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Left 4 Dead

Visual Masterpiece

The visual style is a mix of photographic textures and pure hand-drawn art and reminds me a bit of the style of Half-Life 2 and it's episodic sequels. But Left 4 Dead goes further and adds style and atmosphere through careful use of contrast and lighting. There is also a very subtle yet impressive film grain effect (user toggleable) and your own flashlight even casts shadows. Sadly the flashlight effect is "faked" - it works great for your own flashlight, but the flashlights of your teammates do not cast shadows nor do you see the light they cast. It's a tradeoff between visuals and performance, and to be honest, you won't notice it unless you actively start looking for things you can nitpick about.

Hmm. Maybe we should follow the tracks.

There are some cool visual effects, such as motion blur, but it's all used in moderation.

Level design is outright amazing. Locations feel real, even if your general route is pre-planned to a degree. Real architecture is used, suitably tweaked to work as game levels. Obstacles feel logical and the only time you see "invisible walls" is when you play as infected in Versus and roam around the otherwise inaccessible rooftops. The designated route is subtly marked with little visual clues. Lighted "EXIT" signs, markings on walls, subtle differences in contrast and warm, bright lights all direct towards safety. You almost unconsciously "know" which way to go, simply from these visual hints. There are plenty of side rooms and alternate routes to explore as well and some of these reward you with extra weaponry or pain medication - and all tend to be filled with zombies.

Faint light coming from somewhere and a sign on the wall - safe house this way.

A lit staircase in otherwise dark room - a subtle hint that you should head that way.

There are plenty of locations and visual details in the levels lifted straight out of the movies of the genre. Got a tall chain-link fence? You can be sure that soon a horde of zombies will climb over it and rush towards you - and they are drawn as shilouettes against the lighter background. Doors also act as a gameplay element - the infected cannot unlock doors and have to spend time smashing through them, so indoors you can temporarily cover your rear by closing doors as you go by. Everywhere levels are filled with small nooks and crannies where a special zombie could be lurking, ready to pounce you as soon as you turn your back. Yet you never know where they lurk, thanks to the AI director controlling spawns and keeping you on your toes even if you know the level inside out.

I'll take 20 levels of quality content like this over 40 levels of disposable junk in Those Other Shooters any day, thank you.

Comparisons

As Left 4 Dead uses Valve's venerable Source engine, it scales pretty well, but not quite as far down as Team Fortress 2 or Portal did. Slightly more complex levels and masses of enemies require a bit more computing power than you might expect from a Source game. Multi-core rendering is fully supported and a dual core system is strongly recommended.

Maximum settings, for modern systems.	High settings, playable on YouGamers recommended setup.
Medium settings. Acceptable visuals, yet playable on the YouGamers minimum.	Even low looks surprisingly good.

You can get by with a fast single core and something like a GeForce 7600GT or Radeon X1800 series at medium, but if you want all the shadows and detail at playable 60fps, at least a modern mid-range video card is recommended. Widescreen resolutions are perfectly supported, as is the norm for Valve games.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: GameplayPage 3: Gameplay, cont.Page 4: Versus Mode, Audio, Bonus FeaturesPage 5: Visuals, PerformancePage 6: Summary and Scores

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