Review of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2
Reviewing my steam games, this week looking at Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. I’m going to write about both Left 4 Dead games at once here, but I should say that Left 4 Dead 2 is a better, cleaned up and more polished version of Left 4 Dead 1.
Left 4 Dead is a co-op survival first person shooter. You take the roll of one of four survivors of ‘The Green Flu’ which has infected the rest of the people in wherever you are. In the first game the characters are Francis (white stereotypical biker), Bill Overbeck (white Vietnam vet), Zoey (white university student) and Louis (African district accounts manager). And in the second game you have Coach (overweight African male), Ellis (white trash mechanic), Nick (white conman, gambler) and Rochelle (Latin network news reporter).
To be honest they all play the same, with no accounting for physical size or strength making a difference in the game. I usually just let the computer randomly assign me to a character. You learn about the characters and their personalities through little bits of dialogue as the game plays. A character will say out loud which direction the group needs to go in, usually with some in character flavour. ‘I know where we can find a gun shop, it is just down that way’ or similar.
When you play there is always four survivors. If you are going solo then the other three are controlled by the AI. It isn’t a brilliant AI, but they are not harmful to your progress either. Staying out of the way, not shooting you with the shotgun and generally equipped with a very good pathfinding program so that they will keep up with you. If you jump out a window they usually go and find the stairs, but they will be with you when you round a corner and face more zombies.
I have even played this game a bit online with the random match making. I have to give Steam credit here. They say that when it matches it looks for open slots in a game on the same server (to reduce ping times and lag for players) as well as people who match your same style of play. Based on a long list of stats the game tracks. So in my case I like to go slowly, trying for head shots and sharing my health with others. When I do this random match making I find I often get a group that also plays just that way. Playing with friends I am far more likely to get put with someone who kicks down the door, runs in shooting and has to get rescued by myself and others because there was a zombie to the left and right of the door.
I first saw this game when it was a demo up on steam. At that time my wife played about five minutes of the game while I watched… My reaction at the time was ‘Fast zombies? Really?’ Now that I’ve played so much more of the game I am past that issue. In part because they are not zombies so much as ‘infected’ and in part because I really enjoy the game.
I am currently playing the game on 1 gig video card equipped computers and it looks amazing. Each environment has debris that fits with the atmosphere. Going through an apartment building you will see discarded food wrappers, TV’s and alarm clocks. Traveling through back alleyways you see garbage bags, litter and so on. Each room gives you the feeling that the designer came up with a story of what happened here and would happily tell you all about it if asked. I don’t think that actually happened, but you do find a number of staged set pieces that you do feel like the world was happening around the characters.
This is especially true for the second game. The first is set all at night as our heroes try to get out of a city. In the second they have it across a number of different locations and different weather conditions. When you are fighting zombies in the middle of a thunderstorm in a cornfield the game looks so very beautiful.
As it is a zombie survival game you wouldn’t expect a bunch of story beyond go to X point, but they managed to squeeze in a bunch. This is more true in the second game when we see a fictional band created just for the game world, deliver some coke (the drink) to another survivor in exchange for his help and so on. But even in the first game we have little bits of story if you go looking for it. Graffiti on the walls tells you of other survivors who took the trip before you. They refer to each other and the problems they encountered, you (or at least I) really feel like part of this game world.
The zombies are also a nice mix. You have ‘the horde’ as the game calls them. These are just regular people infected with ‘the green flu.’ The game even has these random people show up dressed as you would expect for the environment you are in. You travel past an ambushed military convoy and you see zombies in military outfits. In the hospital you are attacked by zombies in those hospital gowns. You see police officers, people in hazmat suits, mechanics and even road workers. The horde itself is quite interesting to see in action, for all that you are really just shooting them to save yourself.
But in addition to these generic zombies the game adds in some special infected. People who mutated into super monsters. Each game has a list, with there being more in the second one. But each one of these special infected is really well done. From being able to grab a survivor with your tongue to vomiting on a survivor to call up a horde to attack, each special has a nice mix of talents to movement. The vomit guy is slow, large and easily killed. But if he gets you then you are in for ten to twenty seconds of serious aggression to resist. The guy with the tongue is tall, thin and average speed. But he can shoot a long way and pull survivors towards him (away from their friends).
The maps are also very well designed. Ok, I cannot speak too much about Left 4 Dead 1 as I’ve only completed two campaigns. But usually the goal of each section is clear if you get lost. Spotlights, green signs (green exit signs often) arrows and parked cars with headlights still on can quickly guide you to where you are to go. If you just want to run through a map (as some players are want to do) then the twisting curving path is clear. If you like to search through all the corners, you find more gear (more guns, more bombs and so on) as well as bits of story… but you face so many more zombies for doing it.
The game becomes a balancing act. You cannot afford to search every room each game, as you would draw so many more zombies thanks to the AI director. So you pick, do I need to find a healing pack? It is worth looking inside this hotel room to see if there is a health pack in the bathroom? Can we take the time?
So much of the game is random, which for me adds to the replay. If this time you were ambushed by a Tank (Large fast zombie, tough to kill) on the street, when you play it next time you may find two hunters (the tongue guys) or nothing at all. The game adjusts based on how tough you are finding it to progress. If you are coming up on an end of the section and only ten damage has been dealt to that point you will find a tank or at least a horde of zombies waiting. If you are half dead, popping pills for the quick relief and low on ammo you are more likely to find a health kit and some guns.
Valve talks about their AI director as being in control of all this randomness. Thanks to it (or perhaps just Valve’s general coding) I have not found a game unbeatable. I don’t always win, but I have never thought ‘I didn’t stand a chance there.’ Often when the game goes sour and the heroes are getting overwhelmed it is because of a human error. Someone has done something wrong and then it got worse from there. Leaving the room, drawing the horde down on you when you were still fighting off others, throwing a bomb too early or too late. Human errors.
And as we are talking about a game that tells you (happily) how many zombies per hour you have killed, as well as totals up the number of zombie dead at the end of a campaign to balance all of this and make me feel like it was all winnable is no small feat. I kill about 400 zombies an hour. Thanks for asking. That means on average we are killing six and a half zombies a minute. But the game doesn’t feel like a frantic twitch game for me. I’ve seen others with an hourly rate almost double that. For them the game would be a twitch factor eight. It allows both of us to enjoy the game, all the more so if we aren’t in the game actual game playing together :)
I have bought a couple copies of the game, and yet I still feel like I’ve gotten a great value out of it. I bought them when the game was on sale, so I’m still below retail cost but I can see why Left 4 Dead 2 is almost always on Steams top sellers list. Even when it isn’t on sale. (At $19.99 I would still think of the game as great.) I’ve got 14 hours of play in the first game so far and 29.5 hours in the second. I haven’t survived all the campaigns so I’m not going to call either finished. Current value as of October 27, is $4 based on my scale. But I feel it is so much higher.
And because Valve likes its fans so much, they release new material for the game from time to time as well as a weekly mod for left 4 dead 2. There is almost always something new to do. The weekly mod for left 4 dead 2 is called a mutation. This week as I write it they set up the game so it is only a single survivor instead of the four, armed with only a single pistol trying to go through the map facing only horde and one special zombie. For each the character has new dialogue to reflect the fact he is alone and I suspect to point out where you are to go. In the past mods have been four swordmen (only swords), super eight (instead of horde you only face special infected) and others. I don’t play each week to see what they offer, but I sometimes regret that.
Left 4 Dead is a co-op survival first person shooter. You take the roll of one of four survivors of ‘The Green Flu’ which has infected the rest of the people in wherever you are. In the first game the characters are Francis (white stereotypical biker), Bill Overbeck (white Vietnam vet), Zoey (white university student) and Louis (African district accounts manager). And in the second game you have Coach (overweight African male), Ellis (white trash mechanic), Nick (white conman, gambler) and Rochelle (Latin network news reporter).
To be honest they all play the same, with no accounting for physical size or strength making a difference in the game. I usually just let the computer randomly assign me to a character. You learn about the characters and their personalities through little bits of dialogue as the game plays. A character will say out loud which direction the group needs to go in, usually with some in character flavour. ‘I know where we can find a gun shop, it is just down that way’ or similar.
When you play there is always four survivors. If you are going solo then the other three are controlled by the AI. It isn’t a brilliant AI, but they are not harmful to your progress either. Staying out of the way, not shooting you with the shotgun and generally equipped with a very good pathfinding program so that they will keep up with you. If you jump out a window they usually go and find the stairs, but they will be with you when you round a corner and face more zombies.
I have even played this game a bit online with the random match making. I have to give Steam credit here. They say that when it matches it looks for open slots in a game on the same server (to reduce ping times and lag for players) as well as people who match your same style of play. Based on a long list of stats the game tracks. So in my case I like to go slowly, trying for head shots and sharing my health with others. When I do this random match making I find I often get a group that also plays just that way. Playing with friends I am far more likely to get put with someone who kicks down the door, runs in shooting and has to get rescued by myself and others because there was a zombie to the left and right of the door.
I first saw this game when it was a demo up on steam. At that time my wife played about five minutes of the game while I watched… My reaction at the time was ‘Fast zombies? Really?’ Now that I’ve played so much more of the game I am past that issue. In part because they are not zombies so much as ‘infected’ and in part because I really enjoy the game.
I am currently playing the game on 1 gig video card equipped computers and it looks amazing. Each environment has debris that fits with the atmosphere. Going through an apartment building you will see discarded food wrappers, TV’s and alarm clocks. Traveling through back alleyways you see garbage bags, litter and so on. Each room gives you the feeling that the designer came up with a story of what happened here and would happily tell you all about it if asked. I don’t think that actually happened, but you do find a number of staged set pieces that you do feel like the world was happening around the characters.
This is especially true for the second game. The first is set all at night as our heroes try to get out of a city. In the second they have it across a number of different locations and different weather conditions. When you are fighting zombies in the middle of a thunderstorm in a cornfield the game looks so very beautiful.
As it is a zombie survival game you wouldn’t expect a bunch of story beyond go to X point, but they managed to squeeze in a bunch. This is more true in the second game when we see a fictional band created just for the game world, deliver some coke (the drink) to another survivor in exchange for his help and so on. But even in the first game we have little bits of story if you go looking for it. Graffiti on the walls tells you of other survivors who took the trip before you. They refer to each other and the problems they encountered, you (or at least I) really feel like part of this game world.
The zombies are also a nice mix. You have ‘the horde’ as the game calls them. These are just regular people infected with ‘the green flu.’ The game even has these random people show up dressed as you would expect for the environment you are in. You travel past an ambushed military convoy and you see zombies in military outfits. In the hospital you are attacked by zombies in those hospital gowns. You see police officers, people in hazmat suits, mechanics and even road workers. The horde itself is quite interesting to see in action, for all that you are really just shooting them to save yourself.
But in addition to these generic zombies the game adds in some special infected. People who mutated into super monsters. Each game has a list, with there being more in the second one. But each one of these special infected is really well done. From being able to grab a survivor with your tongue to vomiting on a survivor to call up a horde to attack, each special has a nice mix of talents to movement. The vomit guy is slow, large and easily killed. But if he gets you then you are in for ten to twenty seconds of serious aggression to resist. The guy with the tongue is tall, thin and average speed. But he can shoot a long way and pull survivors towards him (away from their friends).
The maps are also very well designed. Ok, I cannot speak too much about Left 4 Dead 1 as I’ve only completed two campaigns. But usually the goal of each section is clear if you get lost. Spotlights, green signs (green exit signs often) arrows and parked cars with headlights still on can quickly guide you to where you are to go. If you just want to run through a map (as some players are want to do) then the twisting curving path is clear. If you like to search through all the corners, you find more gear (more guns, more bombs and so on) as well as bits of story… but you face so many more zombies for doing it.
The game becomes a balancing act. You cannot afford to search every room each game, as you would draw so many more zombies thanks to the AI director. So you pick, do I need to find a healing pack? It is worth looking inside this hotel room to see if there is a health pack in the bathroom? Can we take the time?
So much of the game is random, which for me adds to the replay. If this time you were ambushed by a Tank (Large fast zombie, tough to kill) on the street, when you play it next time you may find two hunters (the tongue guys) or nothing at all. The game adjusts based on how tough you are finding it to progress. If you are coming up on an end of the section and only ten damage has been dealt to that point you will find a tank or at least a horde of zombies waiting. If you are half dead, popping pills for the quick relief and low on ammo you are more likely to find a health kit and some guns.
Valve talks about their AI director as being in control of all this randomness. Thanks to it (or perhaps just Valve’s general coding) I have not found a game unbeatable. I don’t always win, but I have never thought ‘I didn’t stand a chance there.’ Often when the game goes sour and the heroes are getting overwhelmed it is because of a human error. Someone has done something wrong and then it got worse from there. Leaving the room, drawing the horde down on you when you were still fighting off others, throwing a bomb too early or too late. Human errors.
And as we are talking about a game that tells you (happily) how many zombies per hour you have killed, as well as totals up the number of zombie dead at the end of a campaign to balance all of this and make me feel like it was all winnable is no small feat. I kill about 400 zombies an hour. Thanks for asking. That means on average we are killing six and a half zombies a minute. But the game doesn’t feel like a frantic twitch game for me. I’ve seen others with an hourly rate almost double that. For them the game would be a twitch factor eight. It allows both of us to enjoy the game, all the more so if we aren’t in the game actual game playing together :)
I have bought a couple copies of the game, and yet I still feel like I’ve gotten a great value out of it. I bought them when the game was on sale, so I’m still below retail cost but I can see why Left 4 Dead 2 is almost always on Steams top sellers list. Even when it isn’t on sale. (At $19.99 I would still think of the game as great.) I’ve got 14 hours of play in the first game so far and 29.5 hours in the second. I haven’t survived all the campaigns so I’m not going to call either finished. Current value as of October 27, is $4 based on my scale. But I feel it is so much higher.
And because Valve likes its fans so much, they release new material for the game from time to time as well as a weekly mod for left 4 dead 2. There is almost always something new to do. The weekly mod for left 4 dead 2 is called a mutation. This week as I write it they set up the game so it is only a single survivor instead of the four, armed with only a single pistol trying to go through the map facing only horde and one special zombie. For each the character has new dialogue to reflect the fact he is alone and I suspect to point out where you are to go. In the past mods have been four swordmen (only swords), super eight (instead of horde you only face special infected) and others. I don’t play each week to see what they offer, but I sometimes regret that.