Left 4 Dead

"The dead don't walk, they run."

Left 4 dead signifies Valves entrance into the growing co-op video game market. And what an entrance! I haven't seen one professional review of Left 4 Dead that didn't give it a 9/10 or higher. However, this really doesn't mean anything to me, as game reviews seem to get nicer and nicer with each release. Despite this, the hype surrounding the game prior to it's release pulled me into a pre-order, and now I glad it did!

For those of you who haven't been follow Left 4 Dead, it follows the quickly growing fad, the zombie apocalypse. You play one of four survivors, with the others controlled either by the AI or, preferably, your friends. Your goal is simple, survive. The game is split into four campaigns called movies, each of which is split into five sections. Each section can take anywhere from ten to twenty minutes to complete, which means a campaign is usually finished in about an hour. While this may seem like a short game, the replay value is HUGE. This is due to the AI Director, a new feature from Valve, which controls everything from where the zombies spawn, to where and when you get health packs, ammo, etc.

The standard infected are not like your standard slow, mindless video game zombie, but rather are similar to the infected in “28 Days/Weeks Later” or “I Am Legend”, in that they have a tendency to mind their own business until they see you, at which point they sprint towards you, using any and all means necessary to rip out your vital organs. This means tearing down doors, climbing fences, sliding under vehicles, or even break down a wall! The new version of the source engine makes this all the more realistic, as the infected lean as they sprint around corners, and climb various objects to reach you.

However, the standard infected are the least of your worries, there are also several boss infected that show up from time to time and cause havoc amongst the survivors. The first of these is the Hunter, a fast infected, capable of leaping huge distances to land on a survivor, rendering them helpless until another survivor knocks it off. The second is the smoker, which is a tall infected with a 50ft prehensile tongue it uses to strangle survivors, either by dangling them from above, or by dragging them close to itself and tearing them to shreds. Even after dieing the smoker leaves behind a cloud of smoke, blinding the survivors. The third is the Boomer, a fat, slow infected whose stomach is full of disgusting bile and gore which it attempts to spew on you via projectile vomit. Fail that, it try to get you to shoot it while it's near the survivors, so it can explode and spew it's vile inside over the entire group, leaving only it's obese legs and waist. In either case, the affected players are blinded, and a horde is attracted to the smell, like vultures to a battle field.

The fourth, and arguably the most dangerous (the other contender being the fifth and final boss infected) boss infected, is the Tank. Picture the Hulk, permanently transformed, and then turned into a zombie. Now piss it off even worse. You now have the perfect mental picture of the Tank. These don't show up but once or twice in a section (thank God!), but when they do, the whole team has to work together to bring them down. If you manage to stay out of it's reach for long enough, it tends to stop worrying about chasing you. At least, long enough to rip a chunk out of the ground and smash you through the wall with it.

The fifth and final boss infected is the Witch. I don't have any decent pictures of the Witch by herself because, frankly, I can't get that close without dieing. The Witch is a young woman that crouches in a corner and cries to herself. Until you get too close, shine your flashlight on her, make too much noise, breath too loud, look at her for a prolonged period of time, or think about her too hard. At that point she gets up, screams, and proceeds to tear your guts out. On Expert, the hardest difficult, she kills you in a single hit. On any other difficulty, she knocks you down in a single hit, then kills you in a few more. Your best option is, obviously, to avoid her. However, the Director seems to get a kick out of waiting for you to draw near to her, skirting the walls and sneaking carefully and slowly, then sending a horde of infected, or a Tank. Oh, by the way, contrary to popular belief, the best way to kill the Witch is NOT to BURN HER!!!

To be honest, I could go on for hours, describing the game to you, but I see no reason to do that when there are plenty of far better descriptions already available. (See Here) Now, onto the review. The game is incredible. I clocked almost fifteen hours in the demo alone, which only had the first two sections of the first campaign, and only half of the second! The replay value here is incredible. The maps play out completely differently each and every time I play them, no repeat games. One play through an entire wall may be broken down, while it's back up the next, forcing you to take the long way around. One round you may be smothered in standard infect the second you leave the safe room, and the next the room may be completely empty.

I heard a lot of people complaining about the graphics in this game, and I can honestly say, they are completely unfounded. The graphics are incredible, especially considering the way my 2 year old computer can have hundreds of infected on screen without so much as a hiccup in the frame rate. Each individual infected does not look like they were pulled out of Crysis, or Gears of War, but if you have the time to examine each infected face, you're cheating. The animations are smooth and numerous, with the infected climbing, sliding, sprinting and even reaching through holes in doors realistically. Even the firing animations enhance the feel of the game, making the weapons look powerful. The fact that the infected fly five or ten feet back when you point-blank them with an automatic shotgun helps too.

The sounds are incredible as well, and only reinforce the feeling of power behind each weapon, and the fear induced by the approaching Tank, or the Witch around the corner. The Director also controls the music, and while you probably won't even notice, with the exception of the warning music for the approaching Horde, or nearby Witch, the music really impacts the feel of the game, inducing a slight feeling of fear constantly, no matter what just happened, or how well you're doing.

The game play is as perfect a co-op game as you will find in the market today. Stray too far from the rest of your team, and you're likely to be overrun by infected before you can even act. Without your team nearby to help, the Hunter or Smoker attacks are now fatal. Stick together, and your team mates can shoot the Hunter off, or free you from the Smokers grip with a quick melee. If your blinded by a Boomer, your team can cover you until it wears off. Unless of course, you decide to go Rambo and beat the game by yourself...

The environment is incredible, especially for a game that is constantly accused of being an arcade game lacking a real story. There is a story, it just isn't told through pure dialog and cut scenes, but through the environment. The endless little details Valve filled in are incredible, from the graffiti, telling the stories of previous survivors, to the abandoned police barricades, with blood and infected bodies littering the street nearby. However, the details are not just purely for story telling either, they also provide the comic relief (although there's a fair bit of that in the survivors occasional conversations as well) and a guide to the world of Left 4 Dead.

The AI, it is here that both my greatest praise, and my greatest criticism of the game lie. While the AI Director is great, the survivor AI isn't. It's not horrible by any means, it's just far from being an acceptable alternative to playing with real people. It always lets you take the lead, which sounds like a good thing, until you have 5hp left, the bots have max, and they still refuse to take point. They often won't follow you into the safe room when you make a break for it, instead staying out to fight. And my last, and greatest complaint, they seem to have an issue with ladders. I had almost finished when the AI bot playing Zoey, managed to get stuck at the top of a ladder. It could have happened to anyone, the direction it was aiming had it mounting and dismounting the ladder repeatedly. The main difference between it and a human, was it didn't stop and try something else... even when the Tank showed up.

On the other side of the argument, the AI Director is incredible. I'm sure you probably already understand the basics, it changing spawns and such to keep the game fresh, but the way it takes advantage of it's power to set up traps for the survivors is unbelievable. The best way I can think of to explain is with a story.

There's a room in the third section of the first campaign. It's filled with these huge metal gas containers (to thick to blow up, unfortunately) and when I get my first glimpse of the room, I hear a Tank growling around the corner to the right. It hasn't seen me yet, so I figured I'd pick off a few normal infected so they weren't attacking me and the AI down while we fought the tank. Then I saw a smoker and fired a few shots, however, because of my weapon choice, and the distance between us, it managed to get behind cover in the far left corner of the room. At this point, all sanity left me and I sidestepped into the room to get a better shot at it... with my back to the tank. Surprisingly, the tank didn't attack me. Now, to give you a better picture of the room, it was set up with two rows of the large metal gas things, almost like store shelves. The Tank growled, reminding me of it's presence, and I ran to opposite side of the room and started slowing working my way down the "isles" checking each one carefully for the Tank. At this point, I had forgotten about the smoker, which started to choke me and pull me across the room... directly across of the Tank. Before the tank could even get to me, a boomer exploded (I think Zoey shot it, revenge for letting her die the time she got stuck on the ladder) and a hunter pounced, knocking me out of the smokers grip. By the time the AI finally got into the room to help, I had all four boss infected pounding me, as well as a horde on it's way.

However, the Director is not just a cruel entity, bent on preventing you and your friends from ever reaching the end of a campaign. It made up for this brutal massacre by putting the Witch right next to the gas station later in the game.....

In closing, Left 4 Dead is quite easily the best co-op experience on the market today, and I haven't even touched on the versus mode. I reviewed the game based on the PC version, but having played the Xbox 360 demo, I can confidently say it is just as good for those who's computers can't run it, those that want split-screen, and anyone who doesn't mind having only the official custom content in their game. My only advise to anyone considering purchasing Left 4 Dead, don't buy it for the solo experience. It's loads of fun, but the AI bots really need some patching before the single player game begins to rival the co-op side.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/11/08

Game Release: Left 4 Dead (US, 11/18/08)