When the game developer
Valve is mentioned, people
have one of two thoughts,
either “Half-Life” or “The
Orange Box,” which is a perfectly
normal reaction to
those who know who the
company is and what they’ve
done.
Since the announcement of
a new project, Valve has been
center stage for most of the
conventions with its highly
anticipated first person zombie
survival game “Left 4
Dead.”
Unlike the other zombieapocalypse-
type-scenario
games, this game doesn’t give
you a whole bunch of options
in order to escape the zombie
infested hellhole. You have
one option, to become very
close to the three other people
who haven’t been infected
and want to survive.
Unlike the other games in
this genre, you can play with
either three other human
players or you can rely on the
game’s AI, which according
to some videos of the gameplay,
is not in any way dumb
or sluggish.
The game’s storytelling
style is also very different as
it is set up in mini-campaigns
that can only be described as
sections or chapters of a
movie. Each chapter takes
place in a different location as
you and your fellow survivors
make your way to
your final destination, which
is revealed as an airport.
Little pieces of the story make
their way into each chapter as
you fight your way though
each movie andget hints as to
the climax of the “film.”
As far as your enemies go,
they don’t appear to be regular
shambling zombies with
little-to-no thought other
than who’s left to eat.
They’re more like the zombies
from “28 Days Later,”
not slowly shambling along,
but full-out sprinting to kill
and eat you. The interesting
part about this is the fact that
as you go along, zombies
won’t just walk out of doors
or climb through windows;
they’ll spawn in places you’d
never think to look like in the
rafters of a building or on the
roof.
Along with the co-op gameplay
that allows you to use
either AI or other players, the
fun takes place in versus
mode. Why should you
always play as human fighting
hordes of the undead?
Thankfully versus mode
allows for some fun as one of
the undead or one of the survivors.
The gameplay as a survivor
in each mode is similar to that
of the campaign, where you
use your teammates and survive
the map. As far as strategy
goes, the only way to win
is to stick together and help
each other out. If one of your
teammates becomes debilitated,
you have to go over and
resuscitate them, which only
takes a few seconds, while
your teammates deal with the
hordes of zombies.
The flip side is being one of
the undead whose versus
mode experience is completely
different from that of the
survivors. The whole point
of being a zombie is completely
decimating the survivors
with superior numbers.
However, being one of
the undead has a disadvantage
in that they all have very
low health and can easily be
killed. But if you do die, just
find a sneaky place to
respawn and attack again.
With its release date only a
few weeks away, it looks as
though Valve will have
another hit on its hands as
this zombie survival game is
completely different from
that of any other in the genre.
The different ways to play the
game certainly is original and
unconventional.
Those who want to use the
Xbox 360 will have an advantage
to playing on Xbox Live
over the PC.
The flip side is that PC will
have far superior graphics
and sound to the Xbox. If you
own either of these formats
you should definitely pick up
this game for the simple reason
that killing zombies is a
lot of fun.