JohnGibbonsComedy

*Warning. The following is filled with plot holes and spelling errors. No really, I wrote this thing while on meds and after playing L4D for five straight hours*

What is Left 4 Dead?
For those who don’t know about Left4Dead, it’s a 4 player Co-Op, zombie survival game. The fully version comes out November 18th, but the demo with two playable levels (both in single player and multiplayer) is available now. It retails for $44.99 but only as a pre-order. Once the game is out it will be $49.99. Valve spent 10 million dollars on its advertising, the largest in amount in Valve’s history.

Early Bugs
I’ve been playing the demo all day and here’s what I think. When it first came out at 7am this morning, it was nearly impossible to get an online game. Within a couple of hours a patch came out and now the problem seems addressed. The first thing I noticed that was odd was that the finding server system is unlike any other steam game. It’s more like a TA based system, where I can create a game and just wait for people to join, then hit go when everyone is ready. I even to the old “going in, 5,4,3,2,1″ while other frantically type “gogogogogogogogogogo”

The Characters
There are four characters to choose from: old guy, tough guy, black guy, and the girl. The four characters don’t really matter in terms of personality, it seems like they only made the four characters as easy memory devices. It’s easy to listen for each character’s unique voice and remember who is play as who.

The Zombies
The characters that do matter are the zombies. There are run of the mill zombies, that run at you “28 Days Later” style by the dozens. There are hunters, which are just zombies in hoodies that can jump far and fast to tackle you. There are boomers which are just the obese dead; they can puke on you and the puke makes a huge zombie wave chase you, but you can kill a boomer in one shot at which point it pops like a balloon filled with guts and kool-aid. There’s a witch, that is a zombies that weeps and weeps, but if you make a sound or shine a flash light at it, it can kill you in one hit. The tank is basically the “Incredible Hulk” of zombies. It’s huge, strong and bitch to kill. And finally the smoker, which is a mobile version of the ceiling hanging tentacle creatures from half life.

The Gameplay
I didn’t realize just how much Co-op you could cram into one game. Jesus christ. You have to guard each other, heal each other, if a zombies tackles a friend you have to knock it off them then help them up. You cannot fuck around. In fact, I surprised to say that griefing your team is LESS fun than playing the game right.

Speaking of griefers, L4D include a nice “vote” option, so the team can immediately vote a person out of a game that is a dick head or just useless. At which point the AI take over. That’s sound kinda crappy, but L4D’s AI is top notch. In fact, the AI even builds the level.

Dynamic Difficulty
No two round in L4D are the same. The AI adjusts everything from zombies numbers, difficulty, type, placement, aggression, to weapon types, number of health kits, bombs, and ammo refill stations. The only thing that the AI doesn’t change is the physical layout of the map, but all items and enemies are adjusted to keep the game challenging.

This is a pretty cool feature. It forces the team to always proceed with caution and to never relax. During one run you may face a wave of zombies at the bottom of a stair case, but the next you don’t fight any. But then you get down those stair and are faced with a boomer and a tank. If you team can’t adapt, you’re fucked.

Overall Thoughts
After 5 hours of playing, I’m very pleased with this. Playing a Co-op game is very refreshing. And how can you go wrong with Zombies+Co-op? It’s impossible. The full release will feature a shit ton of new stuff, all of which I look forward to. Until then, I’m glad to finally have a game besides TF2 to play.