Left 4 Dead

Has anyone played the Left 4 Dead demo yet? It’s incredible. I’ve played all of the Resident Evil series games, and they can’t really compare to the sheer terror of hundreds of zombies breaking down doors to tear your flesh apart. It’s visceral, gritty, and intense. A must have.

The game is developed around the Counter Strike engine, and uses an AI Director to determine where to spawn everything. For instance, if you’re doing really well, the next corridor may have 50 zombies sprinting towards you. If you’re doing horribly, however, you may only find a dozen. Health packs and weapon locations are also dependent on your level of success.

It works almost exactly like it is advertized to do. I’ve played it four times, starting from the first level, and the enemies are generally random. There are certain amounts of time that pass before you face a zombie horde, however, and from my experience, that remains constant depending on your level of difficulty. As for the most common special enemies: Smokers can emit a toxic gas and bind you with their tongues for the other zombies to attack you, Boomers explode and vomit a zombie-attracting substance on you, and Hunters crawl around, can jump 20 feet, and cling to ceilings. If a Hunter jumps on you, you’re probably gonna get raped.

You can read more about the game and its enemies at the wiki entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_4_Dead).

You can download the demo through Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/530/) or just buy it for X360 and PC on Nov 18.

360 has the demo as well.

I’ve been playing it quite a bit on steam and it is pretty awesome. Difficulties less than Expert are boring as hell, though. Far too easy. Expert is probably my favorite game I’ve played in a long time. I don’t think things are varied quite enough for my tastes, but that’s probably because the demo is only about 1 and 2/3rds of a level out of 20 in the game, plus they’re sure to add more in a later patch. It’s especially fun with a group of friends who all have mics.

Seeing as I’m universally short on friends, I’ll pass. But it definitely looks thrilling. I haven’t played any demos, but I like the general idea and execution as shown.

To me the game seems generic, but who am I to judge. I haven’t had an opportunity to check it out, but perhaps I might just to see what the fuss is about.

The game looks sweet, graphics, interface, and all that. The music is pretty good too.

I played the Demo. From what I played, it’s really a game that you can only enjoy with other people. Yes it’s very well made. However, the frantic fun only comes when you’re playing Online or Co-op, and trying to survive with your friends or random people Online with headsets.

Kudos to Valve for including a Single Player game, but Left4Dead is a full Multi-Player experience.

One of the extremely few games I wish were on PS3.

Oh well.

One of the extremely few games I wish were on PS3.

Oh well.

Shame Gabe Newell thinks that…
the PS3 blows and that "I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a ‘do over’. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it.’"

:3

but really Left 4 Dead is so good it should be on every console so everyone can enjoy it.

He’s entitled to his opinion, of which I am well aware of. I found it out when researching why the PS3 version of the Orange Box was buggy and choppy.

Looking forward to it. Valve has not disappointed me yet. I’m still hopelessly addicted to TF2.

PS3 version has been announced to be in development. I forget where I read that, but it was a reputable source.

I just hope that EA fired the team that ported The Orange Box.

EA has been showing some love to the PS3 lately. As for the Orange Box, I’ve only played Portal, which is the only reason why I got the Orange box. I suppose I should give TF and HL a chance, but even with Resistance 2, Silent Hill Homecoming, MotorStorm Pacific Rift and the Simpsons Game (it was $10. that’s why I got it) in my new games list, I can’t seem to put LittleBigPlanet down.

back on topic…

Left 4 Dead has intrested me. I like the idea of zombies running at me like 28 Days/Week Later. That’s got to be some insane gaming. If Nos and I are lucky, they’ll give the PS3 port the same kind of love Bioshock got (but not bloody likely)