If the zombie apocalypse is this fun, then I wish I was dead. That could be interpreted many ways. One is that (a) this is a terrible game and I want to kill myself, (b) I wish I was dead to become a zombie, or (c) um… never mind, only two ways that I can think of. Well, the correct interpretation is (b). I guess in this case, and the same is true with many zombie games of late, I would rather be infected than dead. In L4D, you don’t have to dead to be a zombie.
I’ll skip the Infected for now and go to the survivors. The survivors are who you play as in the campaign. You’re a group of survivors of the epidemic of zombies and you’re trying to get to a certain place in each campaign were survivors are being evacuated. That is really all there is to the story, except that there are four different campaigns that each take place in various locations that would be found in a city. One goes through the streets and up on to the top of a hospital, one through the countryside and a small field to be evacuated at a military outpost, the next in an airport, and the last in sewers that take you out into a forest where you get picked up by a boat during the finale. Speaking of the finale, all of the campaigns have an epic finale where the survivors hole up somewhere for a period of time until the transport arrives to evacuate you. Then the campaign ends.
The campaigns are fun, but not fun enough for me. Why would you play as a human, when you could play as an infected and screw with the human players? I just never really got into being a survivor and always would much rather play versus mode where you take turns being survivors and infected.
So versus mode is where a team of four joins another team of four and one team plays the survivors for a round and tries to reach the safe room. There are five safe rooms (I think) in each campaign. The other team plays as infected and tries to apprehend the survivors and kill them all before they reach the safe room. After the survivors reach the safe room, or the survivors are all killed, the teams switch roles and play the chapter over again. The important thing about that is that there are many different variants of each chapter so it never feels like your playing a game that you just played. I always preferred the infected, as I stated earlier, because it felt way more fun.
In versus mode you can play as the “special” infected, the Hunter, the Smoker, the Boomer, or the Tank. The smoker are like cats. They crouch down and can jump like 30 feet onto a target and then start to tear them to shreds while also knocking them down to the ground where they are defenseless and can be attacked by other zombies. The smokers have long tongues that they shoot a hundred feet out and into a survivor. They then drag the survivor closer and closer and attack them when they get close enough. Also, a survivor being attacked by a smoker only has a few seconds to shoot them before they are stunned. The tank is, well, a tank. It has a huge amount of health, can knock people to the ground with one hit, and can rip huge chunks out of the ground and throw them at the survivors. The Boomer, is a large, fat zombie, that barfs on the survivors which attracts the “horde” (the term for the normal infected). I’m serious.
a Tank
Combat is intense. There is nothing else to say about it. It’s frantic, fast-paced and intense. There is no problem with the combat unless you cannot get yourself to think quickly and make split second decisions. The only problem with it is the guns. There is not a big variety of them and the sniper rifle? Who wants a sniper rifle inside a hospital? Or sewers? But still its really great combat.
So Left 4 Dead is a really good game. I am one of the few people who didn’t really ever like it as much as every one else did. But I liked it and I definitely see how and why everyone else likes it. I recommend this game only for hardcore shooters as you really need to have a lot of experience.
Oh wait, haha, I forgot something. The AI director. The AI director is an AI that controls all of the other AI and controls how many items and ammo stashes you find. If you’re doing great the AI director will make more zombie babies, and if you’re doing really bad it’ll throw you some slack and make it a little easier.
is that it? That’s it. So go and play your games and keep looking at my blog. I don’t have a million views yet. Oh, and comment. You have no idea how excited I get whenever I get a comment. Seriously though, take five seconds and comment.
Love,
Jake Goulder
Peefackle’s Author
Pwn First, Ask Questions Later 