14 DAY TRIAL // Left 4 Dead 2 had a pretty hard and bumpy road to get through before it got launched. First, the game was boycotted by dedicated fans of the first installment, and then it had to be seriously edited to be allowed an Australian release. But, eventually, the title was launched and it turned out to be a lot of fun. It sold better than the first Left 4 Dead, but one can't really say it's a better game, or an evolution over the first. The concept, the one that made the first L4D stand out, is the same and the only differences are found in new types of infected and new weapons. The distribution is also a fresh one, but not really an improvement over the original.
As a newly released, multiplayer-focused game, there were bound to be a lot of issues to come up during online sessions, and, of course, they did. Testing can only go so far before the millions of gamers come up with a unique scenario in the title that makes it go crazy and flip out. As such, there were plenty such issues with Left 4 Dead 2, especially with the hit boxes. Since it relies on the Source engine, the game came across the same problems that CS: Source did, as well as all the other Source mods. The end-result is that you don't really hit what you're aiming at, and sometimes what should have been a sure hit is a miss, and the other way around.
Valve is, of course, aware of such problems and the effect they had in L4D2, so a patch has also been released to try to mend as many of them as possible. Already available for the PC, the Xbox 360 version of the game will have to wait a little bit longer, with the update coming along sometime by the end of the month. The latest patch fixes a lot of problems, and of course the infected hit boxes are some of them. The exact list of the fixes, as well as a description of what they did can be found below.
Changed rules for ghost placement in Scavenge Mode; Player controlled Special Infected are no longer forced to un-crouch and lock strafe when they crouch attack; Spitter spit that damages players on a moving elevator will now fizzle quickly; Allow the survivor and infected to rotate the camera yaw while being attacked by a Charger or Smoker; Smoker that has dragged a survivor to the end now gets the same cinematic flashlight as the Hunter and Charger; Fixed a crash in physics; Updated the Charger's hit boxes; Updated the Jockey's hit boxes; Updated the Spitter's hit boxes;
Fixed player health on being revived after a Charger slam over a high ledge; Fixed versus scores not resetting after a vote to change campaigns; Fixed being able to use defibrillator on dead players who were far above or below you; Fixed pink glow on dead survivors; Fixed being able to hold crouch while incapped to get better weapon accuracy; Fixed players pushing against some props causing them to accumulate downward velocity and then take falling damage when they let go of the forward key; Fixed a case where an incapped survivor inside a rescue vehicle would trigger both the escape sequence and a round restart; Fixed the helping hand from getting stuck when extended.