So The Passing, the free DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 has been released.  Read on to hear my thoughts on this, and why (for me at least) The Passing has given me a glint of L4D1 as well as a new founded respect for the humble pistol.

Cast your minds back a year or 2 to the launch of Left 4 Dead 1.  It was something we'd never seen before, the graphics were good, the gameplay was amazing, and it gave us the oppertunity to have some of the best teamwork experiences we'd ever had on an online game.  Things (for me) that stand out in my head about L4D1 was the manic'ness of it, running short of ammo, resorting to pistols, and getting excited and bringing your team mates over when you found the second pistol so you could "dual up".  The horde was fierce, in those days it was very much a "back to the wall" approach, as getting mobbed by a horde with just a single pistol for defence would spell distaster, and who knows what the Special Infected are up to!

Fast forward to Left 4 Dead 2, and it was a whole separate affair.  At first, the maps themselves were brutal, far longer than we were used to, with more zombies, and of course the new special infected to get used to.  After this, it was all about the tactics.  Instant kill charges, smoking off ledges, jockying off rooftops and superbooms.  After this it was flamboyancy (meleeing tanks to death, chainsawing witches, 25 pounces and blind spits) which lead us to our mods, and gradually cranking up the odds against the survivors.

When Left 4 Dead 2 came out, there were a lot of complaints.  Whether it was due to the spitters acid being too green to the daylight maps being too bright, or the tank being too pink, the complaints were rife and plentiful (though everyone still adored the game in general). Fast forward a few months, and there were a gamers going back to Left 4 Dead 1, not becuase L4D2 is a bad game - it just wasn't as "good" as L4D1.  I must admit myself that I kind of understood what they meant too, though I couldn't put my finger on exactly why.  When L4D2 was released, it was seen as very "Hard" compared to L4D1, now a L4D1 game in my opinion is far harder, as you have no melee weapon to fall back on, and guns are far and few between. I've been looking at the strategies that are used throught playing a campaign of L4D1 and L4D2 recently to see what it is that makes us go back to the original, and when The Passing was released, it gave me my Eurieka moment.  My eurieka was that all of the "tools" in L4D2 were there to make it a better game than L4D1, just they hadn't been used properly.  Bear with me here, and let me explain.

Question:

In L4D2, how many times would you (unless your chainsaw had just ran out, or you are incapped and were armed with a melee) EVER only have a single pistol

Chances are, the answer would be never.  You would either have a melee, or you would have dual pistols in the saferoom by picking up the spare pistol your team mate dropped.  Simply put, going outside with 1 pistol doesn't make sense, and is'nt a good idea.

With L4D1, its all you've got.  Theres no chainsaws, bats, clubs, swords and so forth and when you DO find a secondary pistol, its a big deal.  Not only for the fact that it's twice as much ammo to use, but it gives your main weapon a break on the dwindling supply of ammo you now have to deal with; and when you're getting horded, you've got to time your reloading well!  With L4D2, you start off with bats, the thought of getting boomed just means switching to it and swinging wildly till they're all dead, and best of all - you dont use a single bullet, or need to reload - no worries.

The passing gave us and extra campaign, and it also messed up our servers.  One of the server glitches was that no melee weapons would spawn at the start, so all you had was your main gun, and a pistol (yes, a SINGLE pistol), and all of a sudden - everything changed.

Oh secondary pistol... I'll never snub you again....

I must admit, I myself was among the people shouting "OMFG SPAWN TEH BATZ!!" but when we decided to play on, the volume dial of L4D2 suddenly turned up to 11.  Regular infected became a challenge, harder to kill, and with limited power forced us to use our shotguns/uzis, which in turn ran out of ammo pretty soon after.  The previously ignorable baseball bat you would find lying in a storeroom became a focal point of "who had the bat" so they could take of what was coming from the front.  To me personally, it turned the game on it's head.  The teamplay,  co-operation and communication was back from L4D1, as were the pulse pounding moments, scraping for resources (health and ammo) as well as a new found respect for the common infected; as now they could swarm you again and that single pistol isn't up to much on it's own.  Again on the subject of melees, as soon as someone found the first or second melee weapons, you could bet your life there was someone behind waiting to pick up their dropped pistol so they now had a pair, and thank goodness for that too!  There was now a point in checking rooms for stuff other than health, and the much over-looked cricket bat and crowbar were the stars of the show - if you could find them and pick them up first!

For me the passing server glitch brought back everything that initially drew me in about the Left 4 Dead series, and in my opinion the missing melees have made the game harder, but far more respectable.  There are a few maps in L4D2 where you are deemed to have "failed" if you use a few medkits on the way through, or if someone is incapped but still makes it to the safe room, as they are that easy.  This is now not the case, as a lot of the time you won't make it through and if you are incapped and make it to the safe room, chances are you are one of the lucky ones.

Not everyone will agree with me on this, but I hope now and again we can turn off the melees at start, and take ourselves on a trip down memory lane to remember the sinking feeling at being boomed, but knowing whether to shoot the horde that is coming, or save it for the hunter, either way the outlook isn't good!