I feel like a movie star!
Playing a few moments of Left 4 Dead will remind you of scenes from “Dawn of the Dead”, “28 Days Later” and countless other what I call fast-mover zombie movies. Every level or "Act" in the game has a tidy beginning and climactic last stand defense before the survivors can make for safety. The game features a dynamic zombie generation engine called the Director that will change spawn locations from map to map. Meaning just because you played the same map twice doesn’t mean you will have the same zombie resistance in the same places. This also goes for where supplied spawn.
This sadistic Director also controls the spawn rates of boss zombies. They are the agile hunter who can leap and tackle survivors, the smoker, who attacks by roping survivors with his long tongue and reeling them in, the boomer who reminds me of the fat guy from Seven, the Tank, and the witch. The tank and the witch are what I would call the heavy weapons in the zombie arsenal. They both have the power to really wipe the survivors out. The witch however does not auto attack the survivors. She spawns wailing on the ground and as long as no survivor gets to close or shoots her, she will remain in that prone state. The tank is just a beater and always requires a lot of lead to put down.
L4D is broken into three main categories, single player campaign, online co-op and online verses. All game modes are quite good. Campaign, I recommend to people first picking up this game not only because you can see how to really play the game in a team sense since the AI really does a great job showing you the ropes. They provide covering fire, heal you and give you pills; they won’t stray off or linger too long. I give major points to the game AI.
Online co-op is another creature entirely. It’s the same game, but your results depend totally by how well your online partners play together. Friendly fire can be devastating, especially if you are playing in a higher difficulty. If your team does not watch their fire you could find yourself hurting badly in the first few minutes of the game. Particularly in the acts that feature a lot of close quarter gun fights “No Mercy” in particular fits this profile. A lot can be said for people who understand the value of getting to a door way and ducking to allow the team to fire over their heads. It’s saved my co-op teams in multiple instances.
The final game mode is verses which puts four survivors against the Director AI and four “boss” zombies played by other online players. In this mode two teams of four rotate out playing survivors and zombies through the different acts. Verses mode is hard on the survivors. No sugar coating needed. It could easily be called grief mode with how badly the zombie bosses can beat on the survivors. A good boomer and smoker team can send all to a quick end. After spending a few hours playing verses I started to remember by time playing a Half-Life 1 mode called Natural Selection. In this case, the zombie bosses really do feel diverse and interesting comparable to the aliens in NS. I’m partial to the Boomer as his vomit can attract the horde to any survivor it touches.
I’m full of love for Left 4 Dead, it’s a game I have no question that it will pull my time away from Team Fortress 2, that’s an accomplishment in itself. The team mechanic in L4D is something that’s rare in online FPS games and frankly makes this game so great. If you enjoy this kind of experience, L4D is an easy buy. Given Valves record on the PC for releasing online content (TF2 weapons) I expect a lot features to be coming down the bend in the next year, which will keep the game new and give your money longer legs.
