Don't celebrate yet, we only crossed the street. (Left 4 Dead (PC))

Member Name: Hexxen

Product:	Left 4 Dead (PC)
Date:	19/01/09 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Action packed, non stop apocalyptic zombie fest

Disadvantages: Shortish life span depending on replayability tolerences

Zombie Mayhem at it's best, you ever sat down and watched something like 28 Days/Weeks later and thought wow that's actually a really good setting for a game and you can be damn sure those clever bunnies over at Valve did similar. This is the birth child over a long project being made out of the Half life 2 engine, what you get essentially is an up to 4 player intense horror action game which in all eventuality after playing the online mode with a lot of different people in quick games or entire chapters is a ton of fun but it soon starts to wear a little bit thin with only 4 chapters split into 5 levels each (esentially told out as mini-movie style storylines). The graphics and atmosphere are fantastic, nothing quite like turning round and seeing a horde of screaming zombies all legging it towards you and thinking "Oh crap", to quote Louis from the intro "Which do we do? Run or Shoot? Run or Shoot?" "Both!".

The game itself is a First Person Shooter, set in different parts of a city depending on which storyline you choose to play. After a frankly quite fantastic intro movie that introduces you to all 4 characters, Bill, Louis, Zoey and Francis you are ready to just pick it up and play. The game is very clever in manipulating the fact that there are 4 people on your team and a lot of the small puzzles (such as defending an area while someone opens a door or turns something on to continue, unfortunately making a massive noise and dragging every zombie withing 10 square blocks to you). The 3 heroes and heroine really do need to work together, if pinned down by one of the stronger different types of zombie you will need to be rescued and have them knocked off you or killed extremely quickly because if they are left to their own devices it's really not pretty for the receiver. There are a general lack of health powerups too, you only tend to get a full health kit generally at the start/end of each level which requires you to run into a deemed safe zone (A train car or the back of a church, somewhere secure). You can however pick up pills too which give you a temporary boost to your health but does seem to run down over time, there can be quite a strategy to looking after more hurt players and sharing the pills around freely which you are able to do.

Okay with so many nasty mutants and undead around the corner your going to have to be fairly well equipped to deal with them fortunately our survivors can clearly hold their own. You have a standard pistol which actually comes with unlimited ammo and dotted around the chapters is a second pistol to pick up so if you fancy holding your own John Woo style zombie massacre your almost encouraged to try. Weaker weapons are left for you to start out with, a Uzi and a Pump-action Shotgun. While these two weapons certainly do the job for holding back the nasties they are soon replaced with several others as you move through the chapters by a Sniper Rifle (complete with zoom), an Automatic Shotgun (great for spraying into massive groups of undead) and an M16/Carbine type assault rifle which is also really good for just emptying into the waves that run at you but each gun is also able to be fairly precise. As zombie lore would have you believe severing the head is the easiest way to take them down and this certainly sings true here too. As backups able to be picked up around the different locations, you also have a Molotov Cocktail for setting fire to big areas and anything contained within as well as a Pipe-bomb complete with a handy beeper on the top so that every zombie in the nearby area will sprint just to get that much closer to it before it explodes. These are extremely necessary on some of the locations and good use of these are very appreciated when your defending a country manor being majorly assaulted by everything hell might have to offer.

The plot details are slightly lax but it tries to make up for that in chucking literally anywhere up to 50 zombies at a time which leads to some very intense firefights where it can be quite hard to not get overwhelmed. These normal zombies (the new hollywood breed who can run at a full pace non stop until they munch that very squishy brain of yours) are backed up aswell by some "specials" you have the Smoker which is esentially the most human of the bunch but with seemingly a 20-30ft long tongue to wrap aroud people and grab them towards him. You also have the Boomer, who is still fairly human but is bloated up to a rediculous size they can voluntarily "target paint" people on your team using projectile vomiting alerting and rallying all nearby horde to rain down everything they have on this unlucky person (beware these can also explode if shot too close to your teammates or yourself! which ironically covers you in blood and has the same effect). Hunter's are fairly close to a vampire depiction i suppose, they can be the most deadly if they catch you unaware's or away from your teammates, they are able to jump a massive length and pin you down furiously scratching and biting. The last of this handsome bunch is deemed the Tank, think a mutated body builder who is extremely angry able to rip down suroundings and throw them at you and your about on the right lines. These are extremely deadly up close but if everyone works together you can bring these down using one person to be bait and run him round obstacles and such. Unfortunately the game has a real knack for sending these against you each time at the worst moments, when your overrun by normal zombies so you really do get a sense of fighting for your life. Also added to these monstrosities you have something called the Witch which at first seems to be a crying and distressed woman but on closer inspection she has 3 ft long fingernails and is extremely mean when angered, these are easily sneaked past if not positioned in an iffy place by just turning off your flashlights and not bothering her.

One massive point here is that the AI playing against you in the Campaign mode has a so called "AI Director" so it will never attack you in the same patterns or movements two games in a row which really gives it some playability. Versus mode is a lot of fun too which see's 4 players playing the survivors and 4 taking the place of the special zombies, playing through the campaigns constantly trying to overcome or slow down and maul your peers makes me feel kinda mean but hey it's the name of the game, and oh so fun.

Now being a long time ex-counterstrike player i have followed Valve's games for quite a long time and can appreciate a good FPS when i play one and for quite a long time this actually stopped me from going to bed, it was so addictive you think to yourself i'll just have that one last game and play through a campaign when i had an odd hour spare. The online capacity here is amazing i have to say, the normal offline game hasn't really got the play time that i have put into the online, just because i really enjoy playing with others and theres something about having those other 3 people watching out for you and playing independently that just works so well. The main downside you have is that i personally think the harder difficulties go to stupid proportions and are obviously aimed at realism which is great to see people approach but when your having to fight zombie hordes and not really being able to take even a single hit (which i suppose you wouldnt be able to admittedly) without being knocked on your backside waiting for your friends to pick you up should they survive did tend to get a tiny bit grating. On top of this the little storyline movie style chapters played out in a rush to get to helicopter in an overrun hospital, a boat in the middle of a very foggy dark dank forest, an army truck at an abandoned farm cottage and escaping on a supply plane in a completely infected airport all sound like great setting for fights and this is very true but after a few plays through of each which only take possibly an hour or maybe slightly longer you start to run dry slightly. This is obviously a problem Valve can remedy via new downloadable content and patches which i dont doubt they will do eventually as they tend to try and support all their products with new content via the "Steam" platform that everything runs through. (Steam is basicly a program you run in your system tray and then you launch L4D through that, which sounds like a bit of a pain but it auto downloads updates, is very easy to connect to multiplayer games through and is harmless so it has it's upsides).

For a possibly short lived game for some until new content comes out i would still highly, highly recommend this for any FPS, Action or Horror fans out there aswell as any one who enjoys online games. This really is an unrivaled experience, atmospheric, action packed and is non stop intensity from start to finish. I enjoyed this game so much and it has been worth every penny so far, absolutely love it to pieces along with every zombie that runs towards me or my teammates.

Summary: Amazing game while it lasts and i've played nothing like it, really not one to be missed