Game review: Left 4 Dead

There have been many games made about zombies over the years. But the new game from Valve does things a bit differently. Left 4 Dead is a cooperative game at heart. You play as one of four survivors trying to make your way to safety through hordes of the undead. The game was made with the Source engine that powered games like Counter Strike and Half-Life 2. You can either play the game locally with up to four players on one system, via system link or on Xbox Live.

The meat of the game is in the campaign mode. You play one of four different campaigns that are wrapped up to look like a zombie movie. It starts with a movie poster and it shows the players names like it would actors playing the part. Then each campaign is divided into five different sections where you have to get to a safe house. If a player dies they can be brought back to life by finding the closet they are in and letting them out. And if a player should die and not make it to the end it will show their name as "In Memory of..."

The weapons in the game are pretty standard. There is the standard pistol (with unlimited ammo), the Uzi, the M-16, the standard shotgun, the auto shotgun and the sniper rifle. All of these handle pretty well and do about as much damage as you'd expect each weapon to inflict. Of course if you choose to sniper rifle you are limited to how many shots you can fire and if you pick the shotguns you are limited with your range and how fast you can reload. But thankfully you do have a melee attack you can use that will help you when you are trying to reload.

Now teamwork in this game is key. If you don't stay together and trying to help the other players you are going to regret it. If you wander off you'll quickly find yourself in a not so favorable position with no one to revive you. But thankfully if one of your teammates has a health pack they can use it on you to regain your health. But be careful because those packs can be pretty few and far between.

The campaigns can be played solo with the computer filling in the other players. But the AI isn't as good as it could be. Lots of times they will wander off on their own or you'll be dying right next to them and they won't help you. So after a while it becomes more of hindrance than anything else. So this game is really best played with real people.

Aside from the campaign there is a versus mode. In this mode up to eight players take the role of either survivor or infected. If you are one of the infected then you play as one of the "special infected" that each have different abilities and would take a while to go into them all in detail. This mode is a lot of fun and I found it more enjoyable to play as one of the zombies and try to kill the humans.

One downside of this game is that it is really short. Each of the four campaigns can be completed is as little as half an hour. This means that you can complete the whole thing in about 2 hours. For a game with a $60 price tag this isn't what you'd call getting your money's worth.

But the developers of the game wanted to encourage people to play through multiple times. So they included what they call the AI Director. This makes it so each time you play through the AI that controls the zombies will behave differently depending on multiple criteria. I did find that each time through it felt a bit different but after a while the computer does start to get a bit predictable.

Now the graphics in this game are pretty good. Don't expect to look at something like Gears of War or Oblivion when you play this. The zombies all look pretty standard and don't have a huge amount of detail. There are some nice effects when you shoot off their heads or blow off their arms and legs but other than that its really nothing to make your jaw drop. Now considering the shear number of things that can be happening on the screen at once the frame rate holds up pretty well. I only noticed a few times where I saw any slowdown but it doesn't enough to make the game unplayable. The environments are pretty generic and will show some damage from bullets and explosives over time.

This is one of those games that is best if just rented. If you are one of those people that think you will play it over and over then you might want to consider picking it up used or on eBay. But I found that you can get pretty much everything this game has to offer in a rental.

My score: 7.5/10