Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Valve
Publisher: Valve

Valve's Source engine titles are consistently beautiful. This beauty comes from a combination of the engine's ability to deliver such clean, crisp, high resolution scenes, and from Valve's excellent artistry. So what exactly happened with this title is a bit confusing; aesthetically, the maps look thrown together, like they were rushed, and the usual Valve map layout symmetry is largely missing.

Left 4 Dead featured an innovative system of dynamically playing music for each player, individually, depending on what was going on. The sequel makes use of the same system, but the music, with its New Orleans twist, doesn't sound as perfectly B-movie-like as the original's. The audio applied to the new "special" infected are not as memorable as the original titles' either.

Left 4 Dead 2's map design ranges from mediocre to absolutely terrible; practically every stage involves long sections of horribly-paced, endless onslaught sequences, which are virtually impossible to play with the AI on any difficulty higher than "Easy". There are pointless additions, like multiple types of handguns, and new, character-less "special" infected, which means that you're essentially getting attacked by a "special" zombie continuously, further disturbing the pacing.

Left 4 Dead 2 does absolutely everything worse than its predecessor; the map designs are ugly and poorly paced, the new, generic-feeling "special" infected and playable characters water down what made the original's so memorable, and outside of the interesting "boomer bile" item, there is nothing that adds any new ludonarrative potential. Taken as a whole, Left 4 Dead 2 makes one wonder why Valve felt the first game even needed a sequel, since they evidently didn't know how to take the formula to the next level.