Left 4 Dead

A few months ago I picked up Left 4 Dead (L4D) via the Steam downloader. I’ve always had a soft spot for Zombie apocalypse movies and games so it only came natural to try L4D out. I’m just going to go ahead and give away the ending, L4D is a great game.

The difficulty of L4D is pretty simple. It plays like every First Person Shooter has played for the last 20 years. The real challenge comes in when you realize you NEED the other 3 people in your group. It’s you and 3 other survivors versus hundreds of rampaging zombies. If someone gets too far behind or too far ahead they are pretty much as good as dead, especially in Versus Mode.

Versus Mode is where this game really shines. You have two teams with 4 players on each team. You take turns being the survivors and the “infected”. There are 4 special types of playable zombies and each with their own special ability to kill or immobilize the survivors. After each round you switch from infected to survivor or vice versa.

The graphics are good. They aren’t amazing but they fit. Everything is clean and there aren’t any noticeably issues. I guess it is what you would expect from a game at this time. The levels are well designed and if I had to make a compliant it would be the lack of levels. There are currently only 4 for campaign and 2 for versus, so they get old fast. There should be some nice custom maps coming out soon though.

Overall I recommend for everyone to pick up this game. At this point I would probably wait until it’s on sale though. There is no monthly fee with Steam or L4D so just having the game is worth the money. Left 4 Dead is one of those games that you could play for a few weeks straight, and then take a month long break from just to come back just as addicted as ever. At the very least you know with Valve and Steam behind it L4D will be a valuable addition to your gaming library for years to come.