Still, the game isn’t any weaker for it, and the individual stories gleaned from the writing on the walls in the safe rooms speak loudly enough on their own. The Survivors will be fighting for their lives in five new campaigns set all across the American South from a shopping mall in Savannah to the grand finale in New Orleans, and while there’s a bit of storyline connecting the scenarios it’s hardly on the level that some were expecting. Certain phrases will get repeated enough to become rote and commonplace, but I’m still hearing new things after 30+ hours of play, so make of that what you will. While fans of the first game may miss the original four Survivors, the newbies are all endearing in their own right, and their dialogue is well-written – Ellis may well be one of the funniest characters I’ve seen in a game in entirely too long.

The lucky (or unlucky?) quartet this time around is Rochelle the ambitious young journalist, Nick the drifting con-man, Ellis the energetic redneck mechanic, and Coach the, uh, coach. The Survivors must work together in order to survive and reach safety, and on the way they’ll blast and chop their way through the Infected to get there. The premise is the same as the first game: Four Survivors have survived the apocalypse thanks to being immune to a virulent disease that turns all who are Infected into ravenous, murderous monsters – zombies, essentially.