Interestingly, the experience of playing Left 4 Dead, in game terms, has more in common with an afternoon in the dungeons of Gauntlet, pressing back endless waves of fleet-footed enemies fouling four different environments, than with Valve's other multiplayer products to date. You press forwards with three other players, taking down the undead with carefree indifference, competing for kills and keeping each other alive. It's delicious, intense and compelling multiplayer. Cam and I get out hands dirty in this conversational review. Your thoughts, Cam?
Cam: Oh man, Left 4 Dead is a heart attack. That's the only way I can describe it. This is some seriously intense action. The comparison to Gauntlet is spot-on, Patch – this is Gauntlet for a New Generation. In an oblique way it also reminds me of Doom and Doom II. Because those game utilised sprite-based enemies, id was able to throw huge numbers of them at us at once. That changed when gaming went 3D, and I really missed that intensity. Left 4 Dead brings it back. You're literally swamped by zombies in this game, and not in a Dead Rising 'you can run through them if you want' way. These zombies are fast and angry. Oh so angry. And they come right at you.
You'll be walking down an empty corridor, and realise that something has changed – a malevolent susurrus rises in the background, before... AAAARGH! - ten, twenty, thirty zombies are all sprinting down the corridor at you. Like I said, a heart attack. It's even cooler in the open outdoor environments. What was once a spooky, gutted city street, for instance, transforms into an instant battlefield as zombies leap down from the rooftops, climb chain-link fences and burst through doors to come get some sweet, sweet brains. As the game so aptly says: "Here they come..."
-
www.ign.com
Subject: Left 4 Dead 
Sun Nov 23, 2008 12:52 pm
