Like Dawn of the Dead meets Aliens... in a crack lounge! (Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360)
Date:	23/07/09 (93 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A great, gory shoot 'em up

Disadvantages: Not enough campaigns, not enough blood

I've never really enjoyed survival horror games, in spite of my life-long love of horror films. All those Resident Evils were just too complicated - too much stupid stuff to do between bouts of zombie killing. All I really want to do is shoot thing - puzzles, save points and missions are not my bag.

Which is why Left 4 Dead is currently my favourite shooty game. It's beautifully uncomplicated. You and your teammates have to make it from point A to point B, and that's it. Yes, there are zombies (or rather, 'infected') who want to stop you, but you're not trying to cure them, find out why they're zombies, or anything else. All you're trying to do is survive; killing as many zombies as you can along the way is just a bonus.

It's a first person shooter, so all you really see of yourself is your gun. This is fine. The characters are as basic as the game. There are four survivor characters to choose from (up to four people can play through missions collaboratively online). I invariably play as Zoey, the female survivor. In spite of her annoying dialogue, she's still the best option, as the other survivors are a dull office worker, a tiresome Kerrang pin-up, and an alcoholic tramp.

I daresay there's a back story, but I don't know what it is - I only read the page of the manual that tells you what the controls are. As far as I can tell almost everyone in the world has caught a disease which has turned them into insanely aggressive, running zombies (this is more '28 Days Later' than 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' - in fact there's no evidence that the zombies want to eat you at all, which is a tad disappointing). In a sense, you're cheerfully going around gunning down people who are seriously ill, but none of the characters seem at all bothered by the morals of this. There are also various types of 'special infected', zombies with powers of varying degrees of difficulty/fearsomeness.

It's very difficult to pinpoint what it is that makes this game so much fun. It's not really doing anything new. I guess part of it is the relentlessness of the attacks - you will never get bored trying to find out where you're meant to go next. Once you've cleared an area of zombies, if you don't get a move on then a load more zombies will pile in and start trying to kill you all over again.

For this reason, it's fairly tense. The sound of the zombies themselves is a bit silly - they often sound like gremlins. But the special zombies all have their own distinct noises, which in one case (the Witch, who cries like a girl) is genuinely freaky. The music is also used very well - you know when you're going to get a huge influx of zombies from the sinister changes in the tunes. The Tank, most fearsome of the special infected, has his own little musical sting, and hearing it when you've had most of your health knocked out and are limping towards a safehouse, can instil fear in even the hardiest of souls. It's a relentless, scary treat.

I like the look of the game, which is largely set at night and favours the kinds of grotty, run-down, post-apocalyptic city locations that most zombie movies go for. There are lots of fun incidental details, like the doom-laden graffiti. The locations are well-realised and fairly logical in where they let you go, with a certain amount to explore, even though the layout is fairly linear.

There's a definite hierarchy of fun in the various different modes. Playing through a campaign on single player is enjoyable. Next most fun is playing through a campaign collaboratively online with other players - one reason the game is so good is because you can't complete it with one character. You need to rely on your fellow survivors - healing each other, watching each other's backs, saving each other from slavering hordes of zombies. It works fine if the other characters are computer controlled, but obviously it's a lot better if they're real people you can yell at down your Xbox live headset.

Best of all is versus mode, in which the teams play through an entire campaign, first as the survivors, then as the infected. You get to play as the special zombies, ie the ones with magic powers, so you can try to grab the heroes with your long, disgusting tongue, or spew green vomit all over them (these are good things, trust me). There's an annoying tendency for players to leave these games early if they're not winning, but if you can get through a whole campaign on versus then you'll have lots of fun.

(Which depends, I suppose, on your definition of fun. If shouting in frustration down your Xbox headset sounds like fun, then you will *love* this game. "I've been tongued! I've been tongued! Come and rescue me! Oi!! I've been tongued!! Come and... for ****'s sake, what the hell are you all doing? I HAVE BEEN TONGUED!!! Where the...? Oh! Ohhhhh! It's too ****ing late now. It's too late. Yeah. Yeah, nice one. Yeah, thanks for nothing. Jerk!")

There are a few things that aren't so great. The multiplayer survival option (in which you just have to survive on one small section of map for as long as possible) bores me - it's a free downloadable extra, though, so can't complain. There are only four campaigns, and while the zombies will spawn in slightly different places for each level, you do get to know each level quite quickly.

There also aren't enough different types of zombie. There are quite a few, both male and female, but they're all fairly sensible - army dudes, police, hospital patients, etc. I want to see some novelty zombies - clowns, nuns, hippies. And there are no different body types on display - no fat zombies, no midget (or child) zombies, no elderly zombies.

There's a lot of blood, and I love the way it spatters on the 'camera' when you blow something's head off at close range. But there certainly isn't *enough* blood. Limbs and heads go flying, but I'd like to see more zombie viscera. For instance, a hapless zombie still trying to attack you even though its bottom half has been blown off, trailing its guts behind it as it pitifully claws its way towards you. Is that too much to ask? And, as with all shoot 'em ups, the corpses discreetly vanish after a few seconds. Why can't we have piles and piles of dead zombies that become obstacles within the game?

Some of the dialogue is annoying - too much macho quipping, not enough stark terror. Also, given how familiar the game obviously is with classic zombie iconography, why on earth isn't there a shopping mall level? Someone at Valve must have seen one or other of the Dawn of the Deads.

But these are all minor quibbles. The game is rated 18, presumably because of the excessive violence. Kids obviously shouldn't be playing this, although plenty of them do.

This is the best zombie-related game I've ever played, and it's my current favourite online gaming experience. Being a girl with a gun shooting zombies in the face is satisfying in ways I can't quite put into words.

Summary: A fantastic Xbox 360 game