Left 4 Dead Review

Zombies have always been the craze in recent years.

Games everywhere are attempting to embrace the undead into some kind of feature through their gameplay, or story. What you may not know is that Left 4 Dead is one of the big daddies that started the craze to begin with.

Valve is a brilliant developer; it can’t be denied that these guys and gals sit down on a project for as long as possible until it is just perfect before sending it out into the wilderness of gamers and critics. The same couldn’t be far from the truth with their first entry into the zombie apocalypse with Left 4 Dead.

Left 4 Dead sees you take control of one of four survivors that are trying to survive every minute in the undead infested urban jungle. Throughout the game you will see this group of individuals traverse a large variety of dark, dank and sometimes misty locations all filled with our beloved brain munchers. While there is barely any story in Left 4 Dead to begin with, you will find that through the characters themselves and the banter that they play off each other, a unique tale of friendship and desperation is created. It is clear from the first level that these people have known each other for at least a short time, but Valve gives us the opportunity to see the cast progress through each level like chapters in a book. The great thing about each of these levels is that anything can happen and each time you play will generally always be a different situation. You could play a level one hundred times over and it would still through the infinite supply of undead at you at any random given time.

This is all done by the game’s clever use of an AI director that is constantly judging you and your team throughout the course of each level and its lengthy checkpoints. Killing zombies with ease? Don’t worry because the AI stat collector will ultimately decide to make things five times harder just to even up the odds. In a way the entire level is just one big dungeon master, and it is down to you and your friend’s trigger finger and reflexes to get to each section alive.

The levels themselves are broken down into a bunch of separate areas all connected by bolted safe rooms that you and your team must fight to in hopes of making it to the next section of the level. Players all start out with a handgun but thankfully these safe rooms all contain a starter sub machine gun, or shotgun to help you decide what your preferred play style is. Players also gain a single health kit each that they can either use on themselves, or a wounded team mate. That is, if you really want to.

It is during the journey between these safe rooms that your teams comradely is ultimately tested and ultimately developed. There is no benefit to going lone wolf in this game because every corner could be your end unless you have someone to back you up. Tactics and a good sense of sacrifice are sometimes needed to make it through alive and sadly you will sometimes lose people along the way. Thankfully dead players can always be brought back to life by making it to the safe room or finding them in the limited respawn rooms that are randomly chosen by the mentioned AI director.

There is nothing more intense than losing your entire team and having to slowly (or quickly) make your way through the dark, quiet corridors in hopes of finding the trapped silhouettes of your originally deceased comrades. The reason for the feeling of terror and dread is not just because of the deadly waves of screaming infected, but because of the further evolved monsters that await you in the shadows. Left 4 Dead comes with a variety of special infected to even the odds, or over throw them when it sees fit through the use of monstrosities like the neck strangling ‘Smoker’ and its incredibly long tongue, ‘the Hunter’ that slowly stalks your team and punches for the kill at the right moment, and finally the puss filled ‘Boomer’ that sprays steaming hot sick on your team and attracts a constant stream of undead enemies in your blind wake. Another special infected comes in the form of a weeping young girl with razor sharp claws known as ‘The Witch’. This enemy is truly terrifying to go near and it is surprisingly entertaining to witness you and your friends whisper to each other as you slowly make your way past her without shining a flash light or making a noise to wake her.

These are finally all topped off with the big daddy of them all known as the ‘Tank’ a hulking, muscle bound titan of death that will charge at you, throw cars at you and simply kill you if you even try going near it. All of these creatures are out to get you, and they will eventually get you unless you work as a team. To counter act these undead forces you are going to need guns, lots of guns. Thankfully Left 4 Dead gives players a nice compact collection to choose from that are nicely scattered at random locations throughout the nightmare filled levels. These come in the forms of an automatic shotgun, assault rifle and sniper rifle. While the guns obviously consist of a small selection, they each give off a rather strong sense of damage to any unlucky enemy that meets the dangerous end of the guns barrel.

Guns won’t stop the horde for long though, so Left 4 Dead also comes with two explosive based weapons in the form of a slow burning Molotov that creates a wall of fire and a blipping pipe bomb that distracts the lesser horde and detonates them into a million pieces. All these tools as mentioned are scattered and also in short supply, so deciding when to use them can either bring satisfaction or a feeling of regret as you realise you should have saved your trusty resources for the unknown encounter right afterwards.

It is no secret that Left 4 Dead is a pretty old game now among PC gamers but that shouldn’t stop us from admiring its rather welcoming age into 2012. The game still looks just as great as any other modern day shooter would and even at the highest settings, you will find yourself saying “Woah” in the back of your mind when seeing the horror of thousands of highly detailed zombies rushing towards you in the room that is being lit solely by a dim lantern in the corner of your office space coffin.

This adventure and how you choose to play it is a pretty exhilarating experience and brings so much replay value that you may just find yourself coming back with your friends for years to come. If you find yourself feeling a little bored from having to play as the unlucky survivor then you can also try out the game’s very menacing Versus mode which allows you and three friends to take control of the special infected and try and kill the four man team of survivors as your player controlled victims try to make it through the level. Seeing as Left 4 Dead has been out for quite some time, you will also gain access to an even bigger selection of DLC levels for you to take part in and experience the character’s missing sections that weren’t originally released on originally.

It should be noted that while these extra levels are free for anyone on the Steam platform, they must all be paid for when attempting to play the console version on the Xbox 360. Not only that but you may find yourself regretting the purchase on the console version, which suffers a long line of unfixed problems, such as dumbed down visuals, annoying controls and a less than enthusiastic community.