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Left 4 Dead |  |
So, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead, Valve’s recent zombie co-op shooter. I must say, I love it. It’s not a perfect game, but there’s something really fun about getting together with three of your buddies and spending an hour or two trying to survive the zombie-pocalypse. The weapons and items all feel pretty good (though I feel like the hunting rifle, for me, is the least useful of them all), and the game really forces you to stick together and cooperate; there are a couple of types of infected that can easily kill a lone survivor.
Something to note: if you play this game in single player, you’re not getting the full experience. It’s fun in single player, but not nearly as fun as playing with real people. The AI-controlled survivors are pretty useful; they have good aim and they’ll watch your back pretty effectively. They do not, however, take any sort of initiative like a human player will, and they also can’t use grenade items. That said, however, playing with even one other human player, especially if that player is someone you know, multiplies the game’s fun by a factor of 10. If you’ve got all four slots filled with people who know each other and gel as a team, you’re in for a real treat.
Also of note is that the versus mode, where one team plays the survivors while one plays the boss infected, is something of an acquired taste. I really didn’t like it that much the first time I played it. Playing the boss infected can be kind of frustrating at times; they die very quickly, and you have to wait 15-20 seconds to respawn. You don’t get to choose which kind of infected you spawn as, which can be irritating at times. Also, it can be hard to judge the range of an infected’s attack and, in the case of the smoker and the boomer, you have to wait a while for your attack to recharge if you miss. Playing a tank can be either very satisfying or also very frustrating; sometimes it feels like your big, meaty fists are going right through the survivors’ bodies without effect. When you get in a few good hits, though, you can really turn the tide of a match.
All that said, though, versus mode is starting to grow on me. I feel like I’m starting to get a better handle on how to play the infected; you have to be very patient and precise, and you have to coordinate both with your fellow boss infected and with the AI horde. You’re most effective when you wait until the survivors are distracted or panicking, then strike. If a smoker and a pair of hunters all strike at the same time during an infected rush, it can spell curtains for the survivors.
There’s also something to be said for playing the survivors against human opponents. They’ll often do things that the AI-controlled infected won’t do, and those things are often unexpected. It is, however, a very different game; there’s less continuity and it’s not quite as cinematic as campaign mode; in many cases, you won’t be making it through an entire level, but you’ll play the next level anyway.
At any rate, I think that there’s a lot of merit in both modes of play. It’s a great game, full of zombie-stomping fun, either way.
