Left 4 Dead

"A lot of fun if you're playing with friends."

Left 4 Dead is an action packed zombie survival FPS game, with a major focus on cooperative team play. There are 4 survivor characters pitted against tons of zombies, as they try to make their way from safehouse to safehouse and ultimately escape.

Playing the game with 3 other friends as a cooperative game is a blast. It's loads of fun, you have to work together, and the computer AI Director does a pretty good job of keeping each game feeling somewhat different from other games. This is handy as you figure out the levels fairly quickly, so you really do need something to shake it up.

Playing with an extra 4 players allows a versus mode, pitting the 4 survivors against the zombie horde with 4 special zombies being controlled by opponents. This adds a ton of replay value and excitement to the game, though there is a long respawn time for the zombie players. Sitting around for half a minute waiting to get back into the action for such a frantic game can be really obnoxious.

Outside of having the perfect amount of friends in the game, it starts to suffer. The AI for the survivors is pretty bad. Playing with randoms can lead to mixed results in any game, but negatives are amplified as a result of the nature of Left 4 Dead's gameplay combined with some of the less desirable personalities that XBL has to offer.

Left 4 Dead looks good graphically and sounds great, mostly due to the effects and voices in the game. The controls work well, and while there are some glitches in the game, they really don't hurt the game overall.

I would avoid the game entirely if you don't think you can get a group of friends playing the game, or if you don't think you can get groups of consistently enjoyable random players to play with you. It's amazing fun when you do have the right group, though.

There are plenty of levels to get through and learn, though like I said it doesn't take too long to figure most of the game out. There are some achievements which are a good bit of fun to accomplish, and if you can get good groups, Left 4 Dead should last you plenty of nights of fighting against swarms of zombies. It's not compelling or deep enough to really outlast the interest in "the next FPS of the month" but it's still a worthy game.

Not factored into this rating is that the sequel is due out soon enough such that if you haven't tried out Left 4 Dead yet, you might as well wait for the sequel along with all the extra attention and interest it will bring.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/30/09

Game Release: Left 4 Dead (US, 11/17/08)