Recently, I learned that there are two types of zombies. You have the undead ones, that have arisen from the grave, probably a little disappointed in the afterlife, and who come back to eat your brain (which indicates that the afterlife really must suck if it compares unfavourably to eating brains). Then there’s the virus type of zombie, you know, from Resident Evil and 28 Days Later. Left 4 Dead sports the latter variety, but really, does anyone even care? Zombie mayhem!
Left 4 Dead is probably one of the least complicated games currently available. There’s no story, no whining, no higher goals that need to be achieved or skeletons in closets that need to be dealt with – it’s just the last four survivors of the zombie apocalypse with a bunch of guns and an endless stream of zombies driven by the urge to feed.
And who would’ve thought, guns plus zombies equals endless amounts of fun.
The setup of the game is straightforward: you choose one of the four survivors (as usual, I’m the girl, Zoey), grab your gun of choice, and you fight your way from safehouse to safehouse, culminating in a huge finale, after which you get rescued – only to do it all over again. There are four campaigns, which lead you through cities, hospitals, forests, airports, you name it.
There are a few limitations that give the game a tactical feel to it. You can only carry two guns: everyone has a simple handgun that never runs out of ammo, and as a second gun you can choose from a sniper rifle (useless), shotgun (good at close range), and a machine gun (t3h awesome). Both the shotgun and the machine gun have a more powerful variant that you can pick up later on in each campaign. In addition to the limited weapons you can carry, you may only carry one healthpack and one set of “pills” that temporarily restore your health.
Then there are the molotovs and the pipe bombs (you can only carry or one pipe bomb, or one molotov). Pipe bombs in Left 4 Dead are the coolest thing in gaming since the dopefish. Zombies are attracted to lights and sounds, and the pipe bombs produce both, which leads to hilarious mobs of zombies amassing around your pipe bomb, only to be exploded into massive clouds of blood (in a zombie…?) and body parts. Disturbingly satisfying.
The game sports different types of zombies. You have regular infected, which are the simple crappy zombies that are easy to kill, but during hordes there are easily 100s of them coming you way. On the highest difficulty setting (expert) each hit by a crappy zombie takes away 20hp, so they are a force to be reckoned with once you leave the baby stages of the game.
The others are the special infected. There’s the smoker, which grabs and drags players with its tongue, until another player rescues them. There’s also the hunter, which pounces players, leaving them incapacitated until rescued by another player. The tank is a really big and strong zombie, and you need the entire team to take them down (on expert, it’s usually wiser to set them on fire and RUN LIKE HELL). The Boomer is a big fat mutant who barfs bile over players that attracts zombies. My favourite is the witch, a crying little-girl like creature that is relatively harmless until disturbed by gunfire or flashlights, at which point she kills you with one blow.
As you can deduce from the above paragraph, Left 4 Dead is a true co-op game. This game is pointless when played in single player, and only reaches its fullest potential when played online, preferably with friends or people you already know. The tenseness of fighting off endless hordes of zombies is addictive, and more than once have friends and I let out heroic roars when we reached the next safehouse with just one hp left, closing the door behind us with 100 zombies still coming our way. The word “epic” doesn’t even begin to describe some of the playthroughs.
The game itself is beautifully designed and very well balanced, and while the Source engine predates the first coming of Christ, it still does its job just fine. The levels are strictly linear, so after a few playthroughs you know the good spots, the best places to fight off the hordes.
The four characters to choose from are standard zombie movie types – Francis the biker guy, Bill the Vietnam veteran, Louis the office worker, and zombie film addict Zoey (“Huh, check this out.”). When in versus mode, you also get to play as the special infected, but I find this game mode a bit cumbersome not only because I suck at it, but also because you usually get killed in 3 seconds.
There are also a few things wrong with this game. While the four campaigns are a lot of fun to play, they are quite short. The game boasts an AI director that places all the zombies, ammo, and healthpacks in different places every time you play, but it doesn’t take long before you know the different possible spawn spots by heart (although you still get the occasional surprise when a tank, a smoker, a boomer, a hunter, and a witch all spawn inside the safehouse, but oh well). A few more campaigns would’ve been fun.
Another big problem is the total lack of any intelligent behaviour by computer-controlled characters, rendering this game utterly useless in single player. While the computer characters have incredible shooting skills, they fail to understand the concept of sticking together or “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. There are several moments in the game where you have to flick a switch to alert the hordes, at which point there are a few possible locations that are relatively safe to defend. Computer characters are unaware of this concept, and since there’s no way to give them orders, they’ll just stand in the middle of the hordes and die. A lot.
They also don’t understand that sometimes, someone is simply done for. If a player is surrounded by ten billion million zombies, and is already on the ground (you remain on the ground for a while so you can be rescued), it’s usually best to just let them die; they will respawn later on in the level in a closet where they can be rescued. In other words, sometimes it’s better to let someone die and attract all the zombies, while the rest sneak away and move on. Computer characters will always try to rescue someone, no matter the odds, which makes the game frustrating at times because it feels like herding cats. But without the cute mental image of kittens and balls of yarn.
One of my biggest complaints, however, is the total and utter lack of a level or campaign in a mall. I don’t know about you, but I have problems calling something a zombie game if it doesn’t have a mall.
Conclusion
While Left 4 Dead has some minor issues it’s probably the best multiplayer game I’ve ever played. It’s just so much fun to be limping around a level with no health, no ammo, and just a crappy handgun, fighting off the hordes, reaching the safehouse, only to get killed by some ^@$*#%% you couldn’t see hiding behind a lamp post.
Valve have put a lot of effort into making the multiplayer experience work, and every aspect of the game is designed towards this goal, and it clearly shows. Sure, the game isn’t sophisticated nor does it have top-notch gaphics, but it doesn’t matter since those things are all inferior to gameplay anyway.
Minor niggles aside, Left 4 Dead is a great game, and I’m still playing every day. Maybe we should host an OSNews game one of these days?
Game Details
- Title: Left 4 Dead
- Platform: XBox 360
- Release Date: November 2008
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I’m not sure about the 360 version, but there is a mall campaign in the work for the pc, you can check out http://www.l4dmods.com
Thom promoting Microsoft Again, bless him.
he’s promoting valve…
OSNews does game reviews now?
Not that I didn’t appreciate it… =P
OSnews has done been doing game reviews for that past couple of month. This is at least review three or four so far.
Yup. We keep it to a minimum though.
I also have to buy these games myself, that’s why all reviews have been on the 360 so far. I don’t have enough money for another console
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Thanks for the nice review — this game sounds pretty interesting. I was originally going to give it a pass, but I’m going to have to rent it now to try it out. If it’s as fun as you report, I can see another $60 flying out of my wallet in the near future
Even playing it on a setting that is beyond one’s capabilities is fun.
people grab guns and kill their families. When they realize it was not a game they shoot them selfs. I know, I know you think I am over reacting but lessen to some of these quotes and try to Imagen someone saying this 30 years ago.
“And who would’ve thought, guns plus zombies equals endless amounts of fun.”
“Pipe bombs in Left 4 Dead are the coolest thing in gaming since the dopefish. Zombies are attracted to lights and sounds, and the pipe bombs produce both, which leads to hilarious mobs of zombies amassing around your pipe bomb, only to be exploded into massive clouds of blood (in a zombie…?) and body parts. Disturbingly satisfying.”
“The tank is a really big and strong zombie, and you need the entire team to take them down (on expert, it’s usually wiser to set them on fire and RUN LIKE HELL)”
“and more than once have friends and I let out heroic roars when we reached the next safehouse with just one hp left, closing the door behind us with 100 zombies still coming our way.”
“The game itself is beautifully designed and very well balanced, and while the Source engine predates the first coming of Christ”
“Christ” that is the last word I thought I would ever read in this article.
The only thing that should be LEFT FOR DEAD is games like this.
Yeah, because before games there was no violence, no rape, no crime, and the world was covered in fairy dust and we all rode magic pink ponies.
Well I admit that 20 years ago I was grabbing flaming barrels and throwing them at plumbers. One of the question is how do these teens succeed in grabbing guns. And in a deeper way, how do we succeed in creating such alienated teens so they even think of going at school for killing their schoolmates ( not that I say that random killing is ok, but that would make more sense to me to blame video game for that)
Anyway we can always check the data
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7631162.stm
http://www.net4tv.com/Voice/story.cfm?storyid=3743
well I could say that “gun massacre in school for mass media” trends begin the year of the first “Barbie game”, so yeah blame the first barbie game.
But face it, poeple have already been killing other people since the beginning of humanity, blaming it on Rock music, Punk music, Movies ,TV, Drugs(winners don’t do drugs), Video Game, Internet only hide the obious (that people only should be allowed to be armed with nerf gun, paintball). TV and video games only respond to request trends (FPS are cheap and are still working very well with buyers, shooting human like IA looking like Human is apparently more satifying than shooting mindless monsters, or ducks, or deers ).
If you don’t like it, don’t play it. It’s not for you to decide what I can and cannot play.
People who pick up guns and kill people probably do enjoy violent video games. They probably also drink a fair amount of water.
But no, you say, that is quite ridicules, there are millions of people who drink water and don’t go on homicidal rampages. The exact same thing is true of video games, violent or otherwise, and anyone who thinks differently is both vastly out of touch with the reality of how pervasive video games are in todays culture, and has been brainwashed by some insular fanatical group (by the end of your comment, I would say that in your case, its the religious right)
Food for thought.. Many studies have been done in this area. They clearly show playing violent video games bring out violent behaviors. I’m sure you have herd the adage “birds of a feather flock togetherâ€. Yes people who drink water do have something in common but I think it is a far reach to connect drinking water with violence. We all have freewill and I do not won’t to take that away from anyone. It was just “Food for thought†But as you read my comment above please think about the “allegory of the caveâ€.
Can you show a link please? The only studies I have heard of proved this was not the case. The studies actually show that lack of proper parenting is the problem.
http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html
Please do a web search yourself on “studies violent video games”
Let me just repeat the words of Maylin Manson. I don’t like Moore, but this interview and Manson’s words perfectly describe my feelings about this non-debate.
No they do not, that is a myth. We have yet to see a study proving cigarette smoking to lung cancer so that isn’t saying much, but there has yet to be an empirical study showing significant behavioral changes.
When you look at everything using some meta-analyical techniques, you are able to find correlations to violent behavior, especially when you take studies around the more extreme games into account (stuff like GTA). What I was talking about with drinking water is that correlation and causation are two different things; you can say there is a correlation between violence and violent video game players, but that only means that violent people enjoy doing things depicting violence, not that violent video games cause violence.
I dont doubt that correlation, but I do consider the theory of causality that certain groups push as a black and white issue.
This game is Mature rated by the ESRB.
I blame Commando Libya. It’s all been downhill since then.
Edited 2009-03-17 16:36 UTC
Must we have this discussion every time Thom reviews a game?
A) No-one has ever been able to gather together all the evidence on this issue and come to a clear conclusion one way or the other.
B) No-one has ever changed their mind on this issue on the basis of what’s been said in an Internet forum.
I would blame that more on parents who want everything and neglect their kids for it.
And having a gun in the house….
Too bad it didn’t come out for the PS3, I would have bought it last year.
Why don’t they eat each other?
In case of undead ones…sure, fresh, living brain might be a lot more tasty then decomposing one in a skull of such zombie, however in this case they wouldn’t be able to sense taste. Plus they would be much easier catch to each other.
In case of infected ones taste of brain should be no problem…
Though one could argue that typical zombieficating virus alters the behaviour in a fundamental way that makes them target humans…
In which case – shouldn’t make-up + social camouflage (act like them) be the easiest possible defense? I think participants of zombie mobs know what they’re doing…it’s training for survival!
Edited 2009-03-18 03:23 UTC
yeah it was tried and proved once in the excellent “Shaun of the Dead” [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365748/]
I play L4D on PC
Bought it on Steam on a special offer (22 €) exclusively for multiplayer, and it’s a great fun to play in versus mode, especially using the infected, because you need to be more tactic and wisely choose your assaults timing.
Single player it’s a bit diasppointing, mostly because, like you said, AI sucks, but in multi really shines.
This and Team Fortress 2 are two gems that really needs to be played