[360] Left 4 Dead (8.5)

Left 4 Dead is a zombie survival game where you and 3 other characters work to escape the hordes through one of 4 different scenarios, divided into chapters: a hospital, a church, an airport and an abandoned farmhouse. Each scenario culminates in a finale where you have to hole up and survive wave after wave of the zombie hordes waiting for a rescue vehicle to arrive.

Created by Valve, of Half-Life and Portal fame, it is a deliciously well created game. It is a solid shooter with well balanced gameplay. However, where it really shines is in the co-op elements. Personally, I am very glad that co-op has become increasingly prevalent in games lately. I credit the Gears of War franchise for it's revival. It's nice to play with people rather than against them.

GAMEPLAY
The game requires co-op game play and punishes people who try to go it alone. The "Special" infected (boomers, smokers, hunters, and tanks... more on that later) incapacitate the character until he (or she) is rescued by another player. People who rush and don't cooperate quickly die. Zombies are fast, they respawn, and they don't let up.

The health system works much like Gears of War. You can take so much damage until you are incapacitated where you will slowly bleed out until a comrade helps you. However, there is no automatic health regeneration... but health can be regained through the use of med-packs. Should you die, however, you will enter a spectator mode until you get to a point where you can be "rescued" by a surviving player.

Weapon options are limited. You can have an uzi or a pump shotgun which can later be upgraded to an M16 and a semi-auto shottie. There's also a sniper rifle, but it's pretty worthless due to the speed of the game (imho). You have two options for "grenade-like" devices: a pipe bomb and molotov cocktail. The pipe bomb beeped and flashed and attracted the zombie hordes to attack it rather than you. Molotovs set anything and everything of fire, doing constant damage to tanks, witches, or anything else hard to kill.

Valve also did a good job at mixing it up. Each time you play the game enemy spawns, item locations and horde frenzies are randomized keeping you always on guard and the game play (somewhat) unpredictable. This makes going through the game multiple times still very fun.

THE INFECTED
There are five "Special" infected that each have a unique characteristic.

Hunters pounce over long distances, incapacitate them and tear away at the survivors health. A survivor has to shoot or punch a Hunter off of his prey to save the victim from certain death.

Smokers strangle their prey using their exceptionally long tongues (much like a zombie-sniper).

Boomers spew bile upon the survivors, obscuring their vision and summoning a zombie horde to swarm upon those who've been vomited on. Also, when shot they explode -- further covering anyone in the immediate vicinity with horde-attracting bile.

Tanks take a heck of a lot of ammo to take down - usually a whole teams worth. They are strong, they can swat cars around, pick up rocks and throw them almost instantly incapacitating the survivors.

Witches sit and cry, but when startled they will attack and instantly incapacitate the one who startled them. They, however, can often be avoided.

VERSUS
In Versus mode, players divide up into two teams: Survivors vs. Infected. Each team plays through one of the 4 scenarios and gets a shot at each episode both as the infected and the survivors. They are scored by overall health, number of survivors and how much of the map they completed. The survivors have to survive, the infected have to stop them.

Survivors cannot respawn. The infected can respawn, although there is a 20 second delay after each death and death comes VERY quickly to the infected. As the infected you can play as a Boomer, a Hunter, or a Smoker. Occasionally (usually once per chapter) someone will spawn as the Tank.

ACHIEVEMENTS
The achievements in this game were very fun to get (most of them, anyway). Most of them are true challenges like defeating a Tank single-handedly or beating the game without using a med-pack or no-one committing a friendly-fire foul.

Some of them would've been downright impossible if it weren't for a glitch in the game invite system that allowed players invited into a game already in progress to get "credit" for being in the game the entire time. The most difficult ones for me were defeating Blood Harvest on Expert, "Nothing Special" where you don't take damage from ANY special infected, and "Untouchables" where no survivor takes damage after calling the rescue vehicle.

FLAWS
This game has a few flaws, most of which Valve has fixed over the few months that it's been out. There were glitches that allowed people to use ladders to avoid attack, smokers to ensnare through doors, etc. Some of them were kind of fun. You could melee a mounted machinegun and get it to shoot you a very far distance if you jumped off of it.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Left 4 Dead does a great job of recreating an intense, somewhat campy zombie film. Each scenario is set up in this way, complete with a movie poster and credits at the end. I really love the game (especially now that it has been patched). I am hoping that Valve will release more levels for the game as the first 4 get a little tired after a while. Still, it is well worth $59.