Review

Left 4 Dead

What’s more entertaining than a movie with zombies in it? Why, a co-op game with zombies in it, of course.

The object of Left 4 Dead is simple; go from safe house to safe house until you get to the rescue point. Along the way, you simply must survive. And that entails shooting down hordes of the infected. There isn’t much to the story other than that. You are a survivor.

The infected aren’t your typical clumsy, slow moving kind. They may look that way at first, but when you make some noise and alert their attention they’re super-fast. They’ll swarm at the survivors from every nook and cranny. Aside from the normal infected there are what I’ll call the “Big Five”–Super mutated zombies that have special powers to help make your journey much more difficult. The Boomer will vomit on your team, making it impossible to see and attracting standard infected towards whomever is hit. Smokers use their tongue to strangle you from a distance. Hunters jump on survivors and tear them to pieces. Witches will sit and cry until you disturb them, then they’ll go on a rampage until downed. Tanks, being the hardest to kill, are just raw force. Tank smash.

There are four campaigns called movies to play through. While somewhat shorter than I would like, the dynamic enemy AI increases the replay value considerably. Enemies, guns, and health will spawn depending on how you are playing; sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. It keeps things fresh. Another addition to the replay value is the four difficulty settings. Each campaign has a finale where the survivors have a standoff with the infected until rescue arrives. These are hectic, difficult, and a blast to play.

Up to 4 players can join in on surviving. And I’d suggest you get as many human players as you possibly can, because the AI can mess up the simplest of plans (especially Zoey). She, in my experience, likes to startle Witches at the most inopportune moments. Teamwork is key. When you are downed, someone else has to help you up. If you stray too far from your comrades this can be very difficult and sometimes impossible. The easiest way for you to survive is if all of your teammates survive.

In versus mode, you take turns playing the survivors and infected with the other team through one of the campaign movies. Only the Blood Harvest and No Mercy movies are currently available. While this is a little disheartening, I wouldn’t rule out Valve releasing the other two for versus play in the future. Playing as a zombie adds a whole new level of fun to Left 4 Dead. It’s so enjoyable that I find myself not wanting to play as the survivors at all. It’s a good thing the game forces players to alternate or there’d be a whole lot of zombies running around with no brains to eat. Poor, poor zombies.

There’s a bit of a learning curve when you’re first thrown in as an infected because each of the four you are randomly spawned as different zombies. However, if you have played any of the campaigns you’ve already got a general idea of what to do with them. The only one of the “Big Five” you won’t be taking control of is the witch.

There’s this annoying timer when you die as an infected. If you have a full team it can be about a 20 second wait. I suppose this plays the key role of keeping it balanced but it’s awfully boring. I’m playing an fps, patience shouldn’t be necessary. Moving on, you are able to climb certain spots in each level as a zombie. This lets you get to better ambush points to make the game that much harder for the survivor team. Climbing them, however, is easier said than done. There are nice yellow markers telling you it’s possible, but I usually have a hell of a time actually doing it. One small mouse move to the left or right and you’ll fall right back to where you started. At the top of a climb you sometimes get caught in a loop of trying to get over the edge only to fall down a little to try the edge again. The fact that you’re in a rush to tear the survivors into shreds doesn’t help.

A major problem with the versus mode are the players who take advantage of certain game exploits. Both the infected and the survivors have certain things they can do to make the game turn in their favor; or to just piss everyone off. I won’t go into details, but youtube is always informative, if you are interested. Valve has been fixing these diligently, but if you want to play it safe I’d say just play with your friends. It’s more fun beating someone you know anyway.

All in all this is another great game by Valve, which is no big surprise. What will they think of next? Hopefully it has the number 4 and the words Left, Dead, and Expansion in the title. Free is also a good word but I may be going out on a limb with that one.

Editor’s Note: The Xbox 360 version is a blast as well!