There has been much hype surrounding this game. It comes from Valve, the prestigious developers of classics such as Team Fortress and the Half-Life series, and won the focus of many at E3. The level of anticipation was enormous. The released demo, which solely featured a brief segment of the Campaign co-op, only added to the hype. However, was it worth it on final release? Yes and no.
Left 4 Dead sets 4 characters into the middle of a zombie apocalypse, with mindless undead staggering at every turn. The featured characters vary wildly, with a gruff tattooed biker, a spunky teenage girl, an affable sales associate, and a grizzled Vietnam vet. They travel as a group in various locales in order to reach safety. This is all you really know, since no other details are given. Players are told that in infection hit, and after the rather intriguing opening cutscene are given no more information. It's a bit of a shame, since the brief introduction we get to the characters leaves us wondering more about them, and how they got together. These characters become merely skins, different only in their voice commands and appearance. It hardly breaks the game, but some more backstory to the events may have fleshed the experience out.
The graphics and sound are adequate. It runs off of the Source engine used in other Valve products. This means that the game, while it looks more than adequate, it can lag a little bit behind newer games. However, with the amount of Infected in some of the encounters, and the amazing atmosphere, you really won't notice. The lighting effects are great, particularly the flashlight. The sounds of the various Infected are distinct, and musical cues let players paying attention know what's coming. Character will shout out when they see something dangerous or of value, so it pays to pay attention. The game excels at atmosphere, overcoming it's graphical imperfections.
The game's entire focus in on the multiplayer aspect, with the four survivors having to battle their way through hordes of undead in order to reach designated save points. It's possible to play by yourself with bots, but this is an unsatisfying experience, used for learning the ropes and nothing more. Working as a unit with three other human players is an exciting experience. I can't stress enough how important voice chat is for this game. Not only does it make coordinating movements with the other players much easier, it allows you to truly enjoy those random moments that are sure to happen thanks to the AI Director and the pure randomness of playing with people. Players will knock infected off off each other, pull each other up ledges, and generally work as a unit in order to pass through the levels. Trying to solo it will usually end in death. When health runs out, players collapse to the ground with their pistol, much like CoD4, and wait for a team mate to help them up. get knocked down too many times without healing and you die, forced to wait until team mates get to a certain point and have the opportunity to respawn you. If a player drops from the game, then the AI takes their place until someone else joins. The AI is actually quite competent at killing undead (almost TOO good at times), but no substitute for an human player.
The AI Director is the most touted feature of the game. Unlike any other game, the Director tailors the experience to the performance of the players, purportedly making it a different experience every time. If players are rushing through the level like a group of urban Rambos, the Director will place bigger hordes and less items. Conversely, players struggling will find fewer enemies and a few more items along the way. It's nice to be able to play the levels and never know exactly where those power items will be, and aims for replayability.
Helping the Director screw you over are the various types of Infected you encounter. You will spend most of your time blasting through the basic Horde. Like the name implies, they attack in great numbers, running close to surround you and take you down with sheer volume. Always appearing in groups, at different points, either through in-game events or random Director choices, a large mob will charge you, forcing players to work together and or be overwhelmed. Special Infected mix things up. Hunters are agile, and will tackle players, who are helpless until an ally knocks off the Hunter. Smokers use their tongues to drag players, and will explode in an obscuring cloud when killed. Boomer bile causes players to lose their vision and summons a Horde on them, and explode when killed, sending bile everywhere. Tanks plow through entire teams and have to be taken down with concentrated fire. Witches are docile until disturbed by a player, and will then attack that player alone, usually killing them. Survivors have to watch their backs, since the Director will often spawn them in locations that make them difficult to stop before they get an attack in.
The linearity of the game, however, limits the possibilities by a wide margin. While the number of zombies in points may vary, the levels themselves do not. There is very little in the way of alternate routes, making players follow a set path every play through. After a while the seemingly random Director begins to get predictable. There's only so many places that zombies can spawn in such a linear path, and the Director begins to repeat itself. While the Special Infected can catch you off guard, on any level below Expert they are often easy to deal with before they cause too much damage. A slow, cautious team working together will have little trouble. Monotony begins to set in, which only 4 chapters with 5 relatively short maps. Once you've played them a few times, the campaign experience loses a bit of it's luster.
Versus Mode is the biggest draw of the game. In this mode, four players play as survivors trying to reach the safe rooms, as usual. However, four other players spawn as special infected, and are tasked with stopping the survivors, or at least causing as much damage as possible. The special infected respawn infinitely, while the survivors stay dead until the level is over if killed. This creates much more tension for the survivors, since unlike the AI, humans will set traps and use the environment to their advantage. After the survivors either reach the safe room or die, points are tallied, and then sides are switched. The winner is them team who accumulates the most points by the end. This mode has much more legs than the campaign mode, and is the mode of choice for many.
However, it is not without it's flaws. The Infected require absolute coordination to be effective. The Survivors will easily dispose of unorganized Infected. In fact, the only way they can safely attack is with the Horde distracting the survivors so they can be picked off. However, this puts an awful lot of emphasis on the noisy, close-ranged Boomer. A bit too much, which is not a good thing in pub games. In addition, the levels themselves often favor the survivors. Much of the game takes place in halls and narrow areas. While this in theory limits the ability of survivors to move about dealing with threats, it limits the Infected more than the humans. During a Horde rush, the survivors can simply bottleneck and mow down the approaching Horde. Special Infected have limited avenues to attack, so they become a bit predictable. Since the special Infected are human controlled, the Director doesn't have as much to do, so outside of randomly giving an Infected control over a Tank or a Witch spawn, the Versus becomes a lot more predictable. The lack of available levels is a huge problem. Out of the four available in Campaign, only 2 are available in Versus. Granted, soon there will be a deluge of player created content, but it would have been nice to have more available out of the box.
Despite the criticisms I seem to be heaving at the game, I still recommend it. It is quite a fun game, and will keep you occupied for some time. If you can find a good group of friends to play with, instead of random pubs, the game's entertainment increases dramatically. While having fun as Infected relies heavily on coodination you often don't find in random games, once you find that group willing to put the effort into it, it becomes an amazing game of cat and mouse with the hapless survivors. This is a game for friends, not solo players. If you are unable to find a group of people worth playing with, it will start to get old much faster for you.
This is not the next coming of gaming like previews made it out to be. Rather, it's a fun romp blasting through zombies and eating brains out of hapless survivors. While the low amount of content hurts it, especially on the 360 with Valve's notorious lack of updates, the future downloadable content and mods will add more legs to this already addicting title. Go out and buy the game, and enjoy it for what it offers. It may not be a revolution, but it will surely eat up your time for a while.
Left 4 Dead sets 4 characters into the middle of a zombie apocalypse, with mindless undead staggering at every turn. The featured characters vary wildly, with a gruff tattooed biker, a spunky teenage girl, an affable sales associate, and a grizzled Vietnam vet. They travel as a group in various locales in order to reach safety. This is all you really know, since no other details are given. Players are told that in infection hit, and after the rather intriguing opening cutscene are given no more information. It's a bit of a shame, since the brief introduction we get to the characters leaves us wondering more about them, and how they got together. These characters become merely skins, different only in their voice commands and appearance. It hardly breaks the game, but some more backstory to the events may have fleshed the experience out.
The graphics and sound are adequate. It runs off of the Source engine used in other Valve products. This means that the game, while it looks more than adequate, it can lag a little bit behind newer games. However, with the amount of Infected in some of the encounters, and the amazing atmosphere, you really won't notice. The lighting effects are great, particularly the flashlight. The sounds of the various Infected are distinct, and musical cues let players paying attention know what's coming. Character will shout out when they see something dangerous or of value, so it pays to pay attention. The game excels at atmosphere, overcoming it's graphical imperfections.
The game's entire focus in on the multiplayer aspect, with the four survivors having to battle their way through hordes of undead in order to reach designated save points. It's possible to play by yourself with bots, but this is an unsatisfying experience, used for learning the ropes and nothing more. Working as a unit with three other human players is an exciting experience. I can't stress enough how important voice chat is for this game. Not only does it make coordinating movements with the other players much easier, it allows you to truly enjoy those random moments that are sure to happen thanks to the AI Director and the pure randomness of playing with people. Players will knock infected off off each other, pull each other up ledges, and generally work as a unit in order to pass through the levels. Trying to solo it will usually end in death. When health runs out, players collapse to the ground with their pistol, much like CoD4, and wait for a team mate to help them up. get knocked down too many times without healing and you die, forced to wait until team mates get to a certain point and have the opportunity to respawn you. If a player drops from the game, then the AI takes their place until someone else joins. The AI is actually quite competent at killing undead (almost TOO good at times), but no substitute for an human player.
The AI Director is the most touted feature of the game. Unlike any other game, the Director tailors the experience to the performance of the players, purportedly making it a different experience every time. If players are rushing through the level like a group of urban Rambos, the Director will place bigger hordes and less items. Conversely, players struggling will find fewer enemies and a few more items along the way. It's nice to be able to play the levels and never know exactly where those power items will be, and aims for replayability.
Helping the Director screw you over are the various types of Infected you encounter. You will spend most of your time blasting through the basic Horde. Like the name implies, they attack in great numbers, running close to surround you and take you down with sheer volume. Always appearing in groups, at different points, either through in-game events or random Director choices, a large mob will charge you, forcing players to work together and or be overwhelmed. Special Infected mix things up. Hunters are agile, and will tackle players, who are helpless until an ally knocks off the Hunter. Smokers use their tongues to drag players, and will explode in an obscuring cloud when killed. Boomer bile causes players to lose their vision and summons a Horde on them, and explode when killed, sending bile everywhere. Tanks plow through entire teams and have to be taken down with concentrated fire. Witches are docile until disturbed by a player, and will then attack that player alone, usually killing them. Survivors have to watch their backs, since the Director will often spawn them in locations that make them difficult to stop before they get an attack in.
The linearity of the game, however, limits the possibilities by a wide margin. While the number of zombies in points may vary, the levels themselves do not. There is very little in the way of alternate routes, making players follow a set path every play through. After a while the seemingly random Director begins to get predictable. There's only so many places that zombies can spawn in such a linear path, and the Director begins to repeat itself. While the Special Infected can catch you off guard, on any level below Expert they are often easy to deal with before they cause too much damage. A slow, cautious team working together will have little trouble. Monotony begins to set in, which only 4 chapters with 5 relatively short maps. Once you've played them a few times, the campaign experience loses a bit of it's luster.
Versus Mode is the biggest draw of the game. In this mode, four players play as survivors trying to reach the safe rooms, as usual. However, four other players spawn as special infected, and are tasked with stopping the survivors, or at least causing as much damage as possible. The special infected respawn infinitely, while the survivors stay dead until the level is over if killed. This creates much more tension for the survivors, since unlike the AI, humans will set traps and use the environment to their advantage. After the survivors either reach the safe room or die, points are tallied, and then sides are switched. The winner is them team who accumulates the most points by the end. This mode has much more legs than the campaign mode, and is the mode of choice for many.
However, it is not without it's flaws. The Infected require absolute coordination to be effective. The Survivors will easily dispose of unorganized Infected. In fact, the only way they can safely attack is with the Horde distracting the survivors so they can be picked off. However, this puts an awful lot of emphasis on the noisy, close-ranged Boomer. A bit too much, which is not a good thing in pub games. In addition, the levels themselves often favor the survivors. Much of the game takes place in halls and narrow areas. While this in theory limits the ability of survivors to move about dealing with threats, it limits the Infected more than the humans. During a Horde rush, the survivors can simply bottleneck and mow down the approaching Horde. Special Infected have limited avenues to attack, so they become a bit predictable. Since the special Infected are human controlled, the Director doesn't have as much to do, so outside of randomly giving an Infected control over a Tank or a Witch spawn, the Versus becomes a lot more predictable. The lack of available levels is a huge problem. Out of the four available in Campaign, only 2 are available in Versus. Granted, soon there will be a deluge of player created content, but it would have been nice to have more available out of the box.
Despite the criticisms I seem to be heaving at the game, I still recommend it. It is quite a fun game, and will keep you occupied for some time. If you can find a good group of friends to play with, instead of random pubs, the game's entertainment increases dramatically. While having fun as Infected relies heavily on coodination you often don't find in random games, once you find that group willing to put the effort into it, it becomes an amazing game of cat and mouse with the hapless survivors. This is a game for friends, not solo players. If you are unable to find a group of people worth playing with, it will start to get old much faster for you.
This is not the next coming of gaming like previews made it out to be. Rather, it's a fun romp blasting through zombies and eating brains out of hapless survivors. While the low amount of content hurts it, especially on the 360 with Valve's notorious lack of updates, the future downloadable content and mods will add more legs to this already addicting title. Go out and buy the game, and enjoy it for what it offers. It may not be a revolution, but it will surely eat up your time for a while.
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