Left 4 Dead 2: It could have been one of 2010’s best games.

While I didn’t sign a petition trying to block its release, I was a bit disarmed by the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2.  The original is not even a year old, has a massive fan following, and even after you earn all the achievements it has infinite re-playability thanks to its always-changing difficulty dynamics and the mere fact that SHOOTING ZOMBIES IN THE FACE NEVER GETS OLD.

With that being said, it’s no surprise that there is a sequel.  This is how video games work, after all, and anybody that has played video games with any degree of passion in the last thirty years knows that.  Developers make a great game and publishers make a whole lot of money off of it.  Developers, being the artsy folks they are, see room for improvement in their art even after its sold a million copies.  Publishers, more than willing to capitalize on brand recognition, generously fund developers’ efforts to improve the original in the form of a sequel, so that the publisher can make even more money off of it than they did the original.

The thing that bothers me about Left 4 Dead 2 is not its existence, but its timing.  I never feared a Madden-esque franchise exploitation; Valve treats their fans better than that.  I didn’t think, however, that it was fair to push a sequel to such an excellent game so soon, simply because there wasn’t many improvements that could be made to the established material.  Valve could have sat on it for a year and spat it out next Christmas, when interest in Left 4 Dead may have started slipping.  As for implementing the new features introduced in the sequel via downloadable content–well, I’m not programmer, so I’m not sure how difficult that would have been for some of the deep-seeded changes to the core game engine (such as melee weapons, new items, and–especially–new Special Infected).   So again, a sequel was inevitable; just released too soon.

Of course it’s on my wish list at Amazon.com for this holiday season.

The demo is out now for Xbox Live Gold subscribers (and all Steam users), so we finally get to see if this sequel is worth being rushed out the gate.  I have to say it would have served better being released next year, when the new ideas would have seemed even more fresh and original–and Valve could have taken the time to better implement them.

There are many things I like about the sequel, namely the characters and setting.  Bill, Francis, Zoey, and Louis are now iconic characters that will forever be associated with the undead apocalypse, and I love them just as much as I did the very first time I booted up the game.  But Ellis (my personal favorite), Coach, Nick, and Rochelle feel better developed and more human; they seem weaker, more helpless, which in this kind of game is a good thing for the narrative.  Let’s be honest: Francis and Bill could have probably split up and handled the zombie apocalypse solo.  You get that sense from their personalities.  The four leads from L4D2 seem to really depend on each other; any one of them would die alone, but together they keep each other alive.

The zombies are also more complex.  The standard Infected are more varied in their design, with some of them being former police officers and thus wearing body armor.  Spitters present a real challenge; they function like Boomers, except they spew venomous bile on the ground that saps your health.  Jockeys are similar to Hunters, except they don’t pin your character; instead, they ride you, similar to their namesake, taking you all over the place.

The setting is much more rich than in the original.  It’s no longer “typical American city and the surrounding community;” this is the South we’re talking about.  Cheap lawn chairs and fences, lots of greenery, wide open streets, and the chirping of cicadas and the buzz of mosquitoes pervade the two chapters that comprise this demo.  Somehow, Valve even nailed the humidity of New Orleans; you get the sense that the air is thick and heavy (the daytime setting probably helps).  In hindsight, the backdrop of the original game was just a placeholder; this is a real place with real personality.

Even the music is better.  The bluegrass interpretation of the music that plays when you die is more sorrowful than in the first game, and the jazz riff that plays to herald the arrival of the Horde is–oddly–more menacing than the B-movie fanfare from the first game.

Unfortunately, where it matters the most–game play–the sequel is a bit more weak.  Yes, new Special Infected present new challenges, but they are blatant variations on the existing characters; they don’t really feel new.  Melee weapons are a huge disappointment.  Yes, they offer one hit kills and a valuable way to conserve ammo, and they are fun to use, but one has to be in melee range of a zombie to use them, meaning you’ll be charging towards them instead of hanging back and suppressing them–this leads to lots of deaths (believe me).  What’s more, the melee weapon replaces your pistol; better functionality would have it replacing your melee attack (you press the left trigger and, instead of a jab with the butt of your gun, you perform a swipe with your melee weapon, just like how melee attacks work in Modern Warfare).  This would have made much more sense and expanded combat options much more, giving you a fallback option when you are swarmed but not forcing you to take risks to use your new toys.  The new guns are a lot of fun to play with, but there’s not enough new ones–and not enough variation amongst them–to feel like a big change to game play.

There is also one glaring problem with the demo.  When I played single player, it ran flawlessly.  When a friend asked me to join him for multiplayer, it lagged like a three-legged dog.  We couldn’t enjoy the game because everything jerked and sputtered and chugged along.  We would empty whole clips into regular Infected and they would stand there wailing on us, and then all of a sudden there we are: on our backs with pistols in the air and a perfect circle of Infected all around us.  We finally decided to quit and hope for the best upon full release; there was no way we were going to enjoy playing like this.

So, judging from the demo, will Left 4 Dead 2 be fun to play?  Yes, it will be.  The new characters and setting add a few extra layers and some very delicious icing to an already delicious cake.  The action is just as fast and frantic as ever, and popping zombies upside the head with a frying pan feels as awesome as it sounds.  Is it worth the $60 price tag?  Yes, it is.  This is a full retail release; it is not an expansion.  It has a wealth of additional play modes not found in the original, a brand new campaign, and changes to how the core game is played.  Was it released too soon, so soon that it will feel like an expansion despite being a totally new entity, spawned from something already in exsitence but with an identity all of its own?  Yes, it was.

Half-Life: Ten years later, it’s still revolutionary.

I never had a computer capable of running Half-Life back in the day, so of course it was one of the first games I intended to play when I built my new gaming rig.  Played it I did; for a solid week it was my world.  No other game existed save for this one.  Having finished it, and having taken the time to let the experience truly sink in, I can say without a doubt that this is truly one of the greatest video games ever made and even (one could say especially) at a decade old it’s fertile ground for those looking for innovative game design.

Of course, the game has its problem.  If you ever use the phrase “On Rails” around me, I will no doubt clinch my fists and narrow my eyes in anger.  That level is the most horrendously off-balanced stretch of game play I have ever experienced.  Chock full of artificial difficulty, this level is one that I can imagine many gamers just gave up on and walked away from; I was close to doing so myself.

I didn’t however, and I found many moments of sheer joy–punctuated by the same absurd difficulty at the most inopportune times–and genuine excitement that I had not felt since (and for those who played the game upon release, would not feel until) the original God of War.

Half-Life plays like an action movie.  The narrative starts out with a ho-hum commute to work for Gordon Freeman, everybody’s favorite ass-kicking theoretical physicist (more on the plausibility of “ass-kicking” being an appropriate description for a theoretical physicist later).  There is a sense of dread in it all, and sure enough it’s not long before something goes horribly, terribly wrong.

What follows later is hours upon hours of highly tactical gun fights, feats of incredible agility and athleticism, nerve-grating moments of suspense, and the giddiness that comes with picking up weapons of mass destruction.  It’s every Jerry Bruckheimer production you’ve ever seen condensed into a video game; a video game with seamless flow (no true cut scenes here) and logical level design.

Unfortunately, the cinematic design also results in some very cheap shots on the gamer.  More often than not, you’ll find yourself falling out of a ventilation shaft or on the wrong end of an explosion that you had no choice but to endure.  Challenging combat and tests-of-reflex are one thing; robbing me of 30 health points just because it looked cool is another.  Theformer gives depth and complexity to a game and the latter creates needless challenge.

While generally well-paced, Half-Life does seem to drag in a few areas.  While never quite as needlessly extended as say, Halo, it does prolong the satisfaction of a win when it seems as if the gamer has already earned the right to claim victory.  The first half of the last four stages really could have been cut.

All in all, however, my faults with the game play is a result of my preferences, not any glaring flaws.  Be it 2009 or 1998, Half-Life is a work of genius.  Portal remains Valve’s true masterpiece, but Half-Life is certainly something of which they should always be proud.

Except for the narrative elements of it.

Seriously, a theoretical physicist with no established military training is able to carry an entire arsenal on his back and can lay waste to entire squadrons of US Marines?  I know that if you go looking for realism in video games you’re setting yourself up for disappointment, but could we at least establish that maybe Gordon Freeman has a military background?  I’m sure we could, but we know next to nothing of Freeman.  He never speaks, never shows his face in-game, and all we know about him is his age and alma mater.  Every other character is equally thin (full disclosure: I have started playing Half-Life 2 and so far, it has a much deeper narrative and more fleshed-out characters) and the story is standard survival-film fare.  It’s only at the very end that things get interesting (and I do mean the very end).

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that games should be games first and narrative devices second, and Half-Life is a nearly flawless game.  I was just expecting more narrative from a game heralded for its story.  As it is, the story of Half-Life is more interesting for its possibility, for the things that aren’t discussed but you can see working behind the scenes,  than for its actual execution.

Make no mistake though: I hold Half-Life as a classic and I highly recommend that anybody who has never played it download it from Steam right now.  While sometimes more of a test of patience and perseverance than actual skill, it is a lesson in level and puzzle design while still offering up combat that rivals that found in any recent shooter.  You’ll have a good time, when all is said and done, and you won’t look like a fool anymore at video game conventions.

Prince of Persia: I Think I’ll Be Sitting This One Out

Heralded as the last big game of this year (after two months of escalating debt!), Prince of Persia dropped Tuesday.  I was going to get it, because, you know, I don’t really need money; however, after reading the reviews from Kotaku and Wired, I think I’ll be waiting for this one to hit the bargain shelf.  Essentially, it seems to be a pretty, pretty game with a great narrative experience, but it doesn’t offer a degree of challenge that makes any game seem rewarding.

In other words, it’s like another one of Ubisoft’ recent releases: fun to study and examine as a humanities work, but not that great when it comes to mechanics.   Assassin’s Creed was a beautiful display of graphics and an interesting case study of multi-layered story-telling, but the game play was so canned I just couldn’t be made to care.  I do want to play Prince of Persia mind you, and I’m not a fan of renting games, so maybe next summer when I just want something fresh and new, I’ll pick it up.

I did pick up The Orange Box last night.  Yes, yes: I know that I am a shame to my God, my Country, and my Mama for not getting it before now.  I know that it was folly to pay $15 for Portal: Still Alive from Live Arcade when I could have dropped the same amount of money on a used copy of the five-in-one package at my local Gamestop.  However, I–please don’t hurt me–never was big fan of Half-Life.  I still don’t think it will be my favorite series ever, but as I’ve played more games I’ve paid more attention to design and development and have a new appreciation for the classics.  So chalk it up to a more mature taste in games now, but after playing Portal and Left 4 Dead, I want to go back and experience all of Valve’s work.  First thing I’m doing when I get my PC is buy the original Half-Life from Steam.

Four day weekend coming up, so I will be gaming until my eyes bleed–and watching movies as well, and I’m launching on the ambitious goal of reading R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt Do’Urden saga from start to finish–not all in one weekend mind you, but I will be reading those books exclusively until I’m done with the whole story.  Then I will wish once again that I had a real, honest to goodness Drizzt game on my hands–maybe one where he joins Batman in saving Gotham City from zombies!