I'm going to go out on a limb, and say that L4D2 is worse than the original. A lot of the new weapons are just worthless (the AK-47 as an example), and the new specials are just fucking ridiculous (the charger as an example). The witch in the fucking safe room was the last straw. If you could return things to Steam for a refund, I probably would.
I have to say I disagree. L4D felt like it was becoming rote so anything new, surprising and difficult is an improvement. The Charger and other new specials didn't seem bad to me. They did seem harder but I think that's just because they're not as ineffectual and predictable as the old specials. Awesome! Is it really so bad that Valve threw you a curveball and put a special in the safe room (with a wide open door)? So, you don't know what you might find when you go through that door. Increased tension, fantastic!
Did you know that there was a bug early on where the difficulty was automatically set to EXPERT every level? Depending on when you played that could account for some of your frustrations. As for the weapons I can't really comment on them individually, other than to say that wading ahead with the chainsaw is a sheer joy. There are multiple sets of weapons at each tier so there will be more variety of weapons that you can pick up that won't necessarily give you any advantage.
Level design has improved and the ebb and flow of the game is less predictable. The finale of the first campaign is an improvement because it forces you to run around the level instead of hunkering down and trying to simply survive. I encourage you to try the game again.
Disclaimer: I've played only the first campaign once.
The part that was bad about the witch in the safe room was that I had to stand in the safe room and way three minutes for the retard computer controlled survivors to get there. They seem to have beefed up the AI for the infected, but not for the survivors.
I don't like to play on-line with people I don't know because I hate playing with rage quitters, TKers, vote-kickers, and whinny 10-year olds. Seriously. See a previous post. It usually takes as long to find a game worth playing as I have to play.
It would be lame to have to wait for the computer that long. Maybe you should try getting Alex and Issac to play. If they have the game they often have free time later in the evening...
BTW, I subscribed to comments for this post and though they showed up in my reader when I tried to open the comment so that I could reply the link back to your blog was broken. I had to navigate back from your most recent blog post.