Left 4 Dead- A Semi Retro review

Left 4 Dead- A Semi Retro review

Feb 27

Zombie games are the holy grail of nerds, meshing together the epicness of zombies and the greatness of video games. However, until now there have not been a good selection of zombie games. Valve has gone after the holy grail with this iteration of the source engine and it seems as though they have gotten all the way to the castle with the grail in it, but could not find it when they got there. It’s a stellar game that offers lots of fun as a multiplayer experience but falls a little flat on single player.

It’s very nice to see Valve creating anew IP out of nowhere. In this day and age sequels seem to be cannibalizing all original thought in the name of profit. Even Valve seems to fall victim to this, Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike Source. Albeit, they do their sequels seemingly with divine inspiration, innovating the games industry in their sleep. Now, Valve has created an entire new universe , one filled with Zombies and ammo everywhere. However, we don’t know how this universe got this way or how it is relevant to us. Why are Zoey, Bill, Francis and Louis the only surviving humans on the planet that seem to get lost every other day? Why is there ammo and flammable objects everywhere? But most importantly, WHY IS EVERYONE A ZOMBIE? This is the same fault that Team Fortress falls prey to: Here is a Red team, here is the Blue team. They hate each other. Fight. There are the zombies, there is the safe room. Go. That is not necessarily a bad thing though. We don’t get bored with the story or get bogged down in lore because there simply is none. It just depends on what you’re looking for.

Upon release, which was about six months ago, there were four maps available for single player and online co op. The levels are all incredibly varied and are helped even more by the invisible AI director, who generates zombie wave attacks and health and ammo whenever it decides it wants to. This helps add replay value to the campaigns. However, I can’t help but feel cheated on the single player front. The AI is forgettable and borders on annoying, constantly shouting the same phrases over and over. And since there is no plot to be seen, the single player campaigns all boil down to you bashing your way through lots and lots and lots of zombies. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s still really cool.

One thing that this game really put an emphasis on is co-op gameplay. I’m not talking about the traditional kind of co-op, where you take a friend along for fun and you two can basically just split ways and meet up again at the end. This game makes you stay with your allies to the end and if you ever get more than about ten feet away from any of your teammates, you can pretty much kiss life on this planet goodbye. One thing I haven’t mentioned is that fact that the zombies that attack you are mostly 28 days later zombies, all fast and agile and pissed off. But every once in awhile, you get a special zombie who will attack. This is either a hunter who pounces on you, a smoker who pulls you away, a boomer who vomits on you and makes you as tasty as steak to other zombies or even less frequently, a tank, who is basically a zombie hulk. The reason this is important is because if you stray away from the team, one of these guys will find you and devour you. Luckily, the AI is smart enough to follow you around and free you when you get attacked.

Where this game really shines is the multiplayer. Valve clearly designed this game with it in mind because it contains that usual beautiful Valve polish and balance. The teams are split into two 4 player teams, one being the survivors you control in single player and the other team gets to play as the special zombies, called the infected. This is where the game gets difficult. Actually, difficult isn’t strong enough a word here. Instead, lets say fucking impossible. Yea, that more describes it. One aspect that started out over powered, but has since been curbed through patching is your melee ability. Melee takes a very very important role in Left 4 Dead, this being obvious since it’s the right mouse button. Before the patch, it was possible to spam melee hits as if they were continuous, making the melee a cure all in tight spots. But since the patch, its only over powered.

Playing as the survivors is just the same as in the campaign but the infected are the most interesting part of the multiplayer experience. Special zombies don’t have very much health at all so you need to be really careful. Being infected also requires an absurd amount of teamwork. Pouncing a survivor by yourself will get you instantly killed. So you need to coordinate with your teammates to go at the same time. This also points out another problem with the game, but it has nothing to do with the game design. The problem stems from the fact that so many people who play the game are asshats. I guess that just comes from playing on the internet.

All in all, Left 4 Dead is a very fun game. It has some problems, sure, but it’s replay value and unique multiplayer experience warrant a buy. Unless you need a story, or you don’t have the internet that is. But who doesn’t have the internet nowadays?