Left 4 Dead Review (PC)

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.