Gameplay (continued)

New items are also in the mix, including a defibrillator used to revive dead allies, a shot of adrenaline that gives you an extra boost of speed, and a canister of Boomer bile that can attract the horde like a pipe bomb or even cause them to attack other infected. Each of these is sure to be useful in the fight against the several new infected. The Spitter projects a blob of acid that forms a festering pool underfoot, dealing more damage the longer you stand in it. The Charger is a lighter, faster version of the tank that charges toward you like a rhino, capable of knocking down multiple survivors and pummeling one indefinitely. The Jockey will jump on your back and steer you away from the group or otherwise toward danger.

The new AI director 2.0 has more control over the gameplay, dynamically switching up things like item placement and path branches. For the latter, you’ll see random alleys and the like end up open or closed, or one of several paths through a graveyard being chosen so that it differs from game-to-game. Valve claims that it will monitor how well the survivors are doing and change difficulty accordingly, but I’ve not yet seen evidence that it does. They also touted the dynamic weather changes, but this was relegated to being exclusive to sudden downpours in the Hard Rain campaign based on play-testers not liking it. Similar feedback led to downscaling of random path generation and more obvious cues to warn of lurking special infected.



Bot AI seems to have gotten even worse than it was in the first L4D, which is as astounding as it is frustrating. They almost never pick up medkits except for one in the safehouse, which leads to wasting them. If they have a melee weapon, they’ll stand still and wait for infected to attack them rather than switching to a gun to shoot them at a distance. Even when they do shoot, they’re notorious for prioritizing common infected over special infected and hardly ever fire on the move. They tend to hang back too far, as well, which results in having to wait inside the safe room and inevitably having to go back out to save them from ambush. Don’t expect them to help you with collecting gas cans, either, which makes the Dead Center finale pretty tough to do in single-player. There are far too many issues to list, but check out the official forum and you’ll be able to read about plenty more.

Consolitis?

The controls are identical to those in the original, so they are not at fault, but that isn’t to say there isn’t a slight console tinge. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed a few minor things that could be attributed to a lazy lack of optimization for the PC gaming experience:

Menu interfaces are meant to be scrolled through, not clicked directly. This is most noticeable on the main menu where you choose which game type to play; first you click on the associated image to slide it over into the primary slot, and then click again to actually select it.

The in-game UI is larger than it was in L4D. It’s not large enough to prove distracting, but the only possible reason is to increase visibility at a distance.

The positioning of the smaller weapons is such that they appear to be the same size as the larger ones. i.e., the Desert Eagle looks enormous, taking up the same amount of screen space as an assault rifle. Is this to better show off details to the console player sitting across the room from the TV screen?

These don’t seem like much of an issue – and really, they aren’t – but one can’t help but be wary of any minor symptoms of consolitis turning into a full-blown, debilitating condition later on.