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.

I have it for PC (lol it came out on a console thats funny) and it fucking rocks. Been playing on extreme difficulty and we always run into and usually die to a tank, which appears to have well over 10k hit points. Versus mode is really cool when I played, people can choose infected or survivor and fight one section of a map against the other group to see who wins then afterwards they swap positions and do it again. The first time I played that our team creamed the survivors with no problems and no tanks then when we went on survivor side and they were infected we had to face three of them as tanks and still won lol.

This game is everything I've ever wanted in a zombie game, resident evil was always so slow, boring, and tedious.

I'm going to get it for PC, I think. You people know about how the music tells you what kind of special zombies are coming, right?

I am going to purchase this... *drool* ...as well.

The music plays when a Tank is coming and that only happens in versus mode. In campaign mode music plays when a horde is coming. In campaign mode they don't need to do anything for special zombies because you can usually hear and identify them before you see them. Tons of times I've heard boomers ahead of time and avoided the vomit by getting the drop on them.

Also, friendly fire fucking sucks in extreme difficulty. To give you an idea how much; pistol fire takes away 10 health per shot and the shotgun can lop off a huge chunk of HP - around 40 I think (this is out of 100).

EDIT: Also there's blood, tons and tons of blood.

EDIT2: Lol wtf, Gears of War 2 isn't a FPS and it wouldn't come close to being one of the best FPS games ever made even if it was.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 19 2008, 6:22 am by chuiu.

I've had a couple of situations where a unique bit of music played before Tank came in and began to molest everyone around me.

Once you hear the music, along with the rumbling, it ends up as a frantic run to the nearest chokepoint where you can all shoot at the Tank ease.

It is not fun getting an adrenaline spike so quickly just from hearing that music.

So is this game worth buying? I'm seriously debating on wether to spend 50 bucks on it or not. I played the demo it seemed pretty good. But just by reading your posts my decision is going towards buying it.. lol.

It is 50 USD on the PC and 60 on the Xbox 360.

If you do buy it for the PC, makes sure your graphic card is good with newer games. I played the demo on the PC and, with my 2003 graphic card, the graphics were choppy and the sound lagged. This was only in the actual game play, mind you. The intro video and title screen were fine.
This however does not top my friend who played the demo, and all he got out of the game play was that everything was white. He could make out buildings and such, but it was close to impossible for him to play the game. He even made his online friends and others lag-out when they came close to him.

Aside from that though, yes, I strongly recommend this game to anyone and everyone that plays video games.

Its an apocalyptic zombie game, all i need to know. I just need some cash. SOMEONE WIRE ME A COUPLE OF BONES, nah mean?

I played the demo a bit while it was aviable on Steam. The first couple of hours were some of the most amusing hours I've ever spent on a computer game (even though I played alone). While the objective is very simple, this is what makes the game so special. These days, game objectives seems to get more and more advanced, so this was a nice change.
I'm not sure wether or not I'll buy it, as it became quite repetitive after a while. However, the demo only included two maps and eight weapons, so the real thing will probably last a lot longer.

Judging from what you guys are saying it just sounds like going through each campaign level without revisitation or anything. I always liked the kind of zombie games that are open-world style and what not, but whatever. I might get it.

I'll decide if I'm getting it this weekend, my friend is getting a bunch of people over to play it at his house.

Which is better though, PC or Xbox? Prolly PC for me since my Live failed.

I've played it. A bit too gorey in my perspective, but still a solid game. Until I get a better computer though, I doubt I'll be playing this full time.

The beauty of it is that when you replay the campaign on co-op with your friends, it won't be the same thing. Zombie rushes and types, and weapon pick-ups change places every time, so you won't know what's coming.

Yeah its different every time you play it but you play it enough and you learn the 3-4 spawn locations for weapons and such. Still very fun especially in extreme when you're going from spot to spot going 'aww damn still no auto-shotgun'.

EDIT: And versus mode fucking owns. Seriously most fun I've had all year playing a game.

Make a mod for Counter Strike. Problem solved.

A warning to RIVE: don't get the Xbox version of L4D. After Valv'es dismal support of the Xbox Orange Box, I'm not buying console game from them. Months after free DLC comes out on the PC, Valve still doesn't even acknowledge its console counterpart. When it finally does, it says that it's coming soon for a price. It's better than nothing, except that it still hasn't come yet. So a year after launch and months after the PC expansions, the Xbox has none of this cool content that PC users have. By the way, the PC version was $10 cheaper than the console.

Lawl at Orange Box on a console, lawl at being mad over no added content because its on a console, lawl at the pricing complaint, and lawl at the fact the content will cost you when its free on pc.

Moral of story: buy it on PC you morons, its an FPS.

I was actually quite satisfied with it until the content started to come out. Then I got angry.