Left 4 Dead - Xbox 360

Last night we beat the living shit out of Left 4 Dead. If you're reading this blog and have the means to play this game- you should have bought it already. If not, go buy it NOW.

Left 4 Dead is a First Person Shooter by Valve Software. There is no storyline for the game other than a war veteran, a geeky black guy, some biker dude, and a chick are all stranded in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. There are four scenarios in the game with five chapters each. City, town, airport, and train-tracks- each one consisting of you getting the fuck out with all your friends alive. Every time you play a level the enemy locations and item locations randomly change, so every play-through is slightly different. The better you play the game, the harder it gets- so if you're kicking ass a special zombie might just come along to ruin the fun. The game plays so that no matter what there are four characters, you being one of them and the rest played by bots. Four player co-op brings out the most in the game as communication brings out its realism- defending each other as a mass onslaught of zombies sprints towards you from every directions.

There are a number of different types of zombies in this game- each one with a unique annoyance.
Regs are everywhere. They limp around slowly until they see you, hear you, or smell you- then they sprint full speed. They rage in few to hundreds and are extremely easy to kill- but don't let them surround you or you're food. Hunters are these hooded zombies that can crawl on walls and leap great distances. They can jump on you and slash your face, you can only get out if a team-mate saves you. Smokers are these tall lanky zombies with long ass tongues. From a great distance they can wrap their licker around your neck and pull you towards them, from which only a team-mate can save you from. Boomers are these fat ass zombies who puke on you and explode with about one shot. If you get puked on a huge wave of zombies will spawn and focus on attacking you. It's hard to defend yourself as a huge glob of green goo fills your screen, hindering your view. Witches are these bitch zombies who cry. When you hear them turn off your lights and try to sneak around them. If you wake them up then they'll come strait for you and tear your shit up. Tanks are the boss zombies of the game and only show up at certain times. They endure a lot of firepower before they go down and can break down walls. If you get hit by them your health will go down substantially and will knock you back quite a distance. Unload on them as fast as possible.

Your possible arsenal is a pistol (dual wield if you find another), two types of shotgun- pump action and automatic, two types of machine gun- uzi and a rifle, and a sniper rifle. There are also two bombs; molotov cocktail, useful for swarms, and a pipe bomb which beeps when you throw it, attracting the zeds away from you towards it. You can carry one primary weapon and your pistols which have unlimited ammo, one bomb, a health pack, and some pills which only keep your health up for a limited amount of time for quick relief.

You can become the Zombies in multi-player. The computer randomly generates what type of special zombie you're going to be, but when you spawn you're this invisible ghost. You must go to an area where the humans can't see you and aren't currently engaging. After you spawn you can search for green markings that allow you to climb up or break through walls. You have two attacks as a zombie- left trigger and right trigger, left usually being close range and right long. This is extremely fun in a huge group.

I felt like there should have been more guns in this game- flame thrower, dual uzi, rocket launcher- what about good ol' regular grenades? For a Valve game, some aspects of Left 4 Dead feel empty. The scenarios don't take much to get through on simpler difficulties and may make you feel like you're not getting your money's worth. I get the feeling this game is meant to be played on harder difficulties to make the reality of an outbreak stronger. As far as I know there are no unlockables and all the scenarios are unlocked from the start- so there's absolutely no progress to the game. I hope Valve releases some intense downloadable content soon.

Left 4 Dead does a very good job at what it's trying to do: be a well-done multi-player zombie game.