Left 4 Dead: Reviewed
Left 4 Dead is the new zombie survival game by Valve, the dudes behind Half Life and Portal. I just recently bought it on Steam and I’m enthralled with it.
It’s set up like a movie. The entire game is you playing through the movie trying to escape the city. It’s only 4 levels long and it randomizes each time in terms of what’s where and weapon drops and what have you. You either play single player with computer bots or hop online and have other people play the other 3 people in the “cast” of “actors” in the “movie.”
At one point I set off a car alarm and alerted a hoard of zombies way off. You just hear a bunch of screaming and you see shadows coming up through the fog 28-days-later-in-the-tunnel style and you’re all OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK.
I didn’t survive. I made it to the end of the game where we have to hole up on top of the building until the chopper gets there. Only one dude made it out.
Comments
I’ve played the demo on Xbox 360, it’s great. I wish there were more levels, but it’s cool that the zombies don’t appear in the same place every time through. Also, if you just wait around in one spot zombies will keep coming, there is no “clearing an area”.
Hopefully, Valve will continually release new levels/weapons/any other content for awhile.
Sounds cool! I saw a billboard for Left4Dead.com and wondered what it was about. Was it inexpensive? Maybe we could get a cast of 4 Scrabblers to play together. I always thought there weren’t enough good co-op games out there
For the 360 there are 5 Chapters each comprising of 5 Acts. The first Chapter is “get through the city alive” where at the end you have to wait for the helicopter, while at the end of the second chapter you have to wait in a barn for the truck to arrive.
Its good stuff all around.
Yeah, I just noticed last night that there were other campaigns. This game is so good. I can’t endorse it on the 360 though because I don’t understand how anyone can play FPS games with a gamepad. It’ so unnatural. Keyboard and mouse, plz.
This game gets the player very involved and excited. The lighting/shadows work very well and the Witch in-game is freaky. I stopped partying for a while to play this game, enough said.
Huh. From a fairly in-depth article from the head of Valve, I get the impression that the game actually responds to how you’re playing it. So the game isn’t actually randomized, it’s based on how calm or frantic you’re playing or how much you’re pushing ahead vs. slow-playing it.
So good!
More people should get this game so we can all play a Scrabbled 4 vs. 4, pleeeaaaase.
Yes, completely.
I’ll be playing again tonight, fellas.
My plans for later fell through, so I shall kill zombies.
I have work to do HOWEVER. In an effort to convince Justin that this game will run on his Pentium 4 machine (it’s got a Radeon 9600… c’mon!), I’m letting him log in as me to download and install the game. So if you see “me” it’s actually Justin. Invite him to play some campaign (no vs. I realized today whilst showing him and Tim that it’s far too much to start out on).
Sounds like a man-date mandate. I shall heed the call.
I’m there.
Sadly, Justin, our man-date was a bust.
It was horrible! I discovered that the game runs, albeit with low settings, on my ancient machine… and now it won’t connect to online play. Probably a mix-up from downloading the files when we were using John’s account and then purchasing it under my account while they still sat, useless, on my machine.
Gonna get in touch with Steam and get it cleared up. I’ll be zombie-ing soon enough, I hope.
Holy crap, I loved that. I really need a microphone now, though… the rest of you are tossing around insults and tactics and witty bon mots while I struggle to communicate by hopping and flickering my flashlight.
Mostly it’s just used for YELLING HOLY FUCK TANK YELLING.
The game is cinematic enough that I feel I need to ruin it with my terrible jokes, just like a real movie.
Justin said:while I struggle to communicate by hopping and flickering my flashlight.
Hilariously accurate.
In 45 minutes I intend to reboot to Windows for possibly Zombies. Who’s with me?
FUCK that was good zombing.
Indeed. And we kicked a guy off his own working server to play.
hahahahhahahhhaaah. oh man. I was talking to him and stuff, too, before you guys got there. He was british and nice.
John said:hahahahhahahhhaaah. oh man. I was talking to him and stuff, too, before you guys got there. He was british and naive.
Fixed it.
hahahahha! Still laughing about that.
John made me buy a microphone. I can now integrate my obnoxious personality into the game.
Yeeeeeeeeessss!!!
Playing Versus mode last night against those people made me feel VEERRRRRY bored and kinda cranky. It actually got to the point, near the end, where I was just wailing on the claw attack and running around while I stared at an open book on my desk. This is probably why I smashed Sammy in the face just as he set himself up for a perfect attack.
Like Real Justin, Virtual Justin has a habit of smacking Sammy upside the head.
I think I’m gonna avoid that mode until I’ve gone through the campaigns a few times and gotten a feel for their layouts. Last night I just felt confused and like I was dragging down the team.
It didn’t help that we were playing fucking professionals, either. I mean, that first round was pretty great. We really put it together pretty well. But yeah, I think we should work our way up to beating something on expert. Which means getting much better at not shooting each other.