Left 4 Dead

9.3

Format PC

Developer Turtle Rock Studios

Publisher

Genre Action

28 Comments

Just go on without me!" I shout. I'm pinned to the ground, a swarm of infected stamping on me. I fire blindly into the crowd, trying to help another survivor who's being tongued to death. A stray bullet severs the lengthy, constricting tongue and he runs for the safe house. Someone is in there already, waiting by the door. Norman, I think. Just like him to get away. As I'm overwhelmed the safe house door is closed. BLAMMO, BANG. "DIE YOU ZOMBIE BASTARDS!" Level over.

Yes, I said "level". For a moment there I was in an '80s action movie, sacrificing my life so that others could live. Left 4 Dead does that to you. It's an entirely new way of playing games with friends. You and up to three others battle through one of four movie-inspired apocalyptic backdrops, trying to reach safety, and that generates war stories like nothing else I've played. With four players working together against the overwhelming odds, plans are born out of desperation, some meagre supplies and a lot of luck.

My companions for my Left 4 Dead review were Norman Chan, Dan Stapleton and Evan Lahti of PC Gamer US. Which is handy, because at the start of every level there are always four of you. You can choose a biker, a pretty girl, an office worker or an old man. It makes no difference as they're all created equal and only there to differentiate between you and the zombies. The weapon choice is meagre: you get a pistol, a healthpack and either a shotgun, a rifle or an automatic weapon.

Along the way you'll find a few pick-ups, such as Molotov cocktails or pipe-bombs, as well as such environmental weapons as gas canisters and petrol tanks. You can play on your own, with three AI team-mates, but I'd suggest you seek out companionship. Even having one other human there makes all the difference, and with a full complement of friends L4D is absolutely extraordinary.

It's knowing you can scream for help and someone will come running that makes this game so compelling. Co-operative play is not just about having people on the same server: it's about sticking together and maintaining communication.

How many games have you played where a jittery group of four people are creeping through a hospital, reporting cleared rooms, checking on each other's state of health and ammo counts, the front two duck-walking so the two behind can fire over their heads? If someone falls behind, the team slows down. If someone gets too far ahead, you beg them to be more careful. In L4D your strength relies on the person beside you. You need to be able to call on that person at any time.

All this takes place in a world of perpetual night, so in debt to cinema clichés that the levels load with faux movie posters and the end credits point out how many zombies were "harmed in this production". The four missions take from between one and two hours each to complete, depending on the difficulty mode. You fight through a hospital, a forest, an airport and farmland. You hide in shacks, traipse through sewers, scurry over rooftops, shoot up offices and make dramatic last stands.

The backstory is told through graffiti on the walls: warnings from the people who went ahead of you, messages to loved ones, zombie death counts, conspiracy theories. Aside from an incredible opening movie, Valve use the techniques used in Portal and Half-Life 2, where the scribbling on a wall leaves you with an uneasy feeling about what's gone before. The settings are often mundane locations, but covered with blood, full of corpses and replete with dark corners for bosses and zombies to spawn in.

In your way are the infected, people from all walks of life now insanely enraged at the sight of you. In the hospital they're in backless gowns, at the airport some wear fluorescent jackets. There are camouflaged army infected, policemen, mums and office workers. They're scattered around the levels, depressed, slumped, leaning forehead-first against walls, crying, vomiting.

In isolation they're easy and plentiful targets, popping after a few bullets. One player can easily take down a group of five or six just by spraying them with an automatic rifle. But that's not the point. The infected will come at you in waves. You get no warning of this, unless you accidentally made too much noise or were hit by one of the boss monsters' special attacks. No, there's just a sudden sound cue and these seemingly easy targets swarm. Nothing stops them. If you've climbed on top of a bus, they'll scramble up the sides. They'll burst through doors and walls, and they don't shamble. They sprint, faces contorted with fury, and when they hit they swipe, and grab, and kick. They surround you, a furious mob seeking to drag you down and stamp you to death.

Their vast numbers and angles of attack are what makes the challenge. The surprise element comes from Valve's AI 'director', which does a remarkable job of making these static levels endlessly challenging. In co-op mode it dictates the frequency of swarms, bosses and pick-ups.

It's watching how you play, and planning ahead, either letting up if you need a break or giving you a challenge if you're tooled up and spoiling for a fight. It even watches for panicky moments. If your team is struggling it'll ease off briefly.

If you do get overwhelmed, you have a few options. Spray bullets and hope that you kill enough foes to create room to manoeuvre. Or, right mouse is a combination of melee and push, enabling you to lash out with whatever you're holding, even med-packs (in which case you must shout at the infected "Stop healing yourself! Stop healing yourself!"). Again, the idea is to make room. If you've formed a tight-knit team, now's the time to scream and hope they're able to help. If you're not within real-life shouting distance of the people you're playing with, or if you're not in possession of a microphone, your character yells automatically and your fellow players are alerted by on-screen text. You just have to hope that your friends are paying attention.

To fight off a swarm, your team-mates might throw a pipebomb, a brilliant piece of comedy weaponry that beeps and enrages zombies. The infected will follow it like a cat chasing a piece of string - except with more stomping. There's a lot of visual and aural information in Left 4 Dead. Icons lead you to extra ammo and pick-ups, and warn against doing certain things such as setting off alarms (which will bring a horde of enemies), or angering a boss. Each player also has a glowing outline that activates when they're out of sight and makes them visible through objects, like a wallhack. You're even able to tell when someone's in trouble by the body shape or colour of their outline. And finally, bosses are accompanied by distinctive, unearthly noises to help you ready yourself before they attack. The Boomer's distressing gurgle sounds like a swamp coming to life.

All the while, the game compels you to stick together, constantly asking you to be aware of your fellow survivors' predicament. Find yourself separated from the group and you'll have to take on a boss or a swarm all by yourself. If you're knocked or pinned down you won't be able to escape without another player's help. You'd better hope the others like you enough to save your idiotic ass.

And so we come to the boss zombies: the Boomer, the Smoker, the Hunter, the Tank and the Witch. They're the real threats. The first three spawn regularly, and each has a particular attack. The Boomer tries to ambush you: his vomit attracts zombies from everywhere. The Hunter pounces, pinning you to the ground. And the Smoker snaps out its hideous tongue, tying you up, draining health or enabling other zombies to mob you. For each attack you need the help of your friends. Boomer vomit blocks your view, the Hunter can only be knocked away by another player, and if you miss your chance to kill the Smoker he holds you until you're rescued or killed.

The other two bosses are rarely seen. The Tank is a powerful, hideous mass of muscle that runs like a gorilla, lobs chunks of scenery at you and knocks survivors back with a single blow. The Witch is a crying girl, the only boss you can't control when you get to Versus mode, and the only boss you can plan to take on or carefully avoid. Startle her and she comes running, pinning you to the ground and tearing into you with astonishing strength and fury. You need friends around to take both her and the Tank down.

Our group came across a Witch near a train track. The trouble was, she was in our way. We had to startle her or we couldn't get past. Norman was carrying a petrol can, and the Witch only had one route to us. So he placed the red can between us and her, we shot her and when she came screaming and screeching, we shot the can. A mass of flame erupted and the Witch came running through it, swatting at the flames that engulfed her. We all focused fire, and she fell just few feet from us. This wasn't a cutscene, it wasn't a set-up by Valve. No level designer had planned it. She wasn't there on a subsequent playthrough. It just happened.

You can play L4D in three different ways: singleplayer, co-operative and Versus mode. Valve haven't previously said much about that final one. The truth is it's the most tense, frightening, funny dimension of Left 4 Dead. Versus mode takes the co-operative mode and adds up to four human players as the boss monsters. Each team takes turns playing each side, but it's only scored on the survivors' side. The goal is to be better survivors than the other team, with your score determined by how far you get, how much health you have and how many people survive.

It's a different game when you're up against human controlled boss monsters. They can work together as a team, complementing abilities and laying traps far more effectively than the AI. Smart monster players wait for the chaos of a swarm attack before moving in, picking your character off at the moment of absolute terror.

Bosses are great fun to play. When you begin you have free run of the map: you can run around, invisible and immaterial, the better to place your character in the optimum position before spawning. That choice makes all the difference. You can hide your Boomer behind a blind corner, then run out and startle the group, puking or exploding all over them. Smokers are great for sneaky players who want to pick survivors off just when they're needed the most.

Imagine as a survivor seeing a Hunter pounce on a friend from behind a bush: it's up to you to beat the boss away. Now think how you'd feel as your heroic moment was snatched away from you - by a long tongue grabbing you from behind just as you made your pal-saving move. I've seen a Smoker snatch a man just before he got to the safety of a chopper. And I died rescuing him.

The Tank rarely spawns, but when he does a smart player can use him to all but wipe out a team of survivors. His powerful swipe knocks people across the map, leaving them unable to help each other and vulnerable to further attacks.

The best moments derive from the evil timing a boss can use to wreak havoc. My favourite came after I'd died and was watching one of the other players via Spectator mode. He'd had to contend with a swarm and a co-ordinated boss attack, and was limping towards a safe house. He looked like he was going to make it. Then a Boomer ran out of nowhere and vomited over him. I spun the camera around and watched him run, limping, as a mass of zombies and a Hunter pounded after him. We were shouting at him, urging him on as they closed in. He made the safe house at the last moment and a player already in there slammed the door shut. The crowd of undead screeched and clawed to no avail. Man, that was close.

Even when playing as a boss monster, co-operative play is where it's at. Alone, you're susceptible to easy counter-assaults from the Survivor team. A Hunter is no match for even two people together. It needs a Smoker to grab someone, and a Boomer to puke up a swarm-summoning load.

Versus mode is the way to play this game. Singleplayer is fun, and co-op is great, but Versus mode demands you take note of how far the other team made it into the level, creating an impetus for your own run through. You accept death, if you manage to get just that little bit further. Even though a team that sticks together wins, it's worth powering though a level simply to get as far past the other team as possible. Which is just funny as hell when you manage it.

Time to pick at the loose threads. Although it makes conceptual sense that your weapon choice is slim, L4D could use a bit more choice for the survivors. Also, it occasionally frustrates when things don't go your way in Versus mode: the random apportioning of the boss classes when you play as the infected can get annoying, particularly if you're forced to play as one class you're not very good at, or you don't get to play as the Tank.

If you're not going to play at least in co-op you'll miss out on much. The AI is good, but it does feel a bit like you're leading ducklings into battle. They really can't replace the human element. But then the '4' is right there in the title, folks. Get more friends. Only the four scenarios I've mentioned will be available at launch, and of those only the hospital and farmland will be playable in Versus mode, although needless to say, Valve will be filling in the gaps with subsequent Steam updates.

But that's not the point. You'll go back and play the same map again and again anyway, because no two run-throughs of Left 4 Dead are the same. The few static elements are just there to anchor you; the AI never does the same thing in the same place. I've opened a door to a house to find a Boomer behind it, waiting. He wasn't there the second, third or fourth time I played. By turning the spawns into a dynamic event not tied to the level architecture, Valve have made an endlessly replayable game. It's got all the nail-biting high tension of a control point assault/defence of Team-Fortress 2, mixed with the tightly designed levels of Half-Life 2 and the weapons of Counter-Strike. As long as they keep introducing new missions, there's no reason why it won't be sucking on your bandwidth for years to come.

Craig Pearson