14 DAY TRIAL // I've been going back to Left 4 Dead 2 in recent weeks, and a key role was played by the achievement system implemented by Valve in the zombie-killing first person shooter.
Sure, Left 4 Dead 2 attracts through the unique characters like Coach or Nick, and through its interesting environments, like the Tunnel of Love in Dark Carnival, but nothing stirs the heart of competitive gamers like achievements.
While some, including myself, patronized these things at the beginning, the feeling you get when unlocking one, especially if the demands were tricky, is a great one.
Valve also needs props for adding a pretty balanced difficulty curve to the challenges, starting with the achievements for completing each of the campaigns, and then to more serious ones like completing all of them on expert or with survival mode turned on.
While hunting for achievements in many games means a lot of grinding or waiting for certain events to trigger, Left 4 Dead 2 manages to help you out here and there, through the AI Director, as well as provide certain areas ripe for certain challenges.
I would've never gotten the Burning Sensation if it weren't for the incendiary ammo drops in the Swamp Fever campaign, nor the Dismemberment Plan one if it weren't for the clowns leading packs of zombies in Dark Carnival.
What's even better is that the cooperative multiplayer mode from Left 4 Dead 2 also makes hunting for achievements a blast, especially since you can set up certain scenarios with friends, like the A Ride Denied or Level a Charge achievements.
Besides giving you extra bragging rights in front of your friends, achievements like Confederacy of Crunches (finish a campaign using only melee weapons), Head Honcho (decapitate zombies using melee weapons) or Chain of Command (kill 100 zombies with a chainsaw) also urge you to use some of the new weapons in Left 4 Dead 2, not just the old ones from the original game.
Still, this doesn't mean that hunting for achievements is an easy thing, but that's a diary for another day.