Left 4 Dead
2008 is a great year for games. See my recent post about Saints Row 2 for an example. Hot on its heels comes Valve’s Left 4 Dead. The free demo became available to the masses on Steam and Xbox Live yesterday, and is a wonderful example of the high quality, polished experience I’ve come to expect from Valve.
Left 4 Dead is a co-operative multiplayer festival of zombie* slaughter. Its not just got your traditional, shambling and slightly thick zombies - oh no, Left 4 Dead has a whole range of the bastards, many of which are athletic, fast-moving, high-jumping murder machines, much like the zombies from 28 days later. Others can do things like vomit on you (nice!), which attracts hordes of them to you for a few moments. There’s a few other varieties too, including boss type zombies which are huge bastards that take a lot of killing, although I haven’t seen them in the demo besides in the introductory cinematic.
(* zombie/infected/undead/whatever - you know what they are)
Its a great looking game, considering that the Source engine has been with us in one form or another since 2004, and it really emphasises the need for team play - there’s only 4 players versus hordes of zombie scum. If you get pinned or trapped by one of the zombies, you can’t escape unless one of your team mates kills the zombie in question. If you get killed you can be revived with minimal health by your team mates, but whoever is reviving you is left exposed, so they need the other remaining members of the team to cover them. If they’re really fond of you they can use their one and only medical kit to heal you up as well. And so on. One thing that sets it apart from other zombie-themed games I’ve played is that ammunition seems plentiful. This is good, since there is no shortage whatsoever of targets!
You can also play by yourself with AI taking control of your team mates, but its nowhere near as much fun. Its well worth getting a few people on your friends list on Steam and getting together to play this. I can’t comment on the Xbox 360 version as I haven’t tried it. I require a keyboard and mouse to be any good at shooters.
A few hours playing the demo was all it took to get me to whip my credit card out and buy the full game from Steam. It will be released on November 18th, and should hit bricks ‘n’ mortar shops a few days later. There’s a five dollar discount if you pre-order it on steam, which gets immediately wiped out when they apply Irish VAT of 21.5% 
At today’s exchange rate with VAT and preorder discount included it came to about €44.
Closet Emo on November 13th, 2008
I wasn’t that blown away by it really.
The fast zombies is an interesting idea, and it’s actually a bit scary-looking being rushed by them… but only for about two seconds.
I found it pretty mindless and tensionless, but I was playing alone on ‘Normal’ skill… which is probably too easy with keyboard/mouse.
I still like the Resident Evil (and Dead Rising) formula of slow zombies in overwhelming numbers… tactics like choosing to avoid a group of zombies, go around the other way, or face them later depending on your health/weapons/ammo, always having to prioritise targets.
Left4Dead feels more like a zombie version of Serious Sam where you just have to blow the shit out of whatever comes running at you.
That’s my initial impression anyway after playing the demo anyway… I wouldn’t blow 44 quid on it, but I’ll try co-op on hard and see if it’s any more interesting.
Closet Emo on November 13th, 2008
PS. Using ‘anyway’ twice in the same sentence for the win. :/