Review – Left 4 Dead (PC, X360)

Left 4 Dead is a fun if somewhat shallow experience using the Source engine. It is a perfect example of what can be done with a generic shooter given fun mechanics and a bit of polish. There really is not a lot to say about Left 4 Dead. Almost everything about the game is the experience of playing it, with or against friends, and that turns out to be a winning formula for this accessible title.

The graphics are the ones you’ve seen a few times before already in Half Life 2 and its spawn. The animations are rewarding when you disintegrate the head of a zombie with a shotgun or vomit on someone as a Boomer, a special zombie that blinds and attracts a horde of zombies with its green bile. Even at max settings, the graphics are not overly impressive by today’s standard. However, everything looks appropriately atmospheric but not too creepy.

The creepiness factor is delivered mostly by the sound. Every zombie has an audio cue to indicate its presence nearby, and in a surround sound environment this can get truly unnerving. This applies especially to the Witch, a zombie with a frail frame that just sobs its baiting cries until someone startles it with a flashlight or a gunshot. Then the pitiful cries turn to angry screams, and then all that can be heard are the screams of the player who startled it.

In addition to the high quality of the zombie noises, each of the four protagonists have an impressive reservoir of sound bytes. The PC version of the game has a great option to turn on subtitles so that you catch all of the quotes. These phrases range from functional to whimsical, but most of the characters aren’t terribly interesting.

Another interesting feature of the sound engineering is the dynamically generated music that is unique to the character being viewed. For example, you get your own music score while playing as a human, but you will also get to hear the music of the person you’re watching after you’re dead.

The game is really simple and has hardly any learning curve. Anyone who has played any kind of first-person shooter in their lifetime can pick this game up and play. The focus of the game is banding with three other teammates to try to complete the objective. If you’re the humans, this means getting to a safe point on the other side of the map. If you’re the zombies, it means killing the humans. The individual humans aren’t different, so there’s no complexity there to worry about. There are only six different weapons in the game and two of the weapons are just upgraded versions of other weapons, so there’s nothing to learn there either. The mechanics of the four zombie types can be explained in less than five minutes, making it easy for new players to jump right in and start mangling.

This lack of variety and depth is compensated by randomly generated and spawned zombies and items so that you have a different experience every time you play. The core mode of the game is a Versus mode, in which a team of up to four players control the zombies and up to four other players control the humans. This creates fun and memorable experiences as your team executes (or falls victim to) the perfect ambush or running frantically through a fire to get to the safe room.

The ingenious part of the gameplay revolves around the design of survival. The chances of a group of three humans surviving a scenario as opposed to a group of four are fantastically lower. As a group of two there is pretty much no hope, as two special zombies attacking at once can end the game. It makes leaving any member of the group behind to gain some ground a losing strategy, and it forms a fast bond amoung the team as they realize that their success depends upon the contribution of every member. This also leads to some deflating moments if a teammate disconnects, as it is impossible to co-ordinate with the computer controlled bot. Other barriers to the humans’ success include spots on the map where they are forced to wake up the neighbourhood, and as we all know noise attracts zombies. A cornucopia of ravenous zombies, which makes for some frantic and exciting moments.

In addition, the game introduces an intelligent pacing mechanism known as The Director. The Director will throw more zombies into the mix if it thinks the players’ stress levels are too low, or spawn items as needed. This AI is why I always have one random zombie chewing on me when I’m just leaving a “safe” area.

Even though it is mainly a multiplayer game, the game disappoints with its poor matchmaking system. To start a game, pick the map and mode and then wait for players to join. To join a game, pick the map and mode you want to play and it throws you into a server matching your criteria. It doesn’t let you see how far into the match the players have progressed, nor does it give you the option to pick multiple maps. Joining as a group is also missing from the list of features on the PC version. Sitting and waiting for players is a frequent cause of frustration because of the limited matchmaking choices on both platforms.

The single player campaign seems insignificant as the artificial intelligence is unspectacular (even in the PC version, where you can issue commands to them), but I haven’t tried it. The co-op campaign is fun the first few times, but most of the enjoyment comes from the Versus mode. Even the Survival mode, which pits a group of humans against an unending swarm of zombies, falls short of the lasting appeal of Versus.

Your enjoyment of this game will come from who you play with. Despite a shallow combat system, Left 4 Dead is still a fun game focused on the fresh experiences generated by randomly located opponents and items. It is not netting Valve any lifetime achievement awards, but it’s a fast-paced, zombie-or-human-exploding good time.

“Dad! You killed zombie Flanders!!” – Bart
“He was a zombie?” – Homer