Left 4 Dead was Valve's next adventure in innovating a seemingly tired idea into something unique by pitting hoards of zombies against humans, but offering co-op, fast enemies and different classes of zombies, making gameplay more diversified than just whacking zombies to death that are as slow as... well, really slow. Left 4 Dead is a 1st-person shooter.
Gameplay: 7.0
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
I'll give Valve credit in the sense that they innovated an idea, once again, and turned it into a popular game.
I, however, didn't care very much for the gameplay as it can easily become annoying and monotonous.
There are several game modes - campaign, multiplayer and survival. All of which can be played by 4 players (8 players in multiplayer), or any combination of players and computers. The goal of the humans is to get from their starting point to their extraction point, while zombies and special classes of super zombies try to slow them down and/or kill them.
The different classes of zombies can do a lot of things, such as pounce on the humans, throw up on them (yummy!), strangle them from long range or just be an all-out monster and go crazy on people.. assuming they don't really know how to fight you.
It sounds like a fun idea, but there are several nagging problems.
As the humans, zombies are all over you, ALL THE TIME. It's very irritating to turn around and have 20 zombies all ganging up on you while you're often helpless and wondering where the hell your teammates are.
The computer teammates that play as the humans are awful at the game, too. They will not make any progress toward the extraction point unless the non-computer teammate advances. They are somewhat quick to react but have the awareness of a goldfish, otherwise.
As the humans, your teammates will either be random people online, friends or AI. More often than not, they're not your friends, and thus, they are terrible teammates. It's frustrating enough getting mutilated by zombies, but when your teammates won't do much to help it can make for a nearly unbearable game.
Scoring in multiplayer is as random as ever, too. You get points for making progress, finishing the level and finishing the level with a particular amount of health. The problem is, it's way too all-or-nothing. If you finish the level with even one person alive, it's somewhere around 200+ points, up to around 700 if all of your teammates finish. If you die at any point, even 1 step outside of the finish line, you won't make it over 100.
Plus, the games in multiplayer are way too long. One game of a multiplayer match is easily going to last 30 minutes since you alternate doing the entire campaign level, one section at a time. I'd appreciate it more if matches were around 10 minutes, which is customary for a shooter.
I thought survival was the most fun mode (at least in theory), but again, is crippled by terrible teammates. In survival you're supposed to hole up in an area and defend yourself as an endless wave of zombies come after you. Very often, non-computer teammates will take 10 minutes setting up their plan of defense and die in the first 30 seconds. It gets boring. And computer teammates are already unresponsive and have no concept of strategy, so they die quickly, too. Plus, there's just way too many damn zombies, and there are a few glitches in the game to assure almost infinite survival. I played a few fun and memorable survival games though, and I'm typically a defensive game player, so it catered to me reasonably well.
As a side note, the survival pack is a free add-on that can be downloaded through Xbox Live.
Easily the highlight of the game is when playing a multiplayer match as the super zombie classes. You're randomly assigned a class and need to damage the humans or just put them out of their misery, and collaborating these attacks is actually very fun - much more fun than playing as the humans anyway. But, the problem with this is that you can only play the zombies half the time in a multiplayer match, so you have to endure playing as the humans half the time and then play the fun part the other half. Why not just have a full-on zombies mode, where you beat the crap out of computer-controlled humans?
The weapons are as standard as ever - pistol, SMG/assault rifle, shotgun, a useless hunting rifle, grenades, cocktails and that's it. At least the shotgun is pretty fun to use.
A lot of the levels get pretty monotonous, too. They needed more unique gameplay situations other than progressing through a series of long hallways and meeting the same enemies over and over.
Overall, I'm not very impressed and I don't understand why the game is as popular as it is. At least they had good ideas - their execution was off-base in several points, though.
Presentation: 10.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
Very good music. Their audio is blaring and intense, and game-critical information is easily heard with and without dialogue... can't ask for much better than this.
Zombies, environments, everything graphically looks pretty dang good.
Theatrics: 2.5
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
Left 4 Dead really doesn't have a story, other than what one can assume. They pit the same characters in several different scenarios and basically say "get from one point to another without dying".
The highlights of the story are the situations they throw you in while you're waiting for extraction. It's really frantic, but easily attributed to gameplay just as much as anything else.
This game isn't about it's story though, so I'm not letting it's lack of any theatrics influence my overall thoughts about it.
Controls: 7.5
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
This game's controls are just awkward sometimes.
They set the punch button to the left trigger, which I guess makes sense because of how often you need to swat zombies out of your face, but it's hard to get used to since almost no other good games map the melee button there. I'd prefer not having to rely on melee at all because there shouldn't be a million zombies taking swipes at you! Your punching at that point should seem worthless when you're holding a gun.
A lot of their sequences for healing yourself, teammates or getting a teammate off the ground are irritating, too. They should force that person to commit and take whatever damage might come along with it, rather than interrupt them all the time and force them to babysit the situation. It's just another link in the chain of annoying gameplay features this game came with.
Replay Value: 6.5
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
If you really like the game, you're probably going to play it a lot, and a lot of people love this game. I didn't care much for it, and after playing each of the campaigns a couple times, the multiplayer for maybe 10 matches and the survival mode, I had enough and had no desire to put the game back in my Xbox. The gameplay is essentially the same from front to back anyway. There's very little variety and being somebody that strives for variety and fun at the same time, this game just didn't do it for me.
Fun: 6.5
How much fun was the game?
Playing as the Zombies is fun, but you only get that for 50% of the time. In small bursts, the game can be decent, but I wouldn't play it over another competitive shooter or even a zombie-slaying game unless I was in the mood to mangle myself for a little while.
There's always the factor of novelty appeal, and it was fun for the novelty for a few hours.
My Overall Rating: 6.9
Appeal and Recommendations
I seem to be in the severe minority by giving this game low marks. It just doesn't do enough good things well enough to stand out and be something I'd play over basically any other popular online shooter.
Tons of people like it though, for whatever reason. I'd at least check it out on a rental and see if you like it.
Gameplay: 7.0
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
I'll give Valve credit in the sense that they innovated an idea, once again, and turned it into a popular game.
I, however, didn't care very much for the gameplay as it can easily become annoying and monotonous.
There are several game modes - campaign, multiplayer and survival. All of which can be played by 4 players (8 players in multiplayer), or any combination of players and computers. The goal of the humans is to get from their starting point to their extraction point, while zombies and special classes of super zombies try to slow them down and/or kill them.
The different classes of zombies can do a lot of things, such as pounce on the humans, throw up on them (yummy!), strangle them from long range or just be an all-out monster and go crazy on people.. assuming they don't really know how to fight you.
It sounds like a fun idea, but there are several nagging problems.
As the humans, zombies are all over you, ALL THE TIME. It's very irritating to turn around and have 20 zombies all ganging up on you while you're often helpless and wondering where the hell your teammates are.
The computer teammates that play as the humans are awful at the game, too. They will not make any progress toward the extraction point unless the non-computer teammate advances. They are somewhat quick to react but have the awareness of a goldfish, otherwise.
As the humans, your teammates will either be random people online, friends or AI. More often than not, they're not your friends, and thus, they are terrible teammates. It's frustrating enough getting mutilated by zombies, but when your teammates won't do much to help it can make for a nearly unbearable game.
Scoring in multiplayer is as random as ever, too. You get points for making progress, finishing the level and finishing the level with a particular amount of health. The problem is, it's way too all-or-nothing. If you finish the level with even one person alive, it's somewhere around 200+ points, up to around 700 if all of your teammates finish. If you die at any point, even 1 step outside of the finish line, you won't make it over 100.
Plus, the games in multiplayer are way too long. One game of a multiplayer match is easily going to last 30 minutes since you alternate doing the entire campaign level, one section at a time. I'd appreciate it more if matches were around 10 minutes, which is customary for a shooter.
I thought survival was the most fun mode (at least in theory), but again, is crippled by terrible teammates. In survival you're supposed to hole up in an area and defend yourself as an endless wave of zombies come after you. Very often, non-computer teammates will take 10 minutes setting up their plan of defense and die in the first 30 seconds. It gets boring. And computer teammates are already unresponsive and have no concept of strategy, so they die quickly, too. Plus, there's just way too many damn zombies, and there are a few glitches in the game to assure almost infinite survival. I played a few fun and memorable survival games though, and I'm typically a defensive game player, so it catered to me reasonably well.
As a side note, the survival pack is a free add-on that can be downloaded through Xbox Live.
Easily the highlight of the game is when playing a multiplayer match as the super zombie classes. You're randomly assigned a class and need to damage the humans or just put them out of their misery, and collaborating these attacks is actually very fun - much more fun than playing as the humans anyway. But, the problem with this is that you can only play the zombies half the time in a multiplayer match, so you have to endure playing as the humans half the time and then play the fun part the other half. Why not just have a full-on zombies mode, where you beat the crap out of computer-controlled humans?
The weapons are as standard as ever - pistol, SMG/assault rifle, shotgun, a useless hunting rifle, grenades, cocktails and that's it. At least the shotgun is pretty fun to use.
A lot of the levels get pretty monotonous, too. They needed more unique gameplay situations other than progressing through a series of long hallways and meeting the same enemies over and over.
Overall, I'm not very impressed and I don't understand why the game is as popular as it is. At least they had good ideas - their execution was off-base in several points, though.
Presentation: 10.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
Very good music. Their audio is blaring and intense, and game-critical information is easily heard with and without dialogue... can't ask for much better than this.
Zombies, environments, everything graphically looks pretty dang good.
Theatrics: 2.5
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
Left 4 Dead really doesn't have a story, other than what one can assume. They pit the same characters in several different scenarios and basically say "get from one point to another without dying".
The highlights of the story are the situations they throw you in while you're waiting for extraction. It's really frantic, but easily attributed to gameplay just as much as anything else.
This game isn't about it's story though, so I'm not letting it's lack of any theatrics influence my overall thoughts about it.
Controls: 7.5
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
This game's controls are just awkward sometimes.
They set the punch button to the left trigger, which I guess makes sense because of how often you need to swat zombies out of your face, but it's hard to get used to since almost no other good games map the melee button there. I'd prefer not having to rely on melee at all because there shouldn't be a million zombies taking swipes at you! Your punching at that point should seem worthless when you're holding a gun.
A lot of their sequences for healing yourself, teammates or getting a teammate off the ground are irritating, too. They should force that person to commit and take whatever damage might come along with it, rather than interrupt them all the time and force them to babysit the situation. It's just another link in the chain of annoying gameplay features this game came with.
Replay Value: 6.5
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
If you really like the game, you're probably going to play it a lot, and a lot of people love this game. I didn't care much for it, and after playing each of the campaigns a couple times, the multiplayer for maybe 10 matches and the survival mode, I had enough and had no desire to put the game back in my Xbox. The gameplay is essentially the same from front to back anyway. There's very little variety and being somebody that strives for variety and fun at the same time, this game just didn't do it for me.
Fun: 6.5
How much fun was the game?
Playing as the Zombies is fun, but you only get that for 50% of the time. In small bursts, the game can be decent, but I wouldn't play it over another competitive shooter or even a zombie-slaying game unless I was in the mood to mangle myself for a little while.
There's always the factor of novelty appeal, and it was fun for the novelty for a few hours.
My Overall Rating: 6.9
Appeal and Recommendations
I seem to be in the severe minority by giving this game low marks. It just doesn't do enough good things well enough to stand out and be something I'd play over basically any other popular online shooter.
Tons of people like it though, for whatever reason. I'd at least check it out on a rental and see if you like it.
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