Summer vacation gives me a lot of free time to play Left 4 Dead, an amazing online FPS shooter that combines my two loves namely video games and zombie movies. Finally an online zombie game. The idea of playing a zombie survival game online has been hard to do. The first real crack at this was a video game I recall called Resident Evil: Outbreak. Outbreak used traditional Resident Evil survival horror gameplay which was perhaps its biggest flaw. "Tank" controls made combat hard and the game involved the usual nonsensical puzzle solving to progress. You get to control different survivors with unique characteristics and abilities. Sadly, online gaming for the consoles was not yet fully developed then even more so since Outbreak made its debut on the PlayStation 2 which had inferior online capabilities compared to Microsoft's Xbox.
Left 4 dead is on the PC which makes online gaming a snap. It is an FPS so it's more action packed and gritty than the the old Outbreak. The horror and thrill comes from battling the zombies or "infected" as they are called as well as "special infected" which have unique mutations. Oh and unlike Outbreak which uses traditional and by traditional, I mean boring old zombies which shamble and sometimes speed walk hilariously towards you. Needless to say, they stopped being scary back in the nineties. L4d uses modern year 2000 zombies which run faster than you ever could in real life. No puzzle solving, find the key bullshit here. Pretty straightforward. Get from start to the safe house. A moron could get it which is good since this is online play we're talking about here.
About the online aspect, L4D is a COOPERATIVE online game. To get an idea how much this game focuses on the power of friendship, you could get pinned down or strangled and it is impossible to escape unless your teammates bail your sorry ass. In Outbreak, you could theoretically solo the whole damn game but having teammates along sort of, kind of helps? In L4D, loners die. Period. Which brings me to one of the best and worst aspects of L4d, the online play.
There is a co-op mode where you and some guys simply fight through one of the four levels. Yawn. The best part is the versus mode where two teams of four take turns as the survivors, who must, well, survive and the special infected who have to stop them. The team who makes it furthest or has the most health when they complete the map get the most points. Pretty simple a moron could get it. Speaking of morons the worst part of the online game as the same as the worst part of living in this planet are the people. Aside from the usual griefer assholes who derive pleasure from intentionally ruining the game for everyone there are people who simply suck. Then there are those who quit the game the minute things get tough. I can understand quitting a game when the team you have really sucks but they show some class at least, they should quit when the round is over so the team can wait for a player who actually has some balls to take the quitters place.
The bad part is the game has only 4 campaigns and only 2 are for versus mode. This month, there will be a download which adds the two other campaigns for versus and a new survival mode. This is good news. Despite the assholes, I love this game and so should you.
