Left 4 Dead
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ESRB:
Blood and Gore,Intense Violence,Language - Mild
Publisher: Valve Software Genre(s): Action Home Page: http://www.l4d.com/
Tonight's Movie Is... Each campaign is introduced with a movie poster and a quick camera pan, then it's all action. Left 4 Dead is split into four campaigns, each designed to feel like a campy popcorn movie. "No Mercy" is set in a big city and your goal is to reach the local hospital and ultimately get to the roof and signal for a rescue chopper to pick you up. "Death Toll" is a varied fight through a small town with a final escape by boat. "Dead Air" sets you towards a local airport for a rescue plane waiting for you. "Blood Harvest" is set in a rural area and you fight your way towards a holdout used by the military to rescue survivors. It appears that initially there was an overall scripted storyline that linked these campaigns into one long story, but the idea got dropped at some point and now they play as four separate "movies", each five levels long. The pacing is very impressive with lulls that let you take a breath followed by mad rushes as hundreds of zombies try to overwhelm you. At the end you always end up in a massive zombie battle before the team barely escapes (or not, based on how much you suck at killing zombies). The campaigns are a bit short and you can fight through it all at normal difficulty in 5-6 hours. This is not a problem. Left 4 Dead is not your average two-bit shooter where you blast away the same enemies, spawning from same locations, triggered by same predictable spots on each level, with absolutely no incentive to play the disposable content again. Instead, Left 4 Dead milks every bit out of the content and stays fresh through clever use of dynamic spawns with enemies and items. Okay, I must admit that the layout of the levels themselves does not change and each level has some spots designated for major events, but everything else is dynamic. What makes it all work is the devilish AI director, pulling the strings behind the scenes with procedurally generated spawns that actively take into account how your team plays. Taking your time to methodically clean up the place? The director will "reward" you with more things to shoot at - probably more than you can handle. Absolutely dominate the zombies as you rapidly rush forward? You can bet on a coordinated assault of special zombies rapidly pinning down half the team just as you thought you were safe. At times it feels like the director is trying ensure that if something can go wrong for the good guys, it will - and in the most horrible way imaginable. It's up to you to react to the ever-changing situation. At normal difficulty the director is mostly toying around and once you figure out the basics it's not that hard, but bump the difficulty up to Expert and you'll beg for mercy while limping towards the door of a safe room as the zombie horde closes in. Not a Standard FPSTo facilitate proper co-op play, Valve has tweaked the basic FPS formula quite a bit. There are no instant respawns on death and you truly want to fight to stay alive in a whole new way. You have a standard health bar, but you don't immediately die when it's depleted. Instead you are pinned down until a teammate can kill off the zombies chomping on you and pull you back up - or until your "bleed" bar is finally depleted and you end up dead. Same is true if you fall off from a great height - your character automatically catches the fall but you need a friend to pull you back up before you lose your grip. Additionally, even if you are rescued, if you are pinned three times you will die unless you receive first aid to mend you back to full health.
If you do end up dead, you are always back in the action (at half health) at the next safe house, assuming the remaining team makes it that far. During long levels your team mates may also find you back alive, trapped in a locked closet waiting for rescue, but this occurs after a considerable respawn delay. Considering how hard it is to keep the team on it's feet even with four people, being a man down does leave you vulnerable, and it's easy for the situation to fold like a house of cards before the dead member can be brought back into action. At times you just have to cut your losses and make a mad dash to the next safe house - at least the person you left for dead bought you some time. In co-op campaign mode, while there is no way to pause the game, you can select "take a break" at any time and leave your character under AI control while you answer the phone, dash for a potty break or explain to your boss why you are playing Left 4 Dead. As the AI bots are quite competent, this allows short breaks without messing up the game for your team.
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