Left 4 Dead is made by Valve Studios, creators of Half-Life, Team Fortress. Counterstrike, and Portal. Most, if not all of these games have been met with glowing reviews. And so far, Left 4 Dead seems to be heading down the same path.
Story-wise, there's absolutely nothing to talk about. There are 4 different maps, all shaped to look like different horror movies. They are, in order, hospital, deserted town, airport and farm. There's only one cutscene and almost no character development. I could finish each story in under an hour, which makes the entire game pretty damn short.
The one thing I have to mention is the extremely impressive friendly AI. 9 times out of 10, my AI companions were better teammates than anyone online.
The thing that everyone has been talking about is the game's impressive AI director, which spawns enemies at different points every playthrough. But the fact remains that I'm still playing through the same damn levels every time, just with enemies at different places.
The game is also pretty low on variety when it comes to zombies and weapons. There are five different "boss" infected. There's the Smoker, which can seize survivors with its extremely long tongue; the Hunter, which will leap on survivors and tear them apart; the Boomer, which will vomit on people and cause a horde of zombies to attack those in range and the Tank, a brick shithouse that will tear you the fuck apart before you can count shit two bricks.
And finally, there's the Witch, one of the scariest motherfucking zombies you will ever see. She's fast, deadly and will kill you in one hit. And the strange thing is that I'm pretty damn attracted to her.
There are only five weapons (Not counting grenades or machine guns), and three of those are upgrades of the other two. They get boring after a while, but they serve their purpose, just as they did in all of Valve's games.
Online play is alright, even though I'm still playing through the same four damn levels with checkpoints spread thin. But verses mode is a nice touch, allowing us to play as the boss infected, with the Tank spawning randomly.
I never really felt like this was a "Survival Horror" game, as everyone has been proudly claiming. The zombies can't take more than two bullets anywhere in their body, and they do nearly no damage to me. I was never really scared of anything in this game. My heart pounded a couple times when I heard the music change and a horde of zombies come swarming at me, all brandishing dessert forks. It's like the lead designer knew what a zombie horror movie was, and might have even seen posters for some, but he just can't grasp the concept. The only time I ever actually died was when a Tank pinned me up against a wall and kept pounding me before I could shoot back. So this simply wasn't a scary game. If it was headshots only, I would quite easily crap my pants every time I set off a car alarm.
Now that I bring that up, I have to ask something; if the zombies hunt by sound, why are they never attracted by the sound of GUNS? Seriously, I'll clear out a room standing from the doorframe, only to go in and find that three or four were standing not five feet from where I was firing. So the enemy AI is a little touchy at places.
Let me sum this up in three more marketable points. Neat, but repetitive. Cool, but limited. Unique, but linear.
I'm going to start using a different review system now. Instead of giving games x out of 10, I'm going to be listing how much I feel comfortable spend for it on opening day. So I'll give Left 4 Dead 50$ out of 60$.
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