Plot: Zombies. Guns. Shoot said zombies with said guns. Get rescued. Repeat.
In a nutshell.
Not in a nutshell, you have four stereotypical characters. The Badass biker
who is badass with a shotgun, President Obama…I mean a black office worker
(Who was originally designed as a ganster) and a Vietnam veteran, who seems to
kill anything no one else does. Or sees. Each campaign takes place in a
different environment, and you are supposed to get to…oh wait, I forgot a
character. A college girl who watched way to many old horror B-Movies. Anyway,
you are supposed to be rescued. That's basically it for the story. You do hear
a few things from the characters that somewhat describe them, but nothing
amazing. The only parts that give anything about the story is during the in
between scenes, where you are in safe-rooms. Messages have been written on the
wall from people to other people, Infected kill scores, helpful (Not really)
information and someone missing the Internet.
Gameplay: A lot of games are pretty good sinle-player, but sometimes much
better when playing with others. Nothing says Multiplayer bigger than Left
4 Dead. A zombie FPS. An interesting cross over, which I thought was gonna be
way to easy, until I found out the zombies run…which means when you set off a
single car alarm, and are playing on hard, consider yourself royally boned. The
game plays like a standard FPS, quite similar to that of Half-Life, that might
have something to do with it being made by Valve, most popular known for their
epic game, Portal. You get about 8 or so different weapons. Pistols, rifles,
hunting rifles, shotguns and molotovs and pipe bombs. Your normal zombies are
easy to kill by shooting them anywhere. There are also special zombies. The
Hunter is a guy dressed like a shop lifter that will leap from great distances
to tear at your nipples, whilst screaming like a loon. The Boomer is a giant fat
guy that throws up on you, summoning more Infected to eat your face. Don't shoot
him when you're too close, or he'll explode on you, calling even more face
eaters. The Smoker has a giant tongue, which grabs you from afar and then tears
at your shoulders, very kinky looking.
The Tank is a giant version of Hulk Hogan crossed with The Terminator…and
then made bigger and slightly less attractive. It will smash anything out of its
way just to get to you, hit you in the face and send you flying across the map.
If too far away, it will tear a chunk of ground up and hurl it at you. And now
for my favorite…The Witch. She sits in corners, or in the middle of your path
and cries. She cries and cries and cries and then tears you apart if you disturb
her from her crying. Seriously, stay away from her. Don't fire at her, don't
point your light at her and DO NOT MAKE EMO JOKES! Witches take as much damage,
if not more, than the Tank.
Another feature of the game is the AI Director. A program that takes into
account how you play, and then decides where to place zombies Infected, and the
specials. And the weapons. And health. In fact, everything but you is placed
where-ever by the Director. The Director tries to make the game much more
replayable by placing different things in different places all the time. If you
saw a shotgun near the beginning, don't go there. there will only remain a
witch, which spells “MY INTESTINES”. To complete a chapter, you must get
from the beginning of a level to the end, where a safe-room awaits filled with
ammo, health and creepy written messages. There are five chapters in a campaign,
with the ending involving holding up in a small area with nothing but you, your
gun, a large amount of Infected and a number of Tanks.
Graphics: Left 4 Dead, when played by ones self on a screen looks amazing.
You can see cities on fire far off in the distance, and you can see nametags on
the dead bodies of all the nurses you just shot in the hospital. If you've
played Half-Life and Portal before, you're not going to be that excited with the
physics engine, as A: it's all been done before and B: You're going to spend
more time worrying where the Infected are rather than how that mailbox didn't
move when you ran into it, but a bigger box did. The sound is pretty awesome,
and does creep you out at moments, even if the music sounds like it's years
old. However, when played in split-screen mode, the game almost seems to lose a
large portion of it's looks.
Overall: This game is much better played with others, because the friendly AI
seems to like shooting normal infected than saving you from a Smoker. But no
matter how many people you play this with, eventually it will get tiring, seeing
as how you can complete the entire game (4 campaigns) in about four/five hours.
That doesn't mean you will stop playing it, you just won't be playing it ALL the
time like when you first got it. The game does have a pretty decent
replayability, in the sense of things are different each time you play, but
eventually you will realize you are still just running the same paces, with your
normal shoot and kill strategy still working. Then again, you will ignore that
for a while as you get the Achievements, some of which are fun. Like setting a
Witch, or a Tank, on fire. Or trying to shoot a Witch in the head and killing
her with a single shot.
