Left 4 Dead, a touching story of care bears and ass rape.

This is a review for the video game Left 4 Dead. So the quick back story for this game is as follows, 4 survivors of the Zombie apocalypse, must make their way to safety.  That’s it.  You can probably imagine at this point the insanity that happens.  L4D follows the crazy misadventures of 4 survivors of the Zombie infestation.  The Characters are Louis, Zoey, Francis, and Bill.  Each character has their on back story of sorts; however it doesn’t play much into the story.

Louis, A 9-5 white collar worker.  He’s an office drone who doesn’t get out much.

Zoey, The Chick of the bunch, she gets her period, and attracts the zombies.

Francis, A tough as nails biker, tattooed down to his ball sack.

Bill, the grizzled old Nam war vet, has seen worse shit than this back in Saigon.

There are a few different types of zombie foes as well, and each has their own special little trick to fuck with your shit.

Zombie, your typical zombie, brainless, weak, and easily dispatched with the business end of your gun.

Boomer, The boomer is a huge fat zombie, he is very weak, one hit from anything will take him out, however his special skill is that he can vomit on you, once you are covered in vomit you get the privilege of now being “marked” for the nest 15 seconds every zombie known to man is going to be on your ass.

Smoker, The smoker is the sniper of the zombie group, he’s fairly strong, and can take some hits, but his specialty is snatching you up with his tongue and dragging you away.  You cannot escape him once he’s got you wrapped up, you need your teammates to come and rescue you… if they are still alive.

Hunter, The hunter is the multi purpose zombie, he’s average across the board, not weak, but not strong, He however can pounce on you, and pin you to the ground, and rip your stomach out, piece by piece.

Tank,  The tank is the strongest zombie of them all, he’s a huge, and I mean huge zombie, all muscle, he can take a whole lot of hits and keep on coming,  he doesn’t  really have a special move, other than he’s badass.

Witch, the Witch is a girl zombie who can kill you in one hit, think I’m fucking around? No, she can. Stay away from her. Listen to me.

That’s all the back story there is, and all you need to know.

So, the game itself is actually very easy to play, the buttons are simple, and the game environment itself is pretty linear.  The environments are very well done, there are secret spots that you can get to, that no zombie can.  The whole environment itself is interactive, you can open doors, jump on cars, basically anything that’s in the world, you can do something with, there is not that whole “invisible wall” thing that goes on in a lot of these games.  The game could be classified as arcade style, but there is way more depth to it than that.  

One of the best parts of this game, which really grabbed my attention, was the purpose of the game.  You see, in most zombie fighting games, your goal is to kill all the zombies, and move on to the next level.  In L4D, that is not the case; the zombies will KEEP coming at you.  Your goal is to survive and make it to the safe house location at the end of the zone.  Seem simple enough? Not by a long shot friendo.  Like I was saying, the zombies will keep coming, in fact the AI for this game is very, very good, there is a “dungeon master” of sorts with the AI, you see, lets say you and your 3 other survivor buddies are making your way easily through the map, well, Mr. Computer, doesn’t like that, thus it will up the amount of zombies it’s going to throw at you.  So you could be used to 10-15 zombies swarming you, and it could bump it up to 50.

The “fear” factor of this game isn’t all that high, the jump out of your seat moments are their, but it’s mostly when you are in a corner, and you can hear a horde of zombies on the other side of this door, and they are literally tearing it down.  The games greatest fear tactics are the unexpected jumps around corners, for some of the levels you are in; it could be pitch black, with the one exception being your handheld flashlight.  So just imagine searching a completely dark bathroom, with your shotgun, and flashlight, kicking open the stalls looking for supplies, needless to say, it can build the tension.

Now onto the important part, the weapons/supplies.  This is a benefit, and a negative in this game.  The items you get are typical of this kind of game, you have your basic guns, you start with, single pistol, shotgun, Uzi, Medical Kit to heal yourself.  Along the way, at certain safe points, you can find upgraded weapons of similar kinds, Like, an assault rifle, automatic shotgun, hunting rifle, and you can also grab a second pistol (duel wield).  As well you can grab secondary attack weapons, like pipe bombs, and Molotov cocktails. Health wise, you can get pain pills, which is a temporary way to get health.  Now the negative is that the weapons get old quick, sometimes you wish their was more stuff to shoot.  However, the beauty of having limited weapons in a way improves game play, instead of debating on if you should take the rocket launcher, or the grenade launcher, you just grab a gun, and keep moving, which is the point of the game.

Last but certainly not least, is the reason this game achieves “bad ass” status.  Multiplayer.  This games multiplayer is the reason you will keep coming back.  There are a couple different multiplayer games to play online. They have a campaign mode, where you and up to 3 other people complete the game like normal, Or there is the new survival mode, were you are fighting endless hordes of zombies with your friends, and limited equipment, last there is Versus mode, which is where you and 3 others battle human controlled zombies.  The reason multiplayer is great for L4D is the interactive ability it gives you the gamer.  Some of the greatest times had playing this game was during online play.  For starters, human players are always smarter, so it adds a bit of realism to the game itself, it also provides for a even balance of skill, If you have a leader personality on your team, they can lead you to survival, or maybe you have someone who loves to jump into the zombie swarm and just start shooting away, put them up front.  Basically multiplayer makes this game.

The Negatives are few and far between, but should be addressed, so here they are.  As discussed before, the weapons can sometimes become boring, now the overall point of the game is survival, but a few extra guns couldn’t hurt replay value. I am hoping that in a game update at some point Xbox will give us a few added weapons.  The next thing is that if you are playing single player, just on your own, the game is short, there are multiple levels to beat, but if you are a super nerd and dedicate a whole day to the game, you can beat it, however with the multiplayer feature, you will never be bored.

Well that’s about it kiddies, I would for sure recommend this game to everyone that likes to get online and spend a few hours fucking around playing a game. It’s not difficult to just pick up and play.  Overall I am going to give this game a 4 ½ out of 5 stars of david.  Mazeltaf you yenta’s.