Soo, Left 4 Dead 2 unveiled today.
Unfortunately it doesn't have the foreseen and more clever titles of Last 2 Die or Left 2 Die.

[Planned] Release Date:
November 17th, 2009

Four completely new survivors.
-Nick, Gambler/Conman
-Coach, high school coach
-Rochelle, news reporter
-Ellis, boy mechanic

Five new campaigns
-They take place in Southern United States of America
-The first is in Savannah, Georgia
-The second is "Swamp Fever", which will be shown at comic-con.
-The last is in New Orleans, Louisiana, it is called "The Parish". (Louisiana has parishes instead of counties.) It takes place in daylight. The objective is to reach a helicopter at the end of a bridge for escape.
-The stories of the five connect.
-Due to continuity, they'll pass through Mississippi and either Florida or Alabama, or both.

New gameplay elements
-Improved AI Director
-Awards for taking longer paths, encouraging exploration
-Paths changed by the AI Director as approached to accommodate your skill level
-Gauntlet events, horde attacks as you're forced to keep moving anyway

Rehashed and/or new guns
-Suppressed MAC 10 SMG
-FN SCAR-L Assault Rifle
-Spas 12 [Semi?] Auto Shotgun, with it's stock folded and flopping around looking awful.
-Remington 870 Marine Magnum with a chrome finish. Likely the standard shotgun.
-SIG P226 with a flashlight is the new standard pistol.
-A Glock is the secondary pistol for dual wielding, with no flashlight. Its magazine capacity suggests it's a Glock 19.
-HK G3-SG1. 30 rounds, scope, semi auto. Seems a bit overpowered.
-Incendiary ammo, seen used with the new MAC 10, FN SCAR L, and Spas 12. Likely able to be used for all weapons. When you activate a supply of incendiary ammo, you reload your weapon, giving it a full magazine of incendiary ammo.

Melee weapons
-Frying pan, Nick's apparent favorite. Kills common infected, throwing them back with a nice 'kwathunk'.
-Baseball bat, shown in use by Rochelle.
-Cricket bat, shown in use by Ellis.
-Fireaxe, shown in use by Ellis. Its primary is a general swing, while secondary is a shove melee like that of a gun.
-Chainsaw, fittingly used by Coach, the big guy. vrn vrn VRRRNNN. Not yet shown in gameplay.
-They can't be put in your inventory; you drop them whenever you switch weapons or get hit by certain special infected attacks.

Changed bombs
-Pipe bomb no longer turns infected to red mist, now it sends their ragdoll bodies and bits flying to ridiculous heights.
-Molotovs aren't changed much.
-Gas tanks shown
-No reason for propane, or oxygen tanks to be gone.
-There will be new thrown projectiles.
-Jets bomb New Orleans, sometimes reforming terrain to open a new path.

Rehashed and/or new zombies
-Common infected now have better gore, entrails will fly, blood spews in streams, etc.
-Some infected in hazmat suits, immune to fire
-New "charger" special infected, which shoulder rams people, and will repetitively smash your face into the ground if you're knocked down alone. It looks like a tank mixed with a common infected farmer, having one monster arm and wearing overalls.
-Smokers are still around
-Hunters are still around, with some new sounds
-Boomers are still around, apparently unchanged
-Tanks are still around, seemingly unchanged.
-Witches return in night time, but also with a new variant...
-Wandering Witches walk around the level, but are as irritable as ever. Daylight gives them more 'pep'. [maybe part of why the l4d's 4 survivors chose to travel by night]


Right now the content has a crappy thrown together appearance, [lots of recycled sounds/textures/models] but it sounds like a lot of fun to play, and hopefully Valve can get it looking good before release, while still adding more fun features.

I really dislike the Art style from the beta videos shown,
so I really hope that Valve can work some of their shader
magic this time around.

Also, since when was Valve into release dates?

I don't know. I think they might be trying to fix their "valve time" reputation. I hope this doesn't mean they'll rush the game into being crap. I'd rather them delay this past that date than release something like what we've seen in the videos so far.

I too hope they go back to a darker grittier style.
Coach's yellow and robin egg blue shirt is just absurd.
I think they're doing the whole daylight thing as to follow in RE5's tracks for zombie action.
Which sucks, because RE5 abandoned horror entirely, going for full action.
L4D should keep the little horror it has in it.

But if they're going with the daylight brightness thing, hopefully they will at least replace their recycled content with more fitting content to go with the new style.

"The selected attachment does not exist anymore."
I didn't link to any videos because I assume everyone here is capable of finding the media themselves, seeing as they are 13+, in the information age, and at a computer with internet access, designed for their convenience.

This is a particularly good article, seeing as they played it hands-on and they explain it thoroughly.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/06 ... s-preview/


Anyways I think I'll be playing as Nick mostly, carrying a chainsaw.
I'll definitely use shotguns primarily again if they have incendiary ammo too, but maybe not if incendiary ammo is only for automatics.
<3 pyrotechnic shells

Why can't you even link to attachments in this forum?

the daylight thing doesnt do it for me. and the blood is way too red for the most part.

image of what it should be like. none of this bright colours on survivors ♥♥♥♥ either.
what the ♥♥♥♥ is with the hazmat suits?

gore looks.. pretty epic and OTT. and the review seemed nice. we'll see.

It seems like the setting is actually trying pretty hard to be more realistic; in a gameplay trailer you could fairly obviously see what was supposed to be a checkpoint, and the hazmat suit zombies are pretty obviously checkpoint workers.

That said I still think it'd be better as l4d DLC; we're supposed to be on valve time, people.

There's have been some new videos.

One is the perimeter breach, where they alert zombies due to an alarm, and they have to get to a tower to turn it off. This is one of the gauntlet events.
It showed the charger charging, holy hell that thing is fast.
It also showed a new assault rifle, I'm fairly certain it's a FN SCAR-L. It was used with incendiary ammo.

The other was another axe gameplay video.
-It showed the charger smashing nick. He knocks over a survivor and then grabs them by the chest with his big arm, and pulls them back up to do it again.
-It showed that you can't put melee weapons in your inventory; you drop them when you change weapons, or get punched by a tank. I'm assuming you also drop them when you get hit by any special infected special attack. Maybe boom bombs since the stagger you, but probably not boomer barf. I don't know.
-It also showed that the tank is back, and not changed much if at all.

There's one major thing I hope VALVe doesn't leave out, and if they do the game will be ♥♥♥♥.

the guys playing in the perimeter breach video are noobs
one of them dies within like 50 seconds.

Oh and by the way, cricket bat.
Kinda out of place. And redundant, since there's already a baseball bat. I really hope they have some kind of significant gameplay distinction.

Do they even play cricket in america?

I know that particular guy is english, but I'm just wondering where he'd find a cricket bat in the middle of a zombie apocalypse in a country that doesn't play cricket.

I'm sure they play Cricket somewhere over here, but I'm not sure where.

The cricket bat is just paying (unnecessary) homage to Sean of the Dead.