Left 4 Dead

            Ever since the original Half-life came out for the PC over a decade ago, Valve, the developer behind the masterpiece, has continued to put out truly imaginative and fantastical games with such detailed and creative plot lines that anyone has ever seen in any shooter.  With this zombie/first person shooter, Valve is taking a new direction with this franchise.  Instead of making it about a single main character that is backed up with an epic story, Valve has switched gears in that this game requires strategic teamwork, and unlike in Half-Life, there is no back-story to any of the four characters you can play as throughout the game.  Not only that, but there isn’t really any story about how or why these zombies came about and how these four survivors found each other.  Having said that though, the game mostly makes up for this with stellar game play mechanics, such as the ability to heal a teammate, and working together in general, make overall experience extremely intense even without a decent story to fallback on.

            For the most part, the scenery and the overall carnage look absolutely spectacular.  Between the detailed facial expressions on each of your comrades frightened faces to the way the darkness of every corner seems to lurch out at you every time you make a move.  The zombies are likewise just as realistic looking as your comrades, with their black, decrepit faces and their wide gaping mouths really helps the overall experience in that you actually feel like you’re part of a zombie apocalypse.

            Of course, what kind of zombie game would this be without the badass weaponry?  While the overall arsenal is made up of the usual basics (shotgun, pistol, machine guns), you also can use several different explosives such as a Molotov cocktail, which illuminates the darkness into a display of incinerated zombies, or a pipe bomb which attracts multiple zombies to it due to a red blinking light on its tip.  Also, every weapon has its own unique sound and punch depending on what your using, be it a high powered automatic shotgun which packs a hell of a punch and sounds like an exploding cannon.  Or the weaker, but faster Uzi, which quickly sprays, hot lead into the faces of the oncoming horde.  While there is anything really new we haven’t seen in other shooters, at least each gun sounds like the real thing, which makes downing zombie after zombie all the more satisfying.

            As far as the AI is concerned, that both act fairly life like on both sides of the spectrum.  Your human allies are fairly smart in that they don’t just rush into a crowd of oncoming flesh eaters without warning.  Instead they move strategically around the zombies, popping off rounds as they maneuver to a safer position.  Zombies act pretty much how you would expect, in that they rush in a large mob that could easily your entire squad should you not have the correct weapon load out or your partners fail to work together to create an effective fighting force.  Also, the game AI is based on how well you play.  So, if your finding difficult to combat the countless waves of oncoming enemies, you can be rest assured that the game play will adjust to you’re experience and game play style so that you can avoid being frustrated about dying over and over again, and can instead be immersed in the overall experience as you try to escape from the perusing zombies.

            Multiplayer is pretty standard, with either you and 3 people playing online cooperatively to complete each level in succession, or playing the completive mode which is up to four people on each side, one as the survivors who are trying to escape to the exit, and the other as the carnivorous zombies who most prevent the survivors from reaching the end of the level.  This where the meat and bones of the fun factor, because you get to work with actual human players who can understand you and usually have better strategies on how to overcome a level, instead of the default AI who simply follow you from point to point.

            My only real problem with this game is its overall lack of meaningful content.  Sure could play each of the four levels over and over again, as each time you play the zombies are placed in a different location, but even this gets a little stale after a while.  The game would have had a much longer life span if only the developers had put in a few more maps; with more ways to customize your weapons wither with different attachments or better ammunition.

            Having said that though, Left 4 Dead is definitely another solid franchise that Valve can put under their belts as being one of the most unique and fast paced shooters of the year.  Even with its lack of content. Left 4 Dead is still a solid title that shooters and zombie fans alike should not hesitate to pick up.