Left 4 Dead – Xbox 360

“The closest to the zombie apocalypse you’ll ever live to see”

Left 4 Dead is Valve Software’s newest game employing the use of their game engine, Source. The game takes places two weeks after an “infection” has occurred, that has obviously turned the human populous into the walking dead. But thrown in with the average “nothing special” zombies are more powerful specialty zombies:   Hunters, Boomers, and Smokers. Mixed in with these zombies are two more much rarer but even more dreaded “super zombies”. The Witch and Tank are the demise of most Left 4 Dead players. A witch’s soft cries echo through the long halls and open areas but don’t be deceived, if you dare disturb her (i.e. Shoot her, or even look at her) she’ll down you in one quick slash. And the Tank… well imagine an M1-Abrams Tank ... but as a zombie. A huge brute, that could rival the hulk, requiring a massive frenzy of bullets from your whole team just to take it down, and if just one of you comes out alive, you should consider yourselves lucky. 

The real credit for the game goes to its game engine. Valve’s Source Engine is their own technical masterpiece, showing just how well Valve knows design. I have seen this engine evolve game after game, but Valve accomplishes a massive technical feat with Left 4 Dead. Hundreds of zombies clawing to get at the survivors, and the game doesn’t even seem to break a sweat. This is overlapped by the incredibly smart enemy A.I. controlled by what Valve dubs “The Director”. The Director’s goal is to make getting to the safe room possible… but about as easy as hunting grizzly bears with pointy sticks.  You’ll soon learn to anticipate The Director’s moves and give yourself a small heads up to his plan, but what he’s best at is knowing exactly when you DON’T want a zombie horde to spawn.

But once you spend a while with Left 4 Dead, you will realize how incredibly simple the game play is, and this is what makes the game great. Valve has managed to simplify the run and shoot mechanics down to its absolute purist form. No awkward game mechanics, combos, or incomprehensible plot lines. It’s just run, hide, shoot, and stay alive. Left 4 Dead emphasizes cooperative teamwork, so playing with three other friends is a must at higher difficulties, but make sure your friends aren’t the type to shoot the car alarms to be funny, because a massive horde kicking at your corpse 30 seconds later doesn’t really elicit giggles. But with good friends come great times, as you help fight off hordes, free each other from smokers and hunters, “attempt” to sneak past the witch, and using all possible skill and resources available to take down an unstoppable tank.

That was just the campaign mode. Versus mode is a whole other beast. Versus mode has two teams, the human survivors, and wait for it.... the infected. That’s right, you get to play as the special infected to prevent the survivors from reaching their safe room. Taking control of a hunter, smoker, and a boomer gives a gratifying sense of revenge for all the trouble those zombies caused you in campaign. Playing as the zombies also allows for players to set up elaborate traps for the survivors to fall into. For example, you as a smoker hide around a corner and pull in the survivor from the back of their group, then when another survivor comes to rescue him, you get a hunter to pounce on him. Then to top it all off, you get a boomer to vomit on those two and hopefully his other teammates that come to rescue him. Sometimes these plans fail, but when they do… oh when they do, it’s beyond satisfying.

The only problem with Left 4 Dead concerns whether or not you have people online to play with. Without some human cooperation, the game seems to lose a lot of its charm when your only teammates are computer A.I.  A second problem would come in a couple months when online players have moved onto other games, making it harder to find a full party to play in a match.

9.5 out of 10