The zombie apocalypse is coming. Surely, we all know this and plainly accept it as fact. The real problem is that we just don't know when it's coming. So, until that day comes, we have Left4Dead to tide us over. Read on for my impressions of the demo.
Left4Dead is a multiplayer, co-operative FPS for PC and 360, developed by Valve South (formerly Turtle Rock Studios). You, and three other people (known as "Survivors") are attempting to survive the zombie ("Infected") apocalypse.
The demo is short. Really short. I'd guess that it takes roughly twenty minutes to complete the two-level demo. What's amazing is that I've played it for about nine to ten hours. Thanks to a feature known as the "A.I. Director", every time you go through the level, the experience is different. Health packs and weapons aren't always in the same spots. Spawning locations of the mutated zombies and normal zombie waves are changed. Furthermore, the more you doddle around, the more likely it is that the A.I. Director will hit you with a wave of zombies.
The combination of all this leads to a tension-filled pace that requires you to move fast enough to keep the zombies from overwhelming you, but not so fast that the group falls apart. Working with three other people to do this can be a bit of a challenge, especially when the game has a strong tendency to punish those who run off on their own. For instance, if I left the group to go find some items, I could be pinned down by a boss Infected known as a Hunter.
The Hunter moves fast and can pin down a Survivor in a matter of seconds, but to balance this, the Hunter also has a small amount of health, making him vulnerable while he has his Survivor pinned. When you're alone, he's deadly, but with a watchful teammate nearby, he doesn't stand much of a chance. It's a simple mechanic, but it's one of many that Valve has implemented to encourage groups to stay together if they want to be successful.
I said that each time through a level is a different experience, but that's not to say that the game changes wildly every time. After some time, you willl get to know how the A.I. Director works and how to almost predict where certain groups of enemies will show up and in what manner. The true beauty, though, is how the game reacts to your decisions on what it initially threw at you.
Even though the game plays like there are a host of scripted events, they are constantly in flux. I certainly don't want to make the claim that this is on the level of chaos theory or anything, but one simple event can lead to a great deal of possibilities, creating the kind of tension that you should want in a game about surviving the zombie apocalypse.
In the example of the Hunter attacking me when I ran off from the group, let's say that my team came running to my rescue. A frantic, disorganized attempt to save me is now in full swing, when a swarm of zombies starts rushing in from the windows of a building. Focus turns to the swarm while one person takes care of the Hunter on me. In the middle of that swarm is a Boomer (another "boss Infected") that catches my other two teammates off-guard, vomiting its zombie-attracting bile all over them. Now, zombies are swarming in from multiple directions, overwhelming the two bile-covered Survivors, while myself and the teammate who rescued me are desperately trying to fend them off from a distance. And this all began with a lone Hunter attack.
This is sort of a typical encounter in Left4Dead. Of course, it could have played out entirely different. That Hunter may never have attacked; or maybe it could have attacked, but with none of the follow-up mess that ensued. These sorts of things just happen in the game, and it's up to the group to react and work together as a team to deal with them.
Considering how much time I've spent playing this short demo, I cannot see myself getting much sleep when the full game comes out on the 18th.
Left4Dead is a multiplayer, co-operative FPS for PC and 360, developed by Valve South (formerly Turtle Rock Studios). You, and three other people (known as "Survivors") are attempting to survive the zombie ("Infected") apocalypse.
The demo is short. Really short. I'd guess that it takes roughly twenty minutes to complete the two-level demo. What's amazing is that I've played it for about nine to ten hours. Thanks to a feature known as the "A.I. Director", every time you go through the level, the experience is different. Health packs and weapons aren't always in the same spots. Spawning locations of the mutated zombies and normal zombie waves are changed. Furthermore, the more you doddle around, the more likely it is that the A.I. Director will hit you with a wave of zombies.
The combination of all this leads to a tension-filled pace that requires you to move fast enough to keep the zombies from overwhelming you, but not so fast that the group falls apart. Working with three other people to do this can be a bit of a challenge, especially when the game has a strong tendency to punish those who run off on their own. For instance, if I left the group to go find some items, I could be pinned down by a boss Infected known as a Hunter.
The Hunter moves fast and can pin down a Survivor in a matter of seconds, but to balance this, the Hunter also has a small amount of health, making him vulnerable while he has his Survivor pinned. When you're alone, he's deadly, but with a watchful teammate nearby, he doesn't stand much of a chance. It's a simple mechanic, but it's one of many that Valve has implemented to encourage groups to stay together if they want to be successful.
I said that each time through a level is a different experience, but that's not to say that the game changes wildly every time. After some time, you willl get to know how the A.I. Director works and how to almost predict where certain groups of enemies will show up and in what manner. The true beauty, though, is how the game reacts to your decisions on what it initially threw at you.
Even though the game plays like there are a host of scripted events, they are constantly in flux. I certainly don't want to make the claim that this is on the level of chaos theory or anything, but one simple event can lead to a great deal of possibilities, creating the kind of tension that you should want in a game about surviving the zombie apocalypse.
In the example of the Hunter attacking me when I ran off from the group, let's say that my team came running to my rescue. A frantic, disorganized attempt to save me is now in full swing, when a swarm of zombies starts rushing in from the windows of a building. Focus turns to the swarm while one person takes care of the Hunter on me. In the middle of that swarm is a Boomer (another "boss Infected") that catches my other two teammates off-guard, vomiting its zombie-attracting bile all over them. Now, zombies are swarming in from multiple directions, overwhelming the two bile-covered Survivors, while myself and the teammate who rescued me are desperately trying to fend them off from a distance. And this all began with a lone Hunter attack.
This is sort of a typical encounter in Left4Dead. Of course, it could have played out entirely different. That Hunter may never have attacked; or maybe it could have attacked, but with none of the follow-up mess that ensued. These sorts of things just happen in the game, and it's up to the group to react and work together as a team to deal with them.
Considering how much time I've spent playing this short demo, I cannot see myself getting much sleep when the full game comes out on the 18th.