Platform: Xbox 360/Xbox Live Publisher: Valve/EA Developer: Valve Rating: R18 Players: Singleplayer/Co-op campaign Genre: Action/FPS/Survival Horror Release Date: November, 2010

Website: www.l4d.com/home.html

The release for the latest instalment in the Left 4 Dead series is merely weeks away and we’ve been given a sneak peak at the demo for Xbox Live thanks to the cool crew over at EA. The result: it’s gorylicious zombie killing at it’s most brutal and you’re going to LOVE Left 4 Dead 2.

If you’ve played the first L4D you’ll be right at home with the game mechanics. Movement in the game seems a whole lot more fluid but as always, right on the money and changing out weapons is all pretty standard. The demo version of the game gives you the opportunity to play through single-player campaign or co-op.

As with the previous game, you’re given a choice of scenarios to play (obviously in the demo, a few of these were not accessible) with the starting area being ‘The Parish’ and the ‘Waterfront’. You can choose to play as any character or random. Barely three minutes into the action and I’m quickly reminded of just how intense the gameplay in L4D can be and it’s been seriously pumped up a notch or twenty in L4D2. You’ll have way more zombies to pwn which also means more bloodshed (blood splatter is everywhere) and you’ll get some pretty sweet weapons to mow down the zombie hordes. My personal favourite is the submachine gun which usually works well with my ‘spray and pray’ method of killing

The demo for L4D2 is a really good opportunity to look at the gameplay and to get a taste of both the single player and co-op gameplay modes. The other game modes listed (but inaccessible in the demo) are ‘Survival’, ‘Realism’, ‘Versus’ and ‘Scavenge’ with single player and co-op being the other two modes.

If you’ve been waiting for L4D2 to arrive, you’re in for a treat because it looks absolutely freaking insane!

Left 4 Dead 2 arrives in New Zealand in November with a tentative date of the 17th. Mark it down in your calendars boys and girls!