Review by: Jason McMaster

Left 4 Dead 2 is a game that doesn't need to dress anything up with long cut-scenes and exposition – you're playing this game to kill zombies and Valve knows it. In Left 4 Dead 2, there's nothing standing between you and the horde of infected you're waiting to annihilate except the safe house door.

The fact that you’re treated to instant action and hordes of the undead to decimate would make you think that there's little more to the game than clicking a button and watching the crimson ichor of a zombie-colada spray against the wall. That would be wrong. The sequel requires more planning and patience than the straight-forward original.

Starting out in Savannah, Georgia and making their way across the deep South, the group of four survivors are trying to find rescue in the form of government-assisted evacuation. Naturally, it wouldn't be much of a game if you found rescue immediately and everything went smoothly from the get-go, so you'll have to massacre your way through a sea of the living dead. One thing Left 4 Dead 2 improves upon first, in leaps and bounds, is the setting and level design.

The initial campaign opens on the roof of a hotel in Savannah. As you enter the hotel proper, you discover it's on fire and you have to fight your way through a zombie-filled inferno. The fire is everywhere on a few of the floors and the overall claustrophobic and breathless sensation urges you forward until you break free of the flames and dive into an elevator. This is where the introductions begin. We meet Ellis, the local mechanic and good ol' boy, Coach, the health teacher at a local school, Rochelle, a low-level producer for a Cleveland TV station, and Nick, con-man extraordinaire.

As the doors to the elevator open, you group up and begin to make your way to the local mall, where you can supposedly find government assistance and evacuation. When you get to the mall, of course, there's no evacuation and you have to find alternate means of escape. Luckily, stock-car legend Jimmy Gibbs, Jr.'s car is in the mall on display and you can use it to escape if you can find enough gas. That's a quick summation of the first of five scenarios included with Left 4 Dead 2, all of which are dripping with tension, uneasy dread and atmosphere. It also highlights the improved set piece design found In the sequel. At times you need to deal with the environment as much as you do a highly agitated zombie.

As in the original, you can play Left 4 Dead 2 co-operatively with up to three other human players or a compliment of humans and AI bots. The best experience, of course, is that of sharing the game with a group of friends. The bots technically do their job, but they're still just bots and if you were hoping the brain dead AI from the first game would be fixed here – well, sorry Charlie. The bots still refuse to throw pipe bombs.