When Left 4 Dead 2 is good, it’s great. Its cooperative campaigns take you and up to three other players through a varied series of locales in an experience than can be called (positively) ‘cinematic.’ Its competitive modes can be fraught with tension, balancing moments of terror (mobbed by zombies, nearby houses aflame, all three of your friends bleeding out on the ground around, you hunker into a corner and hope for the best) with moments of adrenaline-fueled glee (literally — stabbing yourself with a syringe, you make a run for a saferoom, shoving zombies out of your way. A car goes flying by you — you look behind: a tank! Mere moments later, you reach safety, slamming the door behind you. A horde outside growls). But when it’s bad, it’s frustratingly bad. Teams can be horribly unbalanced and hard to correct, which isn’t fun for anyone; many matches can take a long time to play, requiring up to an hour’s commitment. Either issue by itself would be no problem; both together, decidedly so.

Left 4 Dead 2 ticked a lot of people off on release, only a year after L4D. However, they proved their point by making L4D2 an all around better game with greater moddability.

Much like TF2, Valve continues to support and update the game, giving it not only necessary bugfixes, but also new maps and gametypes to keep the experience fresh. If you’ve bought L4D2, you’re getting your money’s worth.

L4D2 is probably the best zombie-shooting game on the market, and a definite improvement over the first game. It goes out of its way to force you to work with your teammates, making for a great co-op experience. However, the gameplay can sometimes get a bit repetitive, so if zombies aren’t your thing, it may be best in smaller doses.