Zombie-flesh-eating-headshot-team-survival-excellence
Format: Xbox 360, PC (version played) Dev: Valve Software Pub: Valve / EA
Out: 21/11/08 Players: 1-2, 2-8 online
Finally, the end of the world as we know it is here, and boy was it worth the wait! A city in ruins, ruins on fire, and zombies leaping, crawling and shambling all over the place. The pandemic has left those infected deranged and mutated, but the true victims of this terrifyingly plausible outbreak are the four survivors – the Vietnam vet, the store manager, the biker and… the female.
Left 4 Dead is essentially a straightforward shooter, created with Valve’s Source engine (Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2), wrapped around an uncluttered and user friendly interface. By no means however, does the game lack departure. Each of Left 4 Dead’s four campaigns is awash with cinematic effects and graphic detail, but the true harbinger or realism, the game’s greatest boast, is the fearsome AI ‘director’ – who monitors the stress levels of each player, putting on the pressure by releasing panic-inducing zombie mobs, spawning special infected, and also improvising the soundtrack to fit the action perfectly. The director can be incessantly cruel, punishing the players for the briefest stall, or teasing them into a nervous crawl. As such, the game’s pace, difficulty and atmosphere are perfectly balanced, repetition is all but eliminated.
Although, single-player is a possibility and the AI for unused teammates is generally well behaved. Leading the three dependent bots through the campaigns alone can be either terrifying or uneventful. Left 4 Dead is a game made for multiplayer, offering one of the most binding team experiences to date. Players can be pinned, dragged, and incapacitated by the infected, and rely on each other for rescue. Limitations on inventory size and item availability also encourage teamwork, as pain pills and first aid, for example, swap hands according to priority. Even in the space of one short campaign (each lasting no longer than an hour and a half), a sense of team spirit and compassion can become deeply seated, and heroic rescues and sacrifices become far more emotionally rewarding than the violence that surrounds them.
Versus, on the other hand, removes emphasis from the survivors, plucking them from the movie set and pitching them against a human controlled infected team. Each stage is performed twice, and victory awarded to the team that progress the furthest as the survivors. The infected characters are gifted with a variety of abhorrently underhanded talents: the boomer with his horde-attracting projectile vomit, the lurking hunter with its jarring pounce, the smoker lassoing stragglers with his rope-like tongue, and the game’s powerhouse ‘boss’ character, the tank – to whom boulders, cars and back-peddling survivors are for launching, all the same. Only a human player could possess the inhumanity to make the most of these roles and fully provide a battle of wits to the survivors – as bringing survival to a cheerless conclusion requires planning, timing, and team co-ordination, but is gruesomely rewarding.
Left 4 Dead is, without doubt, created for multiplayer. Arguably, it is also made for PC, as it favours the Steam community, a mouse and keyboard, free internet support and enjoys the potential of a strong modding community. Split-screen co-op for consoles is limited to two players, but obviously brings its own advantages. Irrespective of the high standard of co-operative play, the four campaigns are no more than loosely concerted, perhaps wanting of an overriding story when the scene for survival horror is so perfectly set. With unconfirmed new content lurking in the shadows, and hours of first class gaming waiting for you around the corner, it may just be time to quarantine yourself.
Piers Wainwright
[Originally published on Friday, 6 February 2009]
Tags: ea, horror, left 4 dead, shooter, valve
