IainMmmm Brains
With the downloadable content breathing new life into the undead carcass of Left 4 Dead yesterday, a review of the full package was in order.
Left 4 Dead is set in the middle of a zombie holocaust, where four survivors have to group together and fight their way to safety. Inspired by the low budget zombie films of the 70’s and 80’s, L4D features four movie style campaigns, all paying homage to the various locales you’ve come to expect from you’re favourite horror flicks including a graveyard, hospital, corn field and airport. Each of the four campaigns are broken down into five acts. The first four are simple “reach the safe zone before you’re all mauled to death” affairs which often involve key sequences, such as calling an elevator in No Mercy or crashing a train cart into a bridge in Blood Harvest, that allow you to move further into the level but also alert a horde of zombies to hinder your progression. The final chapter is unimaginatively called the finale and like the name suggests is almost entirely focused around making a last stand, Hollywood hero style. All four of the campaigns are open from the start which on one hand allows you to work through them in whatever order you want, but on the other removes any feeling of real progression.
While only having four levels to play through sounds like a bit of a let down, the beauty of L4D is that every play through is different thanks to the AI Director. Weapons and health appear in different places, depending on how well you’re playing, zombies and special infected (which will be covered later in the review) spawn from different directions each time and even the levels themselves sometimes change with the addition or omission of shortcuts and alternative routes. While this is a brilliantly innovative idea, playing the game on your own can still get old fast as the computer controlled AI often do more to hinder than help, such as using health packs to boost their almost full health while you’re bleeding all over the place or throwing a Molotov right where you’re standing. The real joy of L4D is the online play, where the unpredictability of real people really adds to the games hectic and unpredictable zombie attacks. Only on L4D can the following happen;
The four survivors decide that a small pier at the end of a level entitled Death Toll would be the perfect place for a final stand as the water protects their back. The team then decide that because the pier bottlenecks at the entrance, some well placed petrol cans there would take out any hordes. Then, and this is the important part, the team decide that they should keep all the spare petrol cans on the pier with them so when one has been used, another can be thrown in its place. A good plan on paper but not so good when a hunter jumps through the flames, ignites himself and lands on top of the large pile of petrol cans setting the entire pier on fire. Safe to say it caused a lot of laughs but we died shortly after…
Before...Smile for the camera
After...Why did we do that? photos courtesy of MrCuddleswick
As well as being able to play the campaigns with 3 friends, you can also try a series of cooperative survival challenges thanks to the new DLC. The majority of challenges are set in the stand-off locations from the 4 campaigns, with a new one based around a lighthouse, and set you against wave upon wave of standard and special infected with only a few seconds between each wave to restock on ammo and heal up. The pace is a lot quicker than any of the campaign hordes and matches usually only last around four or five minutes (a gold medal only requires 10 minutes survival). The focus of this mode lies heavily on teamwork, if you not watching each other’s backs and constantly relaying special infected sightings you’re going to go down fast.
If co-op play isn’t your thing however, L4D does feature a very strong versus mode focusing around the campaigns in which two teams of 4 take it in turns to complete the individual acts of a campaign while the other team runs opposition as four out of the five special infected. Each special infected has a unique ability which is listed below;
Boomer: Large and very slow with the ability to throw up on survivors. The sick then attracts a horde of standard infected
Hunter: Can pounce long distances and pin survivors to the ground
Smoker: Has a lasso tongue that’s used to grab survivors and drag them away from the group
Tank: Only spawns in certain parts of the level depending on how well the survivors are doing. Has incredible strength, can throw cars and rocks and has much higher health than the other infected
Witch: Non playable. Doesn’t attack until disturbed by a survivor. Once disturbed, the witch can kill a survivor in a few seconds.
Versus mode is just as fun as cooperative and playing as special infected adds a fantastic tactical element to the game. For example let a boomer loose in an enclosed space and survivors can survive the horde that ensues relatively easily. A boomer in an open space however means the survivors have to cover all angles, leaving them exposed for a hunter or smoker attack.
On the game play front, L4D is very impressive. The three modes are excellent for playing with friends and the AI Director helps make each play through feel fresh. The music in the game is also excellent, adding a great deal of tension into the game and the zombie sounds are handled expertly by none other than Faith No More’s Mike Patton. Unfortunately for all the positive, there are some negatives to the game. L4D is running with the same source engine that the Half Life 2 episodes where utilising back in 2007 so the graphics aren’t on par with a lot of FPS games out at the moment and the single player does get dull rather quickly.
If you have live and you’re looking for a new game to play with your friends, L4D is definitely the game for you. Even without the DLC (which is free, so the only reason not get the 100mb add on is a lack of space on your hard drive) it’s one of the best multiplayer experiences available on the 360.
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