Left 4 dead is an online first person shooter created and published by Valve available for Xbox 360 (if you're a masochist who wants achy fingers, and to shovel out $10 bucks USD for every freely available patch over Xbox Live) and PC (which has to run on the steam client so basically it's like deciding whether you want to be stabbed in right or left testicle).
Let's start with the high points of Left 4 dead shall we. We, as the gaming community will never have to dread a movie based on left 4 dead as it's already been made several times over. That includes the excess marketing and hype, trailers that bend and manipulate footage into what they think you want to see, and a sequel less than a year later that shows little to no inspiration, ingenuity, improvement or innovation over the original but then again that's what the trailers are for right?
That's exactly what Left 4 Dead is. In theory (or carefully selected trailers) it is a great game, in actual execution however it's two and a half hours (yes that's the entire game length I've played it several times, it's pathetically short) of thoughtless shooting at powerless opponents unless the A.I. decides to throw the slightly bigger yet still powerless opponent at you(the Tank). Once you get good enough doing this with four of your friends you can play versus where another team can play infected. I'll explain what it's like playing the most impotent characters in the worst game in the world later in this review.
There's a lot of myths and rumors surrounding this game and I would like to clear a lot of them up right now:
- Replayability: none, does not exist or at least not any replayable to the hundreds of superior shooters on the market. There's quake 3 mods that have a higher replay value than left 4 dead. The cause of the replay myth is the hype behind this game and what they call "The Director". In theory "The Director" would change the quantity, positioning and intelligence of enemies in respect to current health, ammunition, play style and selected difficulty level. This is all bollocks and the same zombies run at the same directions in the same numbers with the only difference being on higher difficulties they do more damage.
The level paths are always the same and this reviewer felt replaying the game for this review was work and tried to document any differences I found but all they amounted to were health packs and ammunition being in a few different places. Oh and more "Tanks" (The big impotent opponent I mentioned earlier. You run in circles and shoot it until it dies. Maybe set it on fire too but it's mostly harmless and on expert when they appear on every stage they feel more like a chore.)
- This game is like playing a horror film: I can't even think of a witty analogy to describe how pathetically inaccurate this is. If there were a horror movie made were the protagonists breezed through obstacles giggling and laughing at every failure the villains made, with no character development, dialogue consisting of nothing but one liners, and every scene could be interchanged without any noticeable effect on the production as a whole with four endings yet no back story as to why there are zombies(Ok I'm sorry Romero but at least you had social commentary to back up your artistic decision), who the characters are, how they met, or how they got access to high power firearms so quickly (even though there are only six weapons in the game and two types of grenades which is an anemic selection) I'd say that was a terrible film and if you watch those types of films shame on you.
Aside from that the animations are stiff, even prone to glitches, the graphics are laughably inferior to other games currently on the market being a generation behind as well as an insult to the engine it's running on, and it's going to take a good hour to get this film started with friends due to it's despicable lobbies. Even then, after you all get in the same lobby and pick the same team you might not wind up on the same team and have to start anew.
Right, now that the myths concerning this game are out of the way (and it's sequel which if this site allowed me to and I were as openly lethargic as Valve I'd just reuse this like they reuse old assets from other games). I can discuss the only mode anyone who owns this game more than a week is going to be playing(please don't buy this game or the sequel, I just wanted to throw that in) Versus. In versus mode you'll be playing in two teams of four. One team of survivors trying to escape the zombies, and another team trying to stop the survivors from escaping.
You can play as four special zombies, the hunter who has a pounce attack which allows him to jump from a distance and pin a survivor going damage over time, the Smoker who snatches survivors with his tongue doing damage over time and dragging them towards him, the boomer who vomits on survivors to attract zombies and the Tank who can throw rocks or punch the survivors (Protip: Don't do that, they'll set you on fire and kill you just throw rocks from a distance blocking their path).
This isn't nearly as entertaining as it sounds and whether you are winning or losing it's unsatisfactory since there's not really a sense of victory in watching a helpless survivor get killed while you sip coffee, or running and gunning (and sitting in corners) your way to victory without thinking. I just realized I forgot to mention the Witch you can't play as the Witch so just make sure you either have everyone shoot it until it dies or shoot it in the head. That's about it. Even in this mode everyone ends up doing the same things over and over again. The infected controls are pretty bad as they were an afterthought so there is some randomization in whether your one-hit-kill-move will work this time.
This isn't a problem with the game itself so much as the community, however I feel this reflects strongly on the game and the experience. Nobody finishes playing this game online. I've played games where by the final level I'm the only player left and up to twenty players have come and gone. They call it rage quitting, however people leave when winning as well. I believe it's out of boredom. People also love killing themselves and other teammates so watch out for that. It really reflects on how people feel about playing this game, sadly there are no refunds through Steam.
There's also survival mode where you see how long you can stand in one place and kill zombies before dying presumably of boredom. Overall Left 4 Dead is a one trick pony and it doesn't do that trick very well. Considering there are multitudes of multiplayer and horror games with more depth and companies seeing all the recognition this is getting for combining the two it shouldn't be very long before this game is irrelevant. In fact if Capcom added two more players to Resident Evil 5
I give this game a score of 3 out of 10 for running smoothly sometime and overall concept.
Personally I consider it the worst triple A title ever produced.
Left 4 Dead is rated M but it's not like anyone cares about video game ratings anyways.
