Left 4 Dead
LEFT 4 DEAD REVIEW
D.B. Cooper
Overview: A simple premise: In the midst of a zombie apocalypse, four characters are fighting for survival in an urban environment, the zombie menace hot on their heels, with nothing but some guns and their wits
Story
At its simplest. Something terrible has clearly just swept through the city, leaving nothing but zombies in its wake. Four survivors are somehow immune to this deadly outbreak, and you will play them through the game to safety.
The Survivors:
Score: N/A
Graphics:
Considering the game uses a years-old engine, the graphics are pretty good with what it puts out. The character models are quite well done and the textures are good. The muscles bulging through their jackets, the greasy sweat on their faces, ripples on the clothing, it’s all there. The animations were competently done, your character will limp realistically as he takes more damage and their faces reflect their current predicament. I’d have liked to have seen more varied movements in the survivors though. One quirk I have is the shoving animation. It looks strange sometimes, like a spastic arm movement.
Dymamic Shadows:
All your items are represented somewhere on the character’s person, which is nice. Other touches, like a beam of light shining through smoke, bits of gore hitting the camera, Boomer vomit, and so on polish up this visually appealing game.
Boomer bile, ew:
The zombie animations are where the engine truly shines. They don’t just “go down”. If you shoot a zombie running at you, it might fall over or stagger a few steps and wave their arms before collapsing. If you shoot them up in the chest, they might waver on their legs before slowly falling over. The only time realism is lost is when you hit a running zombie in the chest with the shotgun. Picture a giant hook suddenly grabbing them from behind. They don’t fly back, but their legs fly into the air on the spot and they go down. Kind of strange, but really not that big of a deal. But overall, momentum is clearly displayed and the zombie movements are totally realistic. Ragdoll physics is shown off here too, in both the zombies and in dead survivors flying through the air.
The environments are just as thoroughly done. Little touches, like wall writing and cars still in the street, increase the sense that this whole scenario is a very recent occurrence. It’s well done and kind of jarring sometimes.
Better safe than sorry...
8.5/10
Gameplay
It plays well for the most part. The controls are pretty much standard for a PC first-person shooter and work well. The game’s selling feature, which challenges you, is known as the AI Director. This “Director”, this overarching presence pulling all the strings, is responsible for all enemies, health, and weapons in the game. If your team is doing well, the Director might throw a few more hordes your way or otherwise make the challenge harder. Same logic for if you’re doing poorly. Weapons and health don’t always spawn when you need them. The Director also forces your team to advance; lagging behind to nurse your wounds or get your bearings is just asking for trouble in the form of a Boomer+zombie horde combination. The Director also likes targeting lone players. This keeps the experience fresh because you never know what to expect when you turn a corner. I often wonder what the Director’s master plan is. The difficulty settings raise the challenge with each level, with Expert difficulty a downright punishing experience for players. It’s very very hard, but not impossible for an organized team.
Zombies
To quickly summarize the enemies you’ll be fighting:
The standard zombie: Weak on its own, but they’re almost never alone and can quickly overwhelm teammates with sheer numbers. Hordes are huge sudden rushes of zombies.
Boomer: A large bloated zombie that spews vomit onto you. This vomit will obscure your vision attract a horde of zombies to your person, not a good combination. It waddles around in blue jeans.
Smokers: This zombie has a long tongue which can drag players away from their companions. Once killed it lets out a cloud of smoke which obscures your vision and prevents you from using voice commands until the cloud clears.
Hunters: These zombies are agile and leap far. They jump on players and render them completely helpless until someone else knocks it off.
Witches: In the form of a small woman, this zombie simply weeps and would rather not be disturbed. If you do however, it leaps up and dashes towards you for a chunk of your flesh. On higher difficulty settings one swipe will kill you instantly.
Tanks: Similar in appearance to the Hulk. Very powerful and fast. This zombie swings at you with giant fists and throws rocks at you. Teamwork is needed to bring this one down.
Fear the tank:
Gored by a hunter:
The AI is smart. Boomers and Smokers hide very well until they’re ready to spring out, and all enemies are aggressive depending on the difficulty. It’s sort of silly to expect some enemies, such as witches and tanks, to seek you out from on the other side of the map though.
The map-finder system to match you up with a campaign needs work. It’s quite inconsistent with finding a map at all. This was a big problem in the demo, and although it isn’t quite as bad there it’s still annoying to have to go back and re-enter all the search data to find a map because it didn’t go through the first time. Matching up maps with friends is easier, though, strangely, you can’t seem to create your own campaign for friends to join unless you manually open the server browser and find a campaign with no people on it. Why Valve left this feature out of such a social-minded game is a mystery to me.
The one problem I see with this game is longevity. With only four levels per section, four sections in all, a good team could blow through this game in a couple of hours. This isn’t usually the case, on higher difficulty one level could take several playthroughs, but I already know all the maps and tactics to take down various enemies. Whether or not I can always pull off these tactics is something else entirely, but it shows how familiar this game has become. The Director system keeps the fighting fresh, but the actual enemies I have to fight are already getting sort of stale. I don’t know if I’ll be playing this as steadily as I am now in a year. Valve had better have some good new content coming to keep the player base at a solid level. Achievements are there to work on, but it isn’t a saving aspect.
Friendly fire is on in full effect. Battles can turn around in an instant with a stray bullet hitting a teammate. This is a very team oriented game, watch where you fire and watch the backs of your teammates. The entire enemy system is designed to make solo runs and gung-ho heroics almost useless.
Finally, Versus mode allows you to play as the zombie Infected, against a team of survivors in a few campaigns. It’s a very different style of gameplay and very frustrating until you get it right.
8/10.
Sound
Left 4 Dead is excellent. I tip my hat to the voice actors ("OH NO!"). There’s a wide range of well done voice commands at your disposal, and characters react realistically to events happening. If he/she is the victim of friendly fire then he/she will cry out at the offender. Screams are realistic, the gunfire noise is spot on, etc. The zombie noises are equally good. They’ll snarl, growl, hiss, yell, shriek, and anything else you’ll expect of a rabid zombie. The ingame music is minimal and creepy-like, and every special enemy has a distinct musical cueWhen a Tank bears down on you the music is swells to suit the occasion. It adds to the immersion. Also, please bring a microphone with you. There are voice commands and a text box but this game requires fast player response and there’s nothing as effective shouting out commands and requests on the spot via a mic. Mine broke the other day and I feel terribly handicapped going into a campaign without it.
9/10.
Conclusion:
Left 4 Dead is a very entertaining addition to Valve’s winning line of shooters. I can’t tell you how much fun it to shoot my way to victory with my friends. The graphics are good. But again, I don’t know how lively the community will be down the road, but knowing Valve I’m sure something good is coming to freshen up the experience.
My score: 8.5/10
I'll add some more pictures tomorrow.
Originally Posted by Stalins Ghost
