Left 4 Dead Review

Left 4 Dead is a new IP from Valve software, the well-known developers of game such as the Half-Life series, Counter-Strike, Portal, and Team Fortress. After the release of The Orange Box, clues were scarce as to what Valve’s next project would be – there was just a short teaser with The Orange Box hinting to this game. Then seemingly out of nowhere, Valve started releasing information about a new zombie outbreak game that they were working on, apparently since 2005. A possible reason for this “out of nowhere” release could be attributed to the fact that the first half of the game’s development was by Turtle Rock Studios (Counter-Strike: Condition Zero), who was then bought by Valve to complete development.

Every time Valve releases one of these non-Half-Life 2 titles, I always initially get upset, thinking that they’re just stretching out the Half-Life 2 timeframe as long as they possibly can, but when you look at the review scores for these games (Team Fortress 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead), you see that they’re at least as important as the core series – and at least as fun. Left 4 Dead is an interesting mix of boring, standard first-person-shooter action and totally revolutionary, incredibly fun, never before seen gameplay. The game is divided into four “movies”, which are separate campaigns in different areas, but with the same characters and the same goals. For example, in the first movie you’re fighting your way across the city to reach the hospital, and in another story you’re making your way through the woods and to a farm house – but it’s always the same 4 survivors, and you always have to get to the goal and fight off zombies until your exit vehicle arrives. When I first bought the game, I played through the campaign and basically figured that was all there was to it. I was honestly disappointed – it takes about an hour to get through each movie the first time, so if you know what you’re doing you can get through all 4 in two hours. In addition to the relatively short length, as I already mentioned, there’s absolutely no variety in the single player campaign. There are the same types of zombies and bosses in all 4.

“But I thought this game was supposed to be awesome, Dave!” Well wait up a second, it is. What I didn’t realize in playing through the single player campaign is that Left 4 Dead is like Half-Life 2 in reverse – instead of an amazing single player story with a tacked-on multiplayer based on the single player, it’s the opposite – an amazing multiplayer experience with a tacked-on campaign based on the multiplayer. You see, in the movies, there are essentially 4 types of enemy zombies, plus 2 special zombies. In versus mode, 4 “survivors” square off against 4 “infected”. The survivors try to get to the end of the chapter like in single player, but the other team spawn as the enemy zombies – and the zombies have lots of abilities that the survivors do not. Zombies can see the outlines of the survivors through walls, and have limited night vision, as well as the ability to climb walls and buildings. Essentially, a player zombie can attack a survivor, which incapacitates the survivor while he is being attacked, unless another survivor kills the zombie to release him – so it turns into a crazy rush of trying to move forward without leaving your teammates behind. The survivors are given a score at the end of the round (either when they all die or when the surviving ones make it to the saferoom) based on how far they got, how many items they have left over, etc. Then the teams switch and the previous zombies try the same map as the survivors – this goes on for all 5 chapters of the movie, and each team’s scores are added up to determine the winner. At the time of release, only the first and last movies are available in this mode, but Valve has promised that the other 2 with be available soon for free.

But even that would get old pretty quickly if not for the “AI Director”. Basically what Valve is saying is that there’s an artificially intelligent control system in the game that will spawn items, zombies, and events based on the “stress level” of each player – so there aren’t any pre-determined “spawn points”. This results in never knowing exactly where the item you’re looking for is, or where the zombies could be hiding. The other multiplayer mode is simply online co-op, playable on all 4 movies. According to Valve, a new multiplayer mode will be coming with the free update “very soon”. One problem with the game is the online play – not to say that it’s laggy or buggy ingame, but the lobby and friends/matchmaking does not work well. Basically you have the choice of joining a random online game, or you can create your own lobby. If you create your own lobby, you can invite your friends and/or set the lobby permissions to “Friends Only” – but it seems as though if your friends join by accepting an invite instead of joining on their own, other players can not join after that. You have to restart the lobby. And even if you can get who you want into a lobby, the server system is no good – unlike Counter-Strike: Source where server owners can make their servers unique and fun so that players will choose their server every time, Left 4 Dead chooses an open server at random – which works most of the time, but sometimes disconnects everyone or crashes the game. There’s no server browser or way to choose a specific server without developer console commands.

The graphics in Left 4 Dead are really incredible. They really exploited the new dynamic lighting from the Orange Box Source engine, as many areas are almost completely black, lit only by your gunfire and flashlights. The survivors look almost photorealistic, without requiring a Crysis computer to run. But as I said, the real shining star here is the lighting. It really makes the game. The sound is mostly good – it also has a dynamic mixing system to start different tracks based on the situation, and each survivor has a TON of lines of dialogue to choose from, but the zombies only have one or two each, which get old fast.

All in all, Left 4 Dead is an incredibly fun, incredibly immersive game that has no competition in the multiplayer world. The graphics are unique and cutting edge, and the replay value is next to unlimited due to the “AI Director”. There are some kinks to work out, which I’m expecting to be fixed with the new update coming “very soon”. The only piece of advice I’d give to potential buyers is to NOT buy this game for the single-player. Buy this game if you have some friends to play online with.