Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for a game like this? A game where no matter how many times you play it you never know what is going to happen next? I tell you, as a lover of games I am excited. As a lover of zombies, I have reached a state of nirvana.
Left 4 Dead is the latest PC horror survival game from those beautiful people at Valve. You can pick as one of four survivors trying to make it back to (living) civilization before you are killed by hordes, nay armies, of the living dead. And these bastards are very realistic. You remember the last remake of Dawn of the Dead, how the zombies all took off like marathon runners? Just picture that, but with a few mutations and a strange sense of intelligence. It’s almost like these guys aren’t even scripted. But with Valve’s A.I. Director, basically the game thinks for itself. Changing the gameplay according to your actions. It’s a beautiful thing.
So after waiting and waiting for the release after watching other people play it at PAX 2008 in Seattle, I finally got my turn with it. In the beginning you get to see a little video of what happens just before you take control of your character. The four survivors are running from a huge hulking beast of a mutant down an alley, and it ends on the roof of a building. This is where you get to choose which mode you want to play in, I.E. campaign, multi-player, or single player. Then you get to choose which character you want to be. Finally, you get a wide array of story choices to get you on the road to killing massive amounts of zombies.
Here are the system requirements for the game itself.
Minimum:
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Recommended:
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And here is what my machine is packing. No, it’s not a banana hammock.
- AMD Athlon X2 3800+ processor
- 3 GB of system memory
- ATI HD 2400 w/ 256MB of graphics memory
- 320 GB Seagate SATA HD
- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
To begin with, the Valve boys/girls built this game on the Source gaming engine, meaning you get massive amounts of quality without sacrificing gameplay performance. In short, you can place this game on mediocre cards so long as they support the shading required. I was able to play this on my onboard video, which is an Nvidia GeForce 6150 LE with only 64MB of graphics memory. I was not able to play this on my old GeForce 5500 with 256MB memory, however. So when you go grab a card, focus more on making sure it has Shader Model 3.0, then worry about the memory.
So back to the gameplay. You have the option of playing as one of the four survivors or you can play as one of four infected characters trying to stop the survivors. Unfortunately, this is only available in Versus Mode, but can be turned into a 4 on 4 game with hours of flesh eating fun. I didn’t have anyone over to play with, so I simply went with single player mode and chose Bill as my character. He’s a delightful older chap that is ex-military and a green beret. Then you have Louis, a systems analyst at an IT department. Zoey, a college student who has a love for horror movies. And finally, Francis. A tattooed biker who doesn’t take crap.
I loved the idea of playing a biker, but in situations like a zombie outbreak, I am more inclined to go with military trained or zombie knowledgeable. I went for the green beret. I have enough knowledge of my own to get me through this game. Time to play.
As Bill, I started out on the rooftop of an apartment complex. I grabbed my gun and first aid kit then went to the edge of the roof to look around. I didn’t see any zombies on one side of the building, but the other street on the opposite side was littered with them. I stood there and watching them for a few minutes, to see how they act when players are not around. They didn’t seem to communicate with each other, but they did interact. If one bumped into another, he or she would get shoved away. A couple of them started to fight once, but something distracted one and he walked away. It was like watching actors walking around as zombies. The artificial intelligence is really very realistic.
I decided to start the game, and walked around to the door that leads down from the roof. As soon as I opened the door this woman on the stairs did a fast spider crawl up the steps and tried to rush me. It took a couple of shots, but I took her out pretty quickly. Another guy was standing at the bottom, so I took him with one head shot. The other characters didn’t just follow me around, It’s like they have their own minds and their own actions, but I was appointed the leader. If I didn’t know that they were AI controlled, I would have thought they were player controlled. They help you out when you need it, heal you or give you pills when you are dying. It’s very realistic.
In one room a whole wall fell down and a storm of undead monsters rushed me. Francis shoved me out of the way before shooting. It was very cool. But the infected were not the only things I had to be saved from. There are these big fat methane-filled slobs called Boomers that vomit on you, the Smoker has a 50 foot tongue that strangles you while he coughs up a filthy green smoke, the Hunter jumps long distances to peel the skin from your bones. That big monster from the first video is called the Tank. He picks up cars and pieces of the road and chucks them at you. And then there’s the Witch. Picture a crack head with super speed and strength… that can kill you with one blow.
There are some weird game glitches, but they usually don’t detract from the gameplay. For one, how is it that a zombie can be teetering on top of a barb-wire fence? Sometimes you can tell if there’s a zombie behind a closed door because his shadow will appear through the door. Speaking of shadows, they are very dynamic, but the edges of them look very synthetic. The engine supports widescreen monitors, but does so in a weird way. Items on the left or right side of the screen become stretched and skewed, which look very unrealistic.
The sound is overall very good. Dramatic music plays appropriately… like when a new wave of the zombie horde attacks or when you are close to a Tank. Other times the sound positioning is way too broad… even when using a 5.1 sound system. For example, trying to locate a Witch can be a very frustrating (and tense) experience. The dramatic music and the witch’s cries get louder as you get closer, but very hard to locate positionally. We even heard a witch when we were outside a building, and the witch was deep inside… and it sounded like she was in the next room.
I played for hours. I played with all the survivor characters. I have to say that this game is one of the best I have ever played as far as detail and creature A.I. The monsters never do the same thing twice, and you never know what is going to happen. When it comes to realistic gameplay, Resident Evil has absolutely nothing on L4D. At any given moment you could be rushed by several dozen infected creatures or dragged up the side of a building by a Smoker tongue and strangled to death. If you have ever wondered what it would be like to be in a real zombie apocalypse, this is as close as it gets to the real thing. The best thing is knowing that you can play this over and over while waiting for Part 2 and never get bored.
In our interview with the developers at Valve, they mentioned that they designed the levels based on the trends of Counter-Strike players. Basically they designed several “good” levels that are highly replayable rather than come up with many levels that will never be played. There are only four episodes, and each one can be played through in an hour.
The biggest problem with Left 4 Dead is that it is too good… it leaves us wanting much more. People who love squad-based shooters may be satisfied with these four episodes, but the rest of us who like traditional shooters crave a much longer single-player experience.
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2 Comment
The HD 2400 has DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0, with 256MB of DDR3, so I don't see why not. It should run like a charm.
Does this game work well with ati hd 2400?