Left 4 Dead Review

I was debating on whether or not to pick this game up yet, as I have not yet beaten Far Cry 2, but on a whim, I decided to go for it just because it's getting such positive feedback...

Man, I wish I would have bought stock in Valve... They are great at finding a nitch, and owning the market on it with a quality product. ... Half Life and Half Life 2 set things in motion, but more recently with Portal, and now Left 4 Dead, I would assume that despite the crappy economy, these guys have no worries about staying in business!

Left 4 Dead is a must have for anyone who has always wanted a FPS zombie shooter, bar none. Play "Stubbs the Zombie" and feel like something is lacking? Well let me tell you what it might have been.... The absolute rush of adrenaline your dead heart gets when pouncing on a helpless survivor, while ripping their chest apart.

You can tell that Valve does extensive testing of their games... The only bugs I've encountered were some hangs, but no crashes, and that might have been due to an overheated Graphics Card.... Not only that, the GAMEPLAY is fine tuned to a point that you actually have no problems with the game... For example, Far Cry 2 has a multiplayer side, but everyone complains about it because it just doesn't feel polished.

Left 4 Dead follows the same sort of gameplay mechanics that Battlefield 2 does, where there is no "single player" story mode, but rather a formula that can be applied more towards multiplayer, but also can be played alone if needed. The games actually have a "campaign" mode, which is a series of levels stitched together to form a small segment of a story... where you and 3 other people are escaping to an evacuation point. This can be a rooftop via helicopter, a river boat, etc.

Gameplay is well paced, and zombies come out at you in waves, sort of like a building symphony where you'll have brief blowouts against a hoard, and then a moment of eerie silence as you regroup and rearm yourselves, and then more zombies...

Graphics are well done, and zombie parts explode when you shoot them. The zombies themselves are exquisite, and well done. In losing all of your health, you don't die right away, you are stuck on the ground while you can still shoot, until another player picks you up. You can fall three times, but then it's fatal. By the time you die, things are usually pretty bad, and your team is soon to follow, and if you are DEAD then you can watch them in a third person camera following them, and you can see them either winning or getting killed. If you reach a safehouse (ie, level transition) players come back to life that had died.

Sounds are a perfect 10. The zombies have creepy as hell voices and gurgle noises... The survivors have literally a hundred or so different sayings and you rarely hear the same thing twice, unless it's something standard like "RELOADING!" or "Cover me! I'm healing!" Type of things.

In versus mode you can go online and actually play as a zombie, and work on killing the survivors. This reminds me of Perfect Dark's Counter-Op mode... which can be difficult as hell.

Overall a great game so far. The only thing that is slightly disappointing is that there are no "unlockables" that i know of... There are "achievements" but since they also made this for the xbox360 AND PC, the PC gamers get screwed again, and really don't get anything for unlocking achievements.

Overall well worth it. A fun game and I can't wait for people to start coming up with mods for it

 

 

 

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I heard that this game was horrible...Someone just told me it's like RE but not as good.

I haven't personally looked into it but when/if I do it'll be the PC version.

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I never understood what the big deal was with Resident Evil... The first one for PS had horrible voice acting and choppy graphics (which was the norm for the time, but still...)
It was only when they came out with the on-the-rails Wii game Umbrella Chronicles when I could play it more as it was meant to be played, in tight corridors in First Person... Even Resident Evil 4 with the more intuitive over the shoulder camera is awkward with the Wiimote in most cases, and the voice acting still lacks in most cases.

With Left 4 Dead, you not only deal with hoards of undead, but you get to do it with a team of strangers (as you play online, you'll get to play with people you've never met, enhancing the experience) making it feel more like you're actually in a zombie movie... Each of the characters has something like a hundred random lines of conversation, and the voice acting is superb. It's gorey and limbs explode as they should, and the environments are creepy as hell. The pace of the game is perfect where you are walking along, listening for sound cues letting you know what's ahead, and then having a swarm of undead running straight at you full speed... And then it dies off again so you have time to refocus.

There are people who like RE, and people who don't... I think RE and L4D are mutually exclusive, as they are set apart for different gameplay and camera and controls and whatnot... People that like RE are generally console gamers, where people who play HL2 and traditional PC FPS games will like Left 4 Dead. It's hard to aim right with a console in this type of game, but it's beautiful in the PC.

One other thing I'd like to add... Moving the mouse isn't jittery... I don't know how to explain it. Like Far Cry 2, I had to turn off blur and adjust the mouse sensitivity to make it so I didn't get sick to play it, but Left 4 Dead's mouse movement is sleek and smooth. They did a great job of polishing the game...

But it just goes to show you how differently 2 games can be welcomed depending on the final polished feel of a game... Far Cry 2 had MUCH MORE varied gameplay, and features... But Left 4 Dead just FEELS better to play, thanks to a lack of annoying bugs, stupid annoying gameplay mechanics, or anything else that detracts from feeling like you're in the game.

 

 

 

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Playing Call of Duty 5 World at War Zombie mode was enough for me to stop playing any zombie games at all! Anyway, I was talking with a friend who played Left 4 Dead, and he was saying how, after you finish the game once i.e. campaign mode, there isn't anything compelling to play the campaign mode again. Left 4 Dead sort of lacks the replay quality like games like Team Fortress 2 has, where although I have played for over 200 hours total, I still very much enjoy playing it since every game is something different. What do you think?

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This game is awesome. I have LEFT 4 DEAD on my computer. The valve company creates great games.

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Valve does make good games. I can't wait to see where they go with Half life 2: episode 3. I've been waiting in suspense to see how they tie in the story from Portal to the Half Life story, since they obviously wanted to go that route, but there is always the possibility that they will totally blow it which of course would suck :\

I dusted off Left 4 Dead last night and thankfully there are still tons of people playing it, so the game is very much alive and well. I bought Far Cry 2 at the same time I bought Left 4 Dead. Far Cry 2 sits alone and dusty. Never to see the light of day again.

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