The first expansion for Left 4 Dead 2 tweaks the co-operative zombie shooter in all the right ways, introducing new game modes and a big twist to the subtle plot without fundamentally changing the gameplay.
The new downloadable content, known as The Passing, was released Thursday by Valve for Xbox 360 and PC. It unspools in three stages that re-create the brick-and-cobblestone riverside of Savannah, Georgia, a new, terrifying stop in the Southern Gothic road trip of 2009's Left 4 Dead 2.
The action takes place just after the Dead Center campaign, where survivors made their escape from a shopping mall in a race car.
(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow).
The Passing starts with the survivors stuck at a dead end. A drawbridge needs lowering, but players will have to navigate a zombie-infested city, make a subterranean river crossing and refuel a generator so the bridge can be lowered.
The Passing feels a lot like Crash Course, an expansion for the original Left 4 Dead, in that it feels open, complex and treacherous. There are a zillion paths to take and it's really easy, especially when you're unfamiliar with the terrain, to get turned around or distracted by unexplored corridors and rooms.
And, like Crash Course, this new campaign is paradise for the infected. When you're playing the game in versus mode as the specially powered zombies, it feels like you've got a million different options when it comes to ambushing the human players. This can make it hard to set up chokepoint traps, because you can never be totally sure where the good guys are going to run.
A Subtle Spoiler
There's a big plot spoiler that goes down during the course of the adventure, but Valve doesn't broadcast the drama via cutscene. That's not Valve's style.
Rather than cram a moment into your face, Valve lets you discover the moment your own way – through snippets of conversation and objects (here a particularly gruesome one) in the environment. It's possible to play through the new content a couple of times without seeing everything, so keep your ears and eyes open as you go into The Passing's third and final level.
But, as widely publicized, The Passing brings back the survivors from the first game. Encounters with them are fun, sprinkled with conversations that play differently each time you meet the characters. The promo embedded above (not a part of the game) is a taste of the kind of banter you'll encounter. The first time I bumped into them they were friendly; when I replayed the campaign, they seemed slightly ticked and threw a veiled insult or two toward my group.
The original survivors aren't playable, but they really lend a hand in the game's big finale. As you're playing a campaign, they shoot at zombies from atop the drawbridge, providing supervaluable cover fire as you try to refuel the bridge's generator. There's even an achievement called Kite Like a Man for using their firepower to kill a tank.
Apart from being a straight-up expansion and introducing new areas and story lines, The Passing delivers fun riffs on multiplayer gaming.
The most exciting new modes are known as Mutations – online versus matches with game-changing tweaks that will be different each week. This week's Mutation is Realism Versus, which pits survivors against the infected with all the in-game assists for the survivors turned off. That means no glowing highlights around allies and items, making it all the more vital to stick together. A future Mutation promises chainsaws with unlimited fuel.
The Passing is downloadable content done right: This new expansion is just the shot in the arm that Left 4 Dead 2 needed to mobilize fans that may have become distracted by newer games.
Image courtesy Valve
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