Left 4 Dead

Yes! After weeks of being pestered by my AVERAGE FRIENDS, I have finally acquired LEFT 4 DEAD, PC version.

First off, I must say, that this game is tremendously cool. Imagine all the zombie movies you have ever watched, mix in a few you haven't and WHAM you are in the middle of a zombie eye-candy explosion!

I do not know about you, but when I first played Resident Evil on my Playstation, I was enthralled. I had the lights off, the sound system running through the living room speakers, and sitting on my game chair hunched over. My leg would shake and shake as I tumbled through the various rooms and corridors looking for that next thing. I would spend HOURS playing that game and its descendants, just because of the thrill of taking out a mass amount of zombies. Aside from Doom 3, no game has pumped me up more than LEFT 4 DEAD.

Mass amounts of flesh-eating zombies, all rushing toward their deaths as you and your three companions try to survive with various weapons. The gameplay is tremendously intuitive. The standard keyboard and mouse movements, as in most first person shooters are used here as well. What differentiates this game from others, is that you do not have to be a marksman to enjoy the game. Valve has done a wonderful job making the game as playable by varying levels of skills. Do not get me wrong, if you are normally a terrific shooter, you will do well here, but the primary focus of the game is to survive and to survive with as much of your team intact as possible. TEAM WORK IS THE KEY to this game. If you think you can go "Dirty Harry" on some zombie-butt you will be sadly mistaken, and quickly OWNED.

For the record: I have a quad-core machine, with 4gb of ram, and a geForce 8800GT video card. My experience is based on this type of machine.

The game has 3 primary types of games: Single Player Campaign, Coop-Campaign, and Versus. Single player is simple, you choose from one of the (currently) 4 maps, select from the other options, such as: character (Bill, Francis, Louis or Zoey), difficulty, etc... and off you go! Co-op Campaign brings together people from the internet to play together to conquer campaigns. Versus brings together 8 players in a 4 on 4 battle for points. In this mode your team rotates turns as zombies and survivors. You each take turns working a part of the campaign, each time trying to do better as the other team. You work your way through the entire campaign to determine the highest score. I have to say that my favorite is the versus. Getting a chance to play as one of the 4 types of zombies is a lot of fun. I do not want to give away all of the information, but it is worth trying out versus.

This game is rated mature because of the massive amounts of gore you go through. Blood splatter, heads blown off, zombies tearing at flesh, are just a few examples of the horror-fun you would get to experience. So, be advised if that type of material offends. Mostly, the game just scares the crap out of me. I contend that if you were not at least a little jumpy the first time through, you might want to have yourself checked! hah!

The graphics are excellent. The details of the zombies are wonderful, and the interactions between the environment, the survivors and the zombies are all very fluid. Blood does get splattered on the wall after you blow the head off the "smoker." The same result will occur from a few elbows to the head as well. The zombies look "real" and act like I expect them too act-- how ever zombie are supposed to act?! For example take a look at a couple of my screenshots.


Overall this game is terrific. It promotes teamwork above all else, which I think is a very cool component to this game. Once they add more maps and more features this game will grow in popularity. I am glad I saved up for this, because it has been worth every penny. On the FREAKING SWEET SCALE (of 1-10, 10 being best) I have given it a 10.

Important links
http://www.l4d.com/ - the primary website of Left 4 Dead.

System Requirements
Microsoft Windows XP / Vista / Vista64
Pentium 4 3.0GHz
1 GB
128 MB, Shader model 2.0, ATI 9600, NVIDIA 6600 or better
At least 7.5 GB of free space
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card