A big issue I have with this game is the enemy variety between levels sucks. A few attempts of the first level was enough to see every enemy we would be encountering for the next 13 hours of playing the game. We haven't finished it yet, but we haven't come across anything new either, so unless there's some sort of final boss I doubt there's going to be anything new introduced later.
This was the case with L4D too.
Robomoo wrote:The game plays exactly like L4D2, the only mechanical difference being that you have melee combat instead of shooting.
It's not that the melee combat replaces shooting. The game still has shooting. Each character in this game has a ranged equip slot, which must contain a ranged weapon, and a rather powerful one too depending on what you equip. There's bows, crossbows, staves that shoot fireballs, and a variety of pistols including revolvers that can shoot everything left in the cylinder at once like a shotgun.
There's just a lot more focus on melee combat compared to L4D2 (which introduced melee weapons to that series) because ranged weapons in this game either shoot too slowly to allow you to properly defend yourself against large amounts of enemies, or if they do shoot quickly they'll chew through your somewhat scarce ammo supplies faster than the rats can chew through your flesh.
The ranged weapons in this game are generally much more powerful than the melee too; spend some time near one of those unlimited ammo crates that you'll come across sometimes, and you'll see just how much easier it is to stave off the vermin. And you're fucked if you run out of ammo, good luck trying to hit an elite enemy if they're targeting you, if they're not shooting or throwing stuff at you from far away, they're grabbing you rendering you helpless without the aid of your friends.
I have a small gripe about the melee combat as well. Everything has much more range than it seems; the rats are able to hit you even a couple of meters away from where they should, and vice versa. Otherwise it's pretty nice, it feels a lot chunkier than in L4D2, where all the melee weapons somehow cut through all zombies like butter. In that game the frying pan can be swung through just as many zombies as a katana (and just as smoothly too) which feels weird. Whereas in this one only the sharpest of weapons will swing through enemies, while the rest, like the hammer and axe will get stuck inside the first enemy you hit, and will need to be swung again to hit another one. Of course, each weapon has a charged attack, and this will hit everything in its path.