The Verdict:
| Gameplay: |  |
| Graphics: |  |
| Audio: | |
| Longevity: |  |
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Left 4 Dead
| Genre | Survival Horror |
| Developer | Valve |
| Publisher | Valve |
| Modes | Single/Multiplayer |
| Rating | BBFC 18 |
| Released | 21.11.2008 |
The zombie apocalypse. Something that has been rumoured for years, something that people always talk about, something that will actually never happen. Well as a matter of fact it already has! Over 10 million times!
With 3 of your friends, you can experience the zombie apocalypse time and time again from the comfort of your sofa, lucky for you though, there’s no pain! Because it’s all in Valve’s Left 4 Dead.
From the very beginning you’re dropped into hospitals, fields, towns and bridges to fight your way through the zombie horde and reach safety. With co-op being the main emphasis of the game it’s recommended that you play with friends, although these can be replaced with AI, it’s just not as fun. You choose from one of four characters before being dropped in to your chosen campaign. And so it begins, your fight for freedom!
Ready up with your Uzi, health packs, shotguns and ammo and prepare. You’ll find yourself running around on Valve’s brilliant source engine and killing zombies pretty soon. The gameplay is certainly ranged and you can choose from easy, normal, advanced and expert difficulties. This has added a great bit of variety to the game, you can either blast through with no trouble at all on easy, it’s just a bit of relaxing fun. If you think you’re up to it however, you can go for expert. It’s only for the most battle tested players and will leave you dead in just 4 hits. So it’s a game for all different kinds of people so anybody can buy and play it!
A great selling point, as mentioned before, is the source engine that the game runs on. The in game mechanics are fast and sensitive but you won’t find yourself struggling to get used to it. So once again, it’s a game for everybody and it doesn’t stop there! The controls are different but you won’t spend long getting used to them. The left trigger will melee, the B button will reload, the X button will perform specials such as opening doors and grabbing items. An overall good layout but if you’re used to a Call of Duty or Gears of War layout, just be aware that you’ll be playing differently.
There is another huge selling point to this game though, and this is a big one! It’s called the AI director and it is quite literally game changing. It basically means that every single play though will be different, zombies will be placed in different positions, in different amounts and with different attack procedures. It will also affect which special enemies you encounter and can determine whether you pass or fail the objective. No two play throughs of a single campaign are identical, all thanks to the Ai director.
Now, if you’ve got this far in to the review and thought “oh blah! It’s just a normal zombie game with fancy features” then you’ve never been more wrong! To start with the zombies themselves aren’t normal! They come in huge amounts and can run at huge speeds, they all have different characteristics but they all have the same intent; to kill you! Now that’s just the normal zombies! Special zombies will appear throughput the game at random intervals. They range from vile-spewing, explosive fat men to ultra tough massacres! They can dramatically change your tactics, making you really think and they add that little bit more to an already awesome experience!
That pretty much sums up the gameplay. It’s an ultra intense, fast paced zombie killer with features that make sure it’s never the same game twice! But, as any Xbox gamer knows, there’s always something extra to your aim for in a game – achievements! The Left 4 Dead achievements are brilliant fun. There are 50 to aim for and the list is one of the best out there. All of the achievements are possible but fun, they’re not too easy and there’s even some that will test the most hardened of gamer but each and every one is fun to aim for. They force you to do what the AI director and can’t do and they force you to play the game differently, the game never gets old with Left 4 Dead!
Graphically the game is very good too. The detail hasn’t been taken too over the top but it isn’t exactly awful. Where attention to detail is required it is done well, for example; the boomers are covered in blisters so disgusting you would believe they are real. But the main part, where the graphics are really taken advantage of, where it wouldn’t be fun without good graphics is blood and gore. Every kill, every pipe bomb and every glorious explosion will result in blood everywhere! Blood so red, so flowing and so violently spurting, you could believe it really just hit you in the face.
It’s not just graphics where the game wins either! The sounds are quite literally game-changing. Where ultimate survival skills are of upmost importance, the sound of a screaming hunter could determine whether you actually make it to the end of the level. So turn up the speakers and listen closely, because this is one of the games where you need it.
Of course, when you spend your hard earned cash on something you want to make sure it’s going to last long enough to warrant your purchase. With Left 4 Dead this really isn’t a worry. Although 4 campaigns at about an hour long doesn’t seem like much it certainly is. Every play through is completely different and let’s face it, co-op never gets old. Throw in this and a whole online versus mode; you’re on to a winner!
Conclusion? Crazy, Bloody, Gory, Insane, and literally mind-blowing zombicidal fun! Left 4 Dead is quite possibly the best and most different zombie game available on the market and you can never really get bored! This is one of the many must-haves for a Xbox 360 owner. Don’t be a zombie, try it out!