LFD’s greatest plus is the promotion of team work over one-man-army super soldiers. More often than not, first-person shooters promote the one-man-army mentality by having one person go up against legions of bad guys and emerge victoriously without so much as a scratch. There have been very few (Brothers in Arms, Full-Spectrum Warrior, Conflict: Desert Storm, etc) that promote team work over solo runs but LFD makes, what I see, at the largest leap forward. There are monsters that will lunge one allies and another person must “save” them by fighting off the monsters either on top of them or dragging them off. Other times an ally is required to either revive or pull another ally from dangling over a ledge. Unless the player is unprecedently good, a player cannot survive without help from his/her allies.
Set in a modern day survival-horror universe, the co-operative gameplay of Left 4 Dead (L4D) casts four “Survivors” in an epic struggle against hordes of swarming zombies and terrifying “Boss Infected” mutants. Developed by Turtle Rock Studios and Valve, creators of the Counter-Strike and Half-Life games, the latest AI technology allows for multiplayer games of one to eight players.
A new and highly virulent strain of the rabies virus emerges and spreads through the human population with frightening speed. The pandemic’s victims become grotesquely disfigured widely violent psychopaths, attacking the uninfected on sight. As one of the “lucky” few apparently immune to the sickness, you, unfortunately, are also trapped in a city crawling with thousands of the bloodthirsty Infected. Alone, you’re dead. But together with a handful of fellow survivors, you might just fight your way to safety.
Players can play as a Survivor or as one of four types of Boss Infected, each of whom possess a unique mutant ability, such as a 50-foot tongue lasso or a giant belly full of explosive methane gas. The gameplay of L4D is set across four massive campaigns. The zombie population of each mission is choreographed by an AI Director that monitors the human players’ actions and creates a unique and dramatic experience for them on the fly.
Now one of the main reasons you should buy the game, the split screen and system link play. You can play split screen with a friend, then hookup online with another friend. Then to take it to a whole-nother-level, 8 player versus mode. Up to four players take control of the Survivors and up to four players take control of the unique zombies (such as Tanks and Smokers) along side of the AI controlled zombies.
The other unique feature the game has are voice commands between the survivors, some are even automatic like when you are reloading, so that the other survivors don’t reload at the same time just in case zombies start coming at you. A nice feature that really prevents everyone from reloading at once and getting swarmed.
“LFD” was primarily advertised, and hyped at the latest E3 summit, as the great zombie co-op game not just online but offline as well. Based almost primarily on this (that and I love playing as Vietnam veterans), my little brother and I saved up for this one so we could finally kill mass hordes together rather than one at a time while the other sits there patiently twiddling his thumbs. We brought it to our home, put it in and were immediately taken in by the mass sound interacting with our Yamaha home theater. It was, for a lack of a better term, really loud.
We loved the introduction screen, which pretty much summed up the entire game: run, shoot a lot, help others, heal, run some more, shoot a lot more some at special bad guys, revive fallen team member, heal, run a short distance and get to “safe” point and prepare for round 2-4. Simplistic, yet incredibly entertaining. The levels are equally simplistic as the linear environments make the path to follow as easy as the aiming system, which is dead-on accurate. There were many times when zombies would spill through a doorway and were quickly stopped because I took the Microsoft approach of “point, click, and hold” and their advance halted as quickly as it started.
The gratuitous level of violence, which would make Terrintino retire since he cannot possibly achieve that level of awesomeness, was entertaining. It was also great to see who got the most head-shots and did the most damage to the special villains. The sounds and asthetics also stayed true to survival horror as you could hear the groaning of nearby zombies and the crying of special villains known as witches. Be weary of them as they are NASTY.
If you don’t have Xbox Live, this game won’t be much fun because its not a traditional game. It’s 4 completely separate sections, and you have 3 others with you and if you are stuck playing with the computer as 2 or 3 teammates, it will get dull-boring-old. With that said, online it’s incredibly fun, rich, and an individual from my game play experience, in that if you don’t play as a team, you will lose and lose fast.
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