The demo for surprise sequel Left 4 Dead 2 was recently released and I spent about two hours of my gaming life today enjoying it (a rare occurrence these days, if I do say so myself). The game features a hefty amount of pseudo-zombies (real zombies do not run) for you to dismember and smack with the underbelly of a frying pan for pure amusement while the story appears to be there just to give reason as to why you are committing the aforementioned acts on these so called “zombies” (although, having said that, I have read that L4D2 will in fact feature a story arc). Having skipped the original L4D due to assuming it wouldn’t be my kind of game, I had only my vague thoughts of “typical zombie shooter” at the ready as I launched the demo and, as a result of this, I was very pleasantly surprised.

After kicking things off with a very attractive intro cinematic, I stumbled into a pre-made lobby hosted by a friend and chose my character from the list of what I like to jokingly refer to as the “Class of Ethnic Stereotypes 2009”. As soon as the game had finished the loading process, the first thing I noticed was the water. The water looked so good that it managed to hold my attention long enough for me to be left behind by my team mates and subsequently almost dying at the hands of the undead. The zombies themselves were very entertaining; running and jumping at you from almost all directions, vomiting on you, strangling you and being deceivingly smart all at the same time, they niche themselves perfectly in-between infuriating and impossibly fun to fight.

It seems that everything in the demo is as near to perfection as a first person shooter can get; refined controls and fluid movement made this demo a dream to play. The balance between sneaking around to avoid attracting the horde of zombies to trying your hardest to kill that very horde is very fragile and either side can tip the scales at any moment. All of this coupled with the quite stunning visuals and intense/ambient (depending on the situation you are in) sound design really do cast away any thoughts that a sequel is too soon. Although there were a few minor technical hitches here and there (a few bouts of lag and sound deficiency), this game just bludgeoned its way onto my list of “Must Buy” games.