Game Modes

Game Modes

Campaign

This is the bulk of Left 4 Dead 2's content. There are 5 separate levels, each of which will take up to 2 hours, depending on how often you die, the number of players taking part and the difficulty level. You can play in split-screen on Xbox 360 (if additional controllers are connected), or online with up to four-players. It is recommended that you play with the full compliment of human players, simply because escaping the levels at the grand set-pieces that mark their conclusion becomes very difficult with AI slowing you down.

The general idea of Left 4 Dead is to survive until the next safe-house, a location where the game loads, you can refresh your ammunition, weapons, and health, and the restart point should your entire party be wiped out. The safe-houses make up the end of each segment or act in the level and the level itself ends with a 'final showdown'. This is where the game throws Infected at you from all angles, including multiple instances of the most difficult Infected in the game, the Tank. Usually there is a timer that, when reached, allows the player to run for an extraction vehicle of some kind.

Versus

An interesting take on the usual multiplayer from first-person shooters, Versus mode supports up to eight players. One team of four plays as the Survivors, much like in the Campaign mode, and tries to reach each safe-house and finally the end of the level. The difference is that the other four play as 'Special Infected', aiming to stop the Survivors from reaching their goal. Once all the Survivors are killed, or they reach the safe-house, the roles reverse and this continues until the end of the level. As Special Infected you have all the abilities the AI Infected have (though you cannot play as the Witch). The levels are virtually the same, and Common Infected still populate the environment, as do AI controlled Special Infected at key moments.

Survival

Rather than a whole level, or section, the Survivors are placed in a restricted area (such as the extraction points from the Campaign) and must simply fight against hordes of Infected until they cannot fight anymore. The idea is to stay alive for as long as possible. Survival is an ironic name as this is quite simply impossible.

Scavenge

Like Versus mode, this has four Survivors against four Infected players. The idea here is for the Survivors to collect and retrieve fuel, while the Infected must stop them.

Realism

You can activate Realism Mode with any of the other modes. This removes the silhouette surrounding players (making spotting stranded allies much more difficult), as well as the similar indicators on items, and prevents players from coming back when killed through the Survivor cupboards that they otherwise would spawn in. Infected also take less damage to the body (so aim for the head), and Witches kill in one hit, like they do on Expert. The idea of this mode is to make the difficulty you prefer more interesting and more challenging without ramping it up as significantly as actually moving the difficulty level up one notch.