The long waited DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 ‘The Passing’ releases today on Xbox 360 and PC. The main reason that a lot of people were excited about this DLC was because it features the new Left 4 Dead 2 survivors meeting the original survivors from Left 4 Dead 1 and as the tagline ‘Nobody survives forever’ states; sadly one of the original Left 4 Dead survivors is dead. I’m not going to reveal who it is but I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough.
‘The Passing’ takes place just after ‘Dead Center’ and before ‘Dark Carnival’. At the beginning of the campaign you can see Francis standing on a bridge but of course you have to go the long way round to get to the original survivors. This new campaign only has 3 chapters and they are all quite long and entertaining. The first features a wedding that has a special bride model of the Witch and new uncommon infected of wedding guests. The second features a murky sewer where you have to go under the bridge. In the finale you have you raise the bridge by retrieving 16 gas cans to start the generator. The finale map is quite big and it can take a while to get all the gas cans with the constant attacks from hordes of zombies and special infected but again the key is sticking together, go off in groups of two to collect the gas cans so that there is always someone to save you if you get incapacitated.
There is nothing really special about the new special infected, ‘The Fallen Survivor’ other than the fact that when this type of infected are killed they randomly drop items such as Med Kits, Pain Pills and Molotov's which you can pick up, so it’s very handy if you’re running out of supplies! There is also a new, more intelligent, AI Director that slightly changes the map every time you play, for example, blocking off some routes and creating new ones and adjusting the amount of zombies in each chapter depending on how the players are playing. I've yet to explore this new feature fully yet but it should make 'The Passing' feel fresh on every playthrough.
‘The Passing’ adds a couple of new weapons to the mix, the incredibly powerful M60 and a golf club, both of which have new achievements relating to killing a lot of zombies using them. Also the pre-order exclusive melee weapon the baseball bat is randomly dotted around the various chapters. Of course no new Left 4 Dead 2 content would be complete without a new Midnight Riders song which you can hear at the wedding or on various jukeboxes.
The new game mode that valve promised isn't a completely new game mode but more of a recycling and combining of old game modes. It's called 'Mutation' and there will be a different ‘Mutation’ game modes every week, this week it is ‘Realism Versus’, no prizes for guessing which two games modes this game type combines. However Valve had said that there are over 20 planned ‘Mutations’ and one that they have mentioned is ‘Chainsaw Massacre’ which does sound very fun. Valve have also said that once a month there will be a poll and the most popular ‘Mutation’ of that month will feature again for a week. 'Mutation' seems like a very good move by Valve to keep interest in Left 4 Dead 2 by introducing a new game type each and every week.
With ‘The Passing’ comes a title update for Left 4 Dead 2 that now includes AI infected in Versus and Scavenge mode, this evens up the teams a lot and makes for much more balanced and interesting games.
‘The Passing’ is available now for 560 Microsoft Points on Xbox 360 or for free to PC users.
