| Serious Zombie: The Second Encounter With its Serious Sam action, tongue-in-cheek B-movie lineage, and retro game styling, it's a surprisingly charming game, and only barely in the horror genre. I'd consider it more of an action game with a vintage horror theme, not actually a horror game in the true sense. Still the graphics are a weak spot, and the minimalistic story and shoot first, shoot second, shoot some more gameplay would get very old, very fast alone. The game's design makes some form of multiplayer almost essential, and the split-screen and LAN support is where the game truly shines as a fun group experience. The more scalable modes such as Versus certainly make long-term internet support a guarantee, especially since this comes from the company that brought us Half-Life and Team Fortress, some of the highest ranking internet games around. If there's one truly weak spot it is, in my opinion, the now-iconic decayed hand cover art. It misrepresents the product severely. Having seen the cover art a year ago, I was instantly turned off as a non-horror fan believing it to be a new hard-core horror game. It does nothing to portray the stylized, sometimes almost comedic parody of retro horror. It may serve to pick up some horror fans to the game, but it instantly turns away a lot of potential gamers who would otherwise enjoy this “horror: lite” game. Despite all this, there's definite room for knocking off a number of points from the score. It goes a long way to expand upon and correct complaints from the original, but it's still a team game primarily and could easily become boring should one attempt it in single player. With that in mind, along with the graphics, and redundancy, it's an excellent game at what it does, but it's not one of the year's reigning champions. If you're looking for a great fast action game, though, it's definitely a winner!
 |
| Graphics
- Sound - Gameplay - Depth
- Multiplayer | Reviewed
by John Del Percio |
GRAPHICS
74 % |
|
A definite problem area, especially on the console versions. While this was likely done to keep the frame rate up, a commendable goal in this type of game, the end result, as evidenced in the screen shots in this review is a fairly retro and weak looking game. The nostalgic appearance may add to the charm for us retro gamers, but for many of today's gamers, it won't look like much.
|
SOUND
80 % |
|
The voice acting is excellent, as are the weapons. Zombie sounds are exactly what you would expect for zombie sounds, though hearing them over and over again made me eventually want to turn the sound down...even more than it already was...
|
GAMEPLAY
92 % |
|
The gameplay offers come great frantic zombie shooting action. It may be redundant, but if you add in the multiplayer, it definitely offers a great platform for a few friends to get together for some off-the-cuff gaming, or for an all out online action. Getting such cooperative gameplay in an FPS can be a difficult task, so it's definitely a notable achievement.
|
DEPTH
68 % |
|
Zombies, to the left, zombies to the right, blam, blam, no more zombies. It's hard to comment on the depth of a game that simply involves shooting everything in sight, with minimal back-story just to give it some cohesion. Then again, the game doesn't profess to have any depth, and promises exactly what it delivers, adrenaline pumping zombie horde slaying action, thus, depth is a disposable score.
|
MULTIPLAYER
100 % |
|
I'm a huge fan of good co-op gaming, and unfortunately an all too often let down by games that either offer no split-screen on consoles, or have such poor co-op game mechanics it's barely worth trying. Left 4 Dead 2 provides an excellent multiplayer experience based entirely around the cooperative elements. This is where the game may reign as one of the champions of the FPS co-op genre.
|
|
As mentioned in the review, the box art, cool as it may look, certainly represents a great example of a title that doesn't fit the book. This seems to be the year for bad box art. The grand prize winner there may be 2K Games' “Borderlands.” While the box art may feature the art style of the game it also drastically misrepresnets the true mood of the game. The concept art for the box was actually better than the final result. I doubt we'll see a change in the art design for Left 4 Dead any time in the near future with the hand now being gaming legend. But don't let it tun you off from what is otherwise an excellent “mindless shooter.” PC gamers of old, take note!
|
|
