player locations and spawn enemies in each scene accordingly. The results are a pretty impressive balance between overly difficult encounters that just create frustration and too easy encounters that never successfully ratchet up the tension.

The Director controls when and where enemies appear, but it's also in control of setting the mood in other ways. Visual cues, music, and speech cues from characters are all regulated by the Director and doled out for maximum impact, and the Director even has limited impact on where items are placed in a map. Environmental effects like rain and physical obstacles can also be adjusted by the Director, ensuring that even the terrain of the maps you navigate will be unique. The Director cycles through highs and lows in terms of intensity, to create a sense of pace that really helps Left 4 Dead 2 solidify its position as a titan of horror gaming.

Left 4 Dead 2 has also seriously raised the stakes from the first game in terms of variety. Players who love the core loop of cooperative gameplay will find five meaty campaigns to choose from. They're much larger and bombastic than the four campaigns that appeared in the first Left 4 Dead, and many maps come with unique circumstances that can really switch up how they play. You can further up the ante by doubling down on "Realism" mode and stripping out much of the assistance you'd otherwise have in game.

The traditional cooperative play may be the most well recognized mode in Left 4 Dead 2, but it's just one of many options to choose from. A survival mode tasks players with working together to last as long as possible, while versus allows one team of players to suit up as the Infected and square off against human survivors. Scavenge mode adds new wrinkles to the versus formula by tasking the survivors with win conditions beyond simply surviving. If you don't play any of the vanilla game modes to be to your liking, the inclusion of "mutations" allows you to make alterations to

In case you hadn't figured it out yet, any team that can't communicate effectively is not going to last long in the world of Left 4 Dead 2. Therein lies the key caveat to Left 4 Dead 2's appeal. If you're the type of multiplayer gamer that likes to take a lone wolf approach, you won't have much fun. The same holds true if you don't have a working microphone that you can really rely on. Tightly coordinated teamwork is necessary, and that means this is a game better played with close friends than with strangers. While there are plenty of great players out there, the process of getting a team that works together well can still be spotty.

You can play Left 4 Dead 2 by yourself, but it's a largely diminished experience. The A.I. and sense of design is just as good when playing without other humans, and the bots that serve as your companions are actually pretty smart in their own right. But so much of the tension of this game is lost when there aren't other players to share it with. If you're at all a fan of shooters or cooperative games, you owe it to yourself to at least try Left 4 Dead 2. Just try to play it the way it's best experienced: with a close group of friends and a willingness to lose often.