LEFT 4 DEAD
Today, November 18, 2008, I picked up Valve's new highly anticipated game Left 4 Dead.
After playing it non-stop for six hours, I can easily say that the game is one of the best First Person Shooters I have played in a long time. Please, do not get me wrong, I have yet to play Gears of War 2 so do not jump on the flame wagon. Anyway, there is no getting around the fact that this game is incredibly addicting. I picked it up for the Xbox 360 and went straight to my friend's house to play it with him. Once we got the basics down, we jumped on co-op and played on.
The Plot:
You have your basic zombie apocalypse, horror, fantasy going on in this game.
Oh no, zombies! Oh no, let's get the f*%k out of here!
Basically, it has been two weeks since the initial infection started and people have already started there own little underground rainroad out of the city, so to say.
The Characters:
You get your choice of four characters to choose from: Zoey; a college girl who has found a reason to slack off from her study, Francis; a biker who finds the whole situation to be like one big bar fight, Bill; an ex-war veteran who could not be happier to be back on the battlefield, and Louis; an office worker who has taken Office Space to a whole new level.
The Basics:
You and three other survivors, human or computer, make your way through the city by taking various routes of safety. Well, they probably were safe for awhile, now it is more of an every-man-for-themselves situation. At the end of each campaign level you reach an actual safe room full of stashed away weapons, ammo, and health packs. Along with various writing on the walls by pass survivors. It is here where you also get your statistics that show who was the Alpha in the level you just finished. However, on the fifth level of each campaign, instead of making it to a safe zone you need to make the zone safe for yourself as you undergo massive wave, after wave, after wave strikes brought on by the never ending zombie hordes as you wait for transportation to come to your aid and get you the hell out of there. No matter where you end up, nowhere is safe.
The Game Play:
The game is rather easy to jump into to once you learn what does what. You will probably find the computer to have the best handling for game play. I only say this because of the large amount of people that play Counter Strike on Steam. If you are playing it on the Xbox 360, you will find it to feel like many FPS. Personally, I find nothing beats just kicking back on the couch/recliner/sumo bag with a controller in your hand.
For killing zombies in this game, you would think that you would have to shoot them in the head, but no, this game actually plays like Dead Rising where just a few hits will kill them. If Dead Rising had zombies that run at you in a mad rage, that is. Upon playing through your first time, you may be lead to believe that the A.I. is mental. The enemies in this game are made quite well though. They only attack you if they see you or hear you. Light is a strong factor in this. The enemies react heavily aggressive to your flashlight. Most notable are the Witches, sobby, little, psycho b*tches that only attack if provoked. Sound is the second factor to the A.I.'s reaction as it feeds their rage to proceed after you. Setting off car alarms, activating gates, and even firing your weapon drives them mad. Prepare to be rushed in no time.
That is another thing too, you seem to get randomly rushed by groups of zombies the more time you spend just camping. To save life, it is always a good idea to move forward. The game's patterns are pretty much random as a whole. Some of the "special infected", as they are referred to, tend to show up at different times and places in campaign levels. The special infected include: Hunters, be afraid, they will pin you down and not stop digging into your body until your allies knock them off; Smokers, camping in the highest unreachable areas or just randomly in front of you, they grab, pull, and give you hell also until an ally frees you unless you are lucky to free yourself before it is too late; Boomers, a fat, sick creature that vomits all over you and your friends making you seem all the more yummy to the zombies as you suddenly become the main target; Witches, sad little girls whom only seem fit to kill you if you only seem fit to piss them off; and TANKERS, a personal favorite of the bunch as they completely loose it over you.
The Online Play:
In time, you will be logging onto the online co-op to check out what levels you have yet to play, how good other players are, and how hectic it is to play with three other people. From what I got out of online play is a few new tricks and that some players are really psycho.
Some Tricks:
An example of some helpful tricks in the farmhouse level in the last campaign are; while in the cornfield, to prevent from getting rushed, jump up on the tracker and then jump up on the field sprinklers. You can walk along them and are only open to attack by Hunters and Smokers. Also in the farmhouse level; at the actual farmhouse stock up on as much goodies as you can, close every door in the house and then talk to the radio. After the signal for help has went out, run upstairs to the bathroom and camp in their. Best weapon to use would be the riot shotgun. When the truck comes, run to your right from the bathroom and jump out the window to the truck. Anyway, those are just two very helpful tricks I picked up while online.
Conclusion:
This is quite an awesome game. Once I get my Xbox 360 back from its RROD, I will end up playing this game a great many times and long into weekend nights. Probably irresponsible long. The madness of online play alone drives me to want more.
Players from SEN:
Steam:
KrazyZee - xKrayZee
FooFighters - BloodyZombie117
FatalException - Erithom
NexY - JuNioZ
DevliN - DevlinD
Xbox LIVE:
RIVE - RIVE XNGLE
External Links:
http://www.l4d.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_4_Dead
Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 29 2008, 3:55 am by RIVE.
None.