Left 4 Dead 2

"Lookin' back on the track, for a little green bag..."*

"Son; we just crossed the street."

Last night I went back and played a bit of Left 4 Dead 2 with my quarter (that's my other half's other half.) It's been a while since I dipped into this particular zombie infected pool, and it's still a lot of fun.

For the uninitiated, Left 4 Dead (both the original and the sequel) are set in a world where the US at least is overrun with 'infected' in the wake of some sort of mutated flu epidemic. The 4 in the title refers to the four naturally immune survivors who make up your party and the 4-player co-op which this allows. The name of the game is escape, and not just once, as each main title is broken into several mini-campaigns, each describing the survivors' escape from one deadly situation, only to get landed in another at the start of the next installment.

The opening movie of the first game pretty much encapsulates the gameplay, as well as showcasing the 'special' infected (although the Boomer is only really there in gunk.)

I keep wanting to call it Dead Centre...

To set the mood just right, each campaign has a movie poster and tagline which shows in the loading screen, along with PSA posters warning you to wash your hands and notifying you that possession of firearms is now illegal as a matter of public safety. This is a game that knows what irony is and isn't ashamed of that fact.

The first game mostly plays out in Pennsylvania, and mostly in the midst of an urban sprawl. Left 4 Dead 2 brings the action south, kicking off in Savannah, Georgia and making its way through New Orleans. In addition to southern accents and an equal black/white balance (I think Zoe is probably meant to be Latina, so the representation isn't too terrible either way, although both have 3:1 male to female ratios and there aren't any Asian-Americans,) the game introduces new varieties of zombies - including the sad-making zombie clowns - and weapons, not just variant guns but the much requested melee arsenal, including axes, crowbars, electric guitars, katanas and the fuel-limited delight of the chainsaw.

Okay; mostly the name of the game is survival.

We played the opening chapter of Left 4 Dead 2, 'Dead Center', in which the four survivors - Coach, Ellis, Nick and Rochelle - are left behind by the last chopper out of town and have to make their way to a shopping mall to steal a stock car. One of the defining traits of the sequel was that it got much more inventive with its campaign finales. In Left 4 Dead mostly you were holding off the horde while waiting for rescue. Dead Centre borrows from the exception, Dead Air, in which the survivors have to refuel a plane as the horde attacks. In this case, you're gassing up a stock car in the middle of the mall and feeling more than a little bit Dawn of the Dead while you're doing it. It's not as good as later levels, like the one where you have to try to attract rescue by setting off a heavy metal band's stage fireworks, but it's pretty damn good.

The campaign manages some solid set pieces. A desperate rush through a burning building is impressively tense for all that the flames are mostly a route map, and the crying of the Witch and the Tank's distinctive brass theme are still enough to fill me with terror.

This image was clearly chosen to represent the gestures that I
wound up making as my buddies drove off into the sunset in an
APC without me. AGAIN.

I found that Andrew has a tendency to rush ahead, which I suspect would have stood us in poor stead on a higher difficulty, but I dialed it back since it's been a while. Notably, he got about twice as many kills as I did, but took roughly three times as much damage. He was also completely not there for me when I was pummeled half to death by a Charger, and don't think that that will be forgotten any time soon.

I'd forgotten how personal this game could feel, although in the final analysis we did all get away, whereas back in the day I got left behind a lot. The story of my early L4D experience is summed up by a picture of a dude standing on a jetty, clutching a pipe bomb as the boat pulls out and the horde charges in.

* Because I did the Monkees joke already.

The Axemurder Chronicles

"I say, dear; looks like a spot of zombies."
"Dashed bad show, dear. Aziz; bring Daisy in from the garden."
"I'm sorry, my lady; Daisy seems to have run off."
"Well, dash it all. I suppose we'll just have to hop in the jallopy and go looking for her, what."

In this game, the Axemurder family need to retrieve their prized pug Daisy from the far side of a town full of zombies and bereft of a clear sense of civic identity. In turn 1, I opted to take the car and, as this already made a noise, Aziz - the only one of my group with a shooter - shot a zombie.

It was +Stephen Fleetwood who decided that 'Aziz' was actually called Brian, but that his principals were unable to see past the fez.

The 'initiative' system was interesting, with different groups acting on the turn of a card.

"Dashed bad traffic."

Colonel Axemurder proved adept at running down the regulation zombies, but the 'drive like the devil' strategy was somewhat hampered by the lack of space on the board. The hordes (large base of zombies, seen at the bottom of the picture above) were an insurmountable obstacle, and with a truck full of squaddies behind and a jeepload of hillbillies coming the other way, the jallopy dash seemed doomed.

"Better leave the car and continue on foot."

Unable to fit the car down the back of the building, the Axemurders went on foot. This was a weakness we identified in analysis, allowing them to almost completely evade zed contact for the middle game.

Meanwhile, their sterling work - and that of the military - was allowing the Criminal Element free access to the supply depot.

"Daisy! Come away from those hillbillies."

The McCletus Clan had also stopped, faced with traffic and a zombie infection, although the presence of a machinegun on their jeep meant that if there were points, they would have been contenders for victory on them. It did mean that they were constantly attracting zombies however, and perhaps as a result both they and the Military suffered more losses than the Axemurders, who ultimately came through with some light and non-infectious nibbling.

Operation Hillbilly shield.

There was some potential for player conflict as the McCletuses ran to rescue 'Maw' from right by the jallopy. If they'd tried to make a getaway in the Axemurdermobile, it might have gotten ugly, especially as there actually weren't rules for us to fight each other.

!Ramming Speed!"

 The 'Tank' zombies were much harder to run down, and by this point the Colonel was not at his best. Fortunately Lady Axemurder came through with some fine axe work.

"Base!"

After that, we made a pretty straight run home, hampered only by that last horde, as we didn't fancy being in snacking range if they activated.

Zombie Apocalypse - A Weekend at Axemurder Hall

So let's begin with some zombies.

My friend James is a sort of mini painter without portfolio, in that he doesn't have a game that he paints for, so much as a collection of concepts. One of the uses he puts this to is a semi-homebrewed zombie game.

The Axemurder family at home. Colonel Peregrine, Earl Axemurder; Celia, Lady Axemurder (nee McStabberson); the Dowager Countess Letitia 'Gran' Axemurder; Daisy the pug; and Brian 'Aziz' Collins, with the Colonel's beloved jallopy. Pictured in the drive of Axemurder Hall.

The game features several groups scurrying across a post-apocalyptic field to achieve a mission of greater or lesser importance. The Military want to rescue a lost squad and recapture a science station, the Criminal Element to loot a supply station and so on. My team, the Axemurder family, had to cross the board and rescue Daisy, their beloved pet pug.

I'll follow this post with some more images and commentary, but in general the game went well, and one of the more interesting emergent aspects was the way in which the non-conflicting goals of the groups created indirect interaction between the groups. The victorious Criminal Element emerged so partly by sneaking along behind the noisier groups and from the fact that both teams who started at or near the supply station kicked off by clearing a path to drive out, leaving it relatively free from zombies, while my own Axemurder clan emerged almost unscathed by making two quick end runs then leaving the zombies to pursue other, louder teams.

While there is no direct conflict between the teams (nor even rules for it), this indirect influence makes the game interesting and has the potential to make it more so once the players get to know the system. The key to victory in a veteran game is likely to lie in reading the other players' jack moves ahead of time and thus being ready to exploit opportunities.

Photos by me, game, setting and miniatures by +James Holloway.