Left 4 Dead 2: Exclusive RPS Hands-On Preview

New game, new locations, new characters, new weapons, new monsters: John has been to Valve and dragged back the news.

Left 4 Dead who now? No one was expecting Valve’s next game to be a sequel to 2008’s awesome co-op zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead. To answer your immediate question: Yes, this is a completely new game, with new characters, in a new location, with new zombies, new weapons, new twists, and an improved Director, in five completely new campaigns set in the Southern United States. This isn’t more maps for the previous game, it’s a brand new game, and it’s due this November. We snuck into Valve HQ ahead of Monday’s announcement and played a full campaign, and at first glance much appears to have evolved.

It’s still Left 4 Dead: Valve have more sense than to change anything that made the first game so splendid. Rather the focus on L4D2 appears to have been the desire by everyone involved in the first game to make something bigger and better. Coming off the back of the project, we were told by various Valve developers, people we bursting with ideas of where to take the game next. So they went right there.

Left 4 Dead 2 takes place in the South of the USA, beginning in Savannah, eventually reaching New Orleans. There’s four new characters to play, each with back-stories to be hinted at in their conversations. Coach is a high school football coach from the Savannah area, used to leading the kids, comfortable in his life, and perhaps not enamoured by the arrival of a zombie attack. There’s Rochelle, from Cleveland originally, working for a cable news network. She’s producing a segment on this strange story occurring in Savannah, and gets caught up in the events. Ellis is a Southern boy mechanic, an enthusiastic but smart guy with a “Southern flair”. Finally there’s Nick, a gambler and a conman, unsure of his company and cynical about the events.

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