While we wait for Left 4 Dead 2 to come out I thought I’d take a look at its original, known for its creepy atmosphere and diverse zombie sounds (there’s too many to count).
His face is about to be blown off...
As soon as you start playing Left 4 Dead you realise that it’s quite repetitive but you look past that when start blowing zombies heads off. The level design is great and each time you’re placed into a different environment with different obstacles. The different levels include:
- The Sewers
- The Hospital
- The Farms
- The Offices
- The Forest
Guns and Extras:
There are only two major problems that I could harp on for ages. There are only six guns. That’s right. Six! There’s a Pistol, Uzi, M-16, Sniper Rifle, Pump-Action Shotgun and Automatic Shotgun. If there were more than that the game would be fantastic, especially if you could customize them. The other is not being able to look down the sight of your gun. I think I say this because I play a lot of games like COD 4 and 5 I always think of it as being essential. I don’t know what you think of this. Tell me!
I find the Automatic Shotgun the best to use as it provides a one-hit-kill in most instances. The extras are pretty good. In certain areas you get to use a mini gun which shreds the zombies, killing them easily. The pipe bomb attracts all zombies to it and blows up, which makes it very useful for when a horde comes. Molotov cocktails are nothing special and the petrol and gasoline tanks are useless as you can’t carry them with a gun.
Zombies:
There isn’t a very big variety of zombies, but you don’t really notice whose head you’ve destroyed. Besides from the normal zombies, there are boomers: who vomit in your face, hunters: that pounce on you, smokers: who wrap their tongue around you, tanks: that rush at you and witches: who go crazy when you wake them. The guns make a satisfying crunch when you shoot zombies and the zombies have very varied sound effects. The game is classified as horror though you only get the occasional shock when something like a hunter jumps on you. The witches are easily the most challenging opponent because as soon as you shoot them once they rush at you and knock you down. You then have to finish it off and let your teammates revive you. But after you defeat a witch a horde of running zombies will appear.
AI:
The AI are extremely annoying. They are Louis, Bill, Zoey and Francis. They shout unnecessary things like “reloading” and “pipe bomb” which really becomes a pain. It seems like they have to explain everything they do. It’s great fun killing the AI at the start of the level and trying to make it through the level by yourself.
From left: Smoker, Boomer, Witch, Hunter, Tank
Graphics:
Left 4 Dead was made back in November last year and the graphics are not good. Everything is quite blocky and compared to other games back then the graphics are horrible. It’s a shame a game this good is let down by these graphics. It works fine on my ancient PC at home which can’t even play games like COD 4 made all the way back in 2007.
Difficulty:
I’ll make no mistake in saying this, but Left 4 Dead is easy as pie on the Normal difficulty settings. I’ve only ever died a couple of times. Winch it up to the top level and it becomes a bit of a challenge but is still easy. I reckon it’s the way the zombies don’t notice you’re there until you shoot or shine your light on them that makes it easy. It’s not challenging and they should have made a higher difficulty setting.
Controls:
The controls are simple, easy to use and remember but I still wanted a sprint button. When a tank sees you, all you want to do is run and the game won’t let you. Hopefully Left 4 Dead 2 will have a sprint button.
OVERALL
Good game with in-depth gameplay, level design and lots of zombies (wish it was the same for guns). It gets quite repetitive and you might find yourself putting it down for this reason. It will be interesting to see what standard the sequel sets.
Rating: 8/10 Good
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