AMAZING!by Anonymous

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March 29, 2009: The developers at Valve managed to do something with this game that the vast majority of video game designers seem to miss entirely: the get into the heads of the gamers. The thing that makes this game so successful - and I have never seen any game that succeeds in its goal more than this one - is that they take great pains to understand the psychology of the player and design the game around that concept, creating a game that makes the players WANT to work together (if they do not, it is almost certain that one or more of them will die). "Left 4 Dead" puts the player in the role of one of four survivors of an infection that has ravaged the world and turned ordinary people into "rage"-type zombies (these are not undead zombies in the George Romero sense, but rather more along the lines of "28 Days Later" virally-infected zombies). The goal of the four survivors is to find rescue -- evacuation from the wrecked, abandoned society around them. In order for them to survive, they must work as a team. Separation from one's teammates spells certain doom for the one separated.

The game offers four separate campaigns for either single-player (playing with 3 other computer-controlled teammates) or online co-op mode. Left 4 Dead makes use of Valve's online game network, Steam, and has a feature that allows players to be matched with other online players for these campaigns. It also allows the player to play with friends, who are often players the user has met during co-op sessions and work well together. The campaigns themselves take place in four separate settings: a wrecked, abandoned urban hospital; a zombie-infested rural landscape; a doomed seaside town whose inhabitants made an unsuccessful last stand against the zombie horde; and a bombed-out airport located in the heart of an industrial park. Each campaign takes on average 45 minutes to an hour to complete, and each individual campaign is divided into sections, in which the goal of the survivors is to make it to the next "safe house" for supplies and medical aid. The campaigns play out very much like the typical zombie movie (in fact, each one begins with a load screen that features a movie poster with its own little movie trailer tag line).

The survivors do not just fight the stereotypical zombies (who themselves are capable of overwhelming the team when they rush en masse): they also must fight the "special" infected, who can immobilize a player and leave them to the mercy of his/her teammates to aid them (if they don't, that player will die). There are many other dynamic elements of the game that are designed to force players to work together. If they don't, they will simply die. And this is the brilliance of the developers: to create a game that causes the players to WANT to stick together and work cooperatively. And though there are only four campaigns, the dynamic game system ensures that every game is distinctly different from the others. This game is seriously addictive and quite simply the best I've ever seen in terms of multiplayer experience. I highly recommend it! As a side note, included with the game is a "designers' commentary that allows the player to walk through one of the campaigns without the zombies attacking him/her while listening to the designers' thought processes about specific game elements in developing this wonderful game. I also highly recommend spending the time to do...

Simply the Bestby Grago

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January 31, 2009: Game developer Valve - best known for their Half Life series and Source gaming engine that created such masterpieces as Counter Strike, Team Fortress and Day of Defeat - strikes gold again with this multiplayer game that takes the zombie movie genre and runs with it. Playing as one of four "survivors", you must make your way across cities, suburbs and rural areas to escape the zombie hordes that have trapped you and your comrades with seemingly no way out. In each of the four scenarios (Valve is likely to upload more scenarios in the future) you must make your way to an extraction point where you can be rescued by Helecopter, Plane, Boat or Army APC. To make things a little more interesting, not only will you be facing against zombie hordes (which can suddenly rush you from any direction, even crashing through walls at times) there are also "Boss" infected, who can make your escape even more difficult and hazardous. Each campaign covers five levels and take a little over an hour to finish, making for surprisingly brief gameplay. But with randomly respawning hordes, multiple paths to littered "safe houses" with ammo and health packs and a special versus multiplayer that allows you to play as the Boss infected, there's a lot of replayability in this game that deservedly has received accolades from all over the games industry. If you like multiplayer shooters, zombie movies or games in general. Left 4 Dead is your game.