Left 4 Dead

Set in a modern day survival-horror universe, the co-operative gameplay of Left 4 Dead (L4D) casts four “Survivors” in an epic struggle against hordes of swarming zombies and terrifying “Boss Infected” mutants. Developed by Turtle Rock Studios and Valve, creators of the Counter-Strike and Half-Life games, the latest AI technology allows for multiplayer games of one to eight players.

A new and highly virulent strain of the rabies virus emerges and spreads through the human population with frightening speed. The pandemic’s victims become grotesquely disfigured widely violent psychopaths, attacking the uninfected on sight. As one of the “lucky” few apparently immune to the sickness, you, unfortunately, are also trapped in a city crawling with thousands of the bloodthirsty Infected. Alone, you’re dead. But together with a handful of fellow survivors, you might just fight your way to safety.

Players can play as a Survivor or as one of four types of Boss Infected, each of whom possess a unique mutant ability, such as a 50-foot tongue lasso or a giant belly full of explosive methane gas. The gameplay of L4D is set across four massive campaigns. The zombie population of each mission is choreographed by an AI Director that monitors the human players’ actions and creates a unique and dramatic experience for them on the fly.

User Ratings and Reviews

1 Star FAIL
LAGGY, many MANY glitches and exploits, yet another game milking the tired Source Engine, dedicated servers fail, the lobby fails. Campaign mode gets boring and lacks challenge, granted you’re with competent players. Versus mode is a bust, you’re either on a terrible team which rotates due to ‘ragequitting’ so there’s no chance for even a good player to get anywhere when there’s no cohesion, or you’re on a good team in which there is no CHALLENGE from the other team for just that reason above. The game is a mess and they need to update update update.

Spend your money elsewhere. Perhaps on a game which was put together with a little more effort, thought and love. This game lacks originality and probably cost less to produce than the price you would otherwise be paying for a copy. Better yet, if you own a game that runs on the Source Engine just download one of the NUMEROUS zombie mods that are equally playable and entertaining.

4 Stars Great Game - Fast Paced - Steam still Terrible
Left 4 Dead

Great game if you like to mow down a zombie hoard with your choice of weapon (machine gun, shotgun, rifle and double handguns). The story line is broken down into sections. The action is almost non stop - if you pause to catch a breath the zombie hoard will find you and your teammates. The AI in single player mode is excellent. I found the 3 computer players to be pretty effective - however they almost always follow you through the choke points so you will bear the brunt of the surprizes (generally a good thing but I did jump a lot from these surprizes). The story line is okay - you are working to get to safety from the zombies - however, like certain movies the plot line really only gets in way of the action.

Frankly I appreciated the relative durability of the players from attacks - there are sections where an extreme number of zombies attack and on some it took me six or more tries to get through alive - that was great. Also there is a fair amount of replayability in the team mode - especially if you get on with one or more friends and create your own ways of defeating a playing a level - we often played wasteland which had the goal of killing everything before moving on (the computer does keep generating new zombies and new hoards if you stay in any place too long).

My only complaint is the Steam authentication system. I play my games on a laptop, often not connected to the internet. Too often Steam gives me some error message that locks out all steam games. This is unacceptable. I spent $50 to buy a game and Steam prevents me from using the game! I wish game developers would bag steam and go to the disk-based authentication - I have never been locked out of one of those games. To make it worse, Steam has the FAQ help section that is completely useless - all the solutions are “problems with my machine.” Steam Sucks!

Left 4 Dead - Great Game!

5 Stars Left 4 Dead Review
Great game, not disappointed. To play online, make sure you have at least 1.5Mbps down speed/256Kbps up speed. It’s what I have and it does get quite laggy at times.

5 Stars Amazing game
I can’t stop playing this game. I had gotten out of playing a lot of video games, but decided to try this one, noe I’m hooked. The only problems I’ve had were having to put in the code for the window size that the game launches in so my monitor would display it and Steam’s servers like to kick you and sometimes kill the mic mid-game. This only happens in multiplayer campaign for some reason.

5 Stars Fast paced team based excitement and fun
I followed this game since announced and after a year of waiting finally had my opportunity to play. I was not disappointed. There are 3 types of play available from single player campaign, multiplayer campaign, multiplayer team vs team.

The game plays as a horror movie with scares of hordes of zombies attacking and a quiet period before the next strike. In the single and multiplayer campaign modes you follow a scripted series of maps and contend with zombies and boss monsters. Boss monsters are zombies with specific special attacks adding more excitement to your run from point A to point B in each map.

The Team vs Team mode allows players to take on the role of a boss monster to attempt to stop the “survivors” from making it to point B. Team speak is enabled for those with a microphone making coordinated attacks and defending against monsters easier to perform.

The game requires Steam which is an online game purchasing client. Steam receives high ratings for keeping all your Steam enabled games up to date with the latest patches automatically. Although the game does not require internet access to play it is required for the Steam client and multiplayer game modes.

I rate this game 5 of 5. An enjoyable game that suspends the user in a movie until the climatic end fight and escape.

Buy/More Info

Tags: Campaign Mode, Dedicated Servers, Dramatic Experience, Epic Struggle, Fellow Survivors, Foot Tongue, Glitches, Hordes, Human Population, L4d, Life Games, Massive Campaigns, Methane Gas, Multiplayer Games, Mutant Ability, Pandemic, Rabies Virus, Survival Horror, Turtle Rock, Virulent Strain

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.