Hey, stop giving away trade secrets! These stores will start to get wise to us.

Anyone want a code for the Louieville Slugger Baseball Bat? Gamestop gave me one when I pre-ordered, and then one was taped to my copy of the game when I picked it up this morning. First person to quote me asking for it gets it.

I assume you mean a 360 code, but if by chance it is a PC code I will gladly take it.

I'd take it if you still got it.

Sorry, yeah it's the 360 not the PC.

It's yours brotha'! Check your PMs in a moment.

Unless you're the sort who thinks Expert level is boring, prepare for a surprise when you start L4D2. I tend to play Advanced/Expert on one, but my team and I got our asses handed to us on just the first campaign of L4D2. They've really upped the difficulty in the sequel. I like it. It's challenging again.

Yeah, this game is amazing. It really builds on the best aspects of the original while retaining the core gameplay. The addition of melee is probably my favorite. Samurai swords, chainsaws, and bats? Too awesome.

All of the new campaigns are excellent as well. There's much much more variety than the original, and they are all considerably longer with more branching pathways and nooks to get lost in. I like that they mixed up the objectives (gas cans, running across the bombed out bridge, wandering witches, etc.), so it isn't always just run and gun until you hole up during a 'stand off' in the final chapter.

Valve also did a great job experimenting with atmospheric effects that impact the gameplay. Most dramatically in Hard Rain, which is probably the strongest new campaign - starting out on a sunny day that slowly turns into a heavy storm. Making your way back through the maps with heavy rain pouring down on the flooded environments is awesome.

The new special infected are a blast to play on versus. My favorite has to be the jockey, or maybe the spitter. But it's just too fun latching on to some poor sap and taking him away far from his team.

It's definitely a lot harder than the previous game, no question. And there's no way that this could have been done as an "expansion pack" to the original game, it adds a lot of new features.

Gotta love the chainsaw.

I rejoined Gamefly for the winter, and put this in my queueueeue. Hopefully, I will get this soon and be able to have a few sessions with some dvdtalkers.

I suck at using the melee weapons. I'm always too far away or turned in the wrong direction.

It's the best weapon in the game! You can literally run through and take down entire hordes without getting touched.

Exactly. Finished L4D on Expert (co-op), took several months. Could not beat the final level of crash course, gave up. First level of l4d2 we actually finshed on our second try but got stuck on level 2 for numerous hours last night. 2nd level is looonng

So what is the deal with the 'exclusive' bat? Unless you buy L4D2 from GS its not in the game?

You're not missing out on anything. There is a normal bat in game, but the exclusive one just looks different - nothing special.

I think if you pre-ordered the game you got the bat.

Don't worry though. The way its set up, if even one person on your team pre-ordered, then everyone gets access to the bat for that session.

I like it personally. Swings fast and hits hard.

I assume the code you put in is unique? ... is it unlocking something on the disc or downloading an add-on? I'm just wondering how this is an 'exclusive' bat since anyone could post the code and everyone be using it by now.

My wife saw the commerical for l4d2, and she thought it was some comic style zombie killer (Like Zombie land). I don't think she quite understands how brutal/intense the game is lol.

Uh-huh. We were getting destroyed on Normal and knocked it back to Easy and were still running into problems once in awhile. Yikes. (But it was awesome!)

I've only played the first two levels thus far, but they've been nothing short of great. Dark Carnival was absolutely insanely fantastic! What a finale! And the gnome was rescued! It was so hilarious us going through 4 levels trying to hold onto that thing.

"FUCK CARL, let him die! Do you have the gnome?!"

I tried to go for the gnome achievement on my first run through the level. That didn't work out so well. After taking care to carry him for quite a while, I set him down somewhere in the funhouse to fight the horde and the next thing I know I've fallen through some hole in the floor to a lower level. No way back up and the bots of course don't grab the gnome. I'm going to have to retry this one once I've memorized where the 'no way back' points are on the map so I can take special precautions at those points.

So far I'm loving the variety of the levels. The only disappointment so far was the mall. I was hoping for something that really captured that mall essence, like Dawn of the Dead '78 or Dead Rising. Instead it just felt like the airport from the first game with a few small touches thrown in to make it more 'mall-like'. It's a sharp contrast to the amusement park, which just oozes carnival flavor in every nook and cranny.

I really liked this game so far, the chainsaw is awesome in particular. Nothing beats running through a horde of zombies with that. I also really like the explosive rounds in the swamp level, so much fun to fire off. Difficulty from the first game is way harder.

the mall did remind me of the dead air level I agree

Well I think L4D2 might have cured me of my L4D addiction (or maybe I'll just go back to the original). WTF is the point of amping up the difficulty that much? I played w/ 6 different groups tonight and not a single game finished. Were people really complaining about the difficulty of the original one that much?

Alright, so I really want to get in on the Best Buy black friday deal of $34.99 for this game. Is my best bet to purchase it this weekend, and then just return and rebuy during the Doorbuster promotion? Anyone have luck with this stuff before?

Besides the dumbass who kept running ahead or dragging behind we finished Dark Carnival on easy and it was... easy. I have yet to try VS yet but damn...lots of places to fuck around with the Survivors.

Me and my friends rented the game and are going to give it a run through tomorrow. From the people that have it, approximately how long do you guys think it would take to go through on normal?

In single player mode on normal it's taken me about an hour to get through most of them. So I guess that's not too different than the first one. Except for the Carnival one which was about an hour and half due to the "sprint" part (you'll know what I mean when you get there ) which took several attempts to get through.

It's hard, but it's not that much worse than the original. People just need to get used to the longer maps and new content. You can't just corner up so easily like in the original. People in VS mode are already starting to get the hang of things, although it's still quite difficult to complete the maps. It will get easier once the layouts are more familiar. I think it's good that it's challenging though. This game gets boring when it's too easy.