Leveling Down

Left 4 Dead is great if you have a crew to play with that is in it for the long haul.

I’ve spent several hours with the 360 retail version of Left 4 Dead and am ready to give some impressions on it. It’s weird – Left 4 Dead is a little simple but even though I just started Gears of War 2, why do I rather play Left 4 Dead? Something about it just keeps drawing me back in. I think it’s because I attempted Expert difficulty, and realized how much skill was needed. The hardcore gamer flag in me lit up and now I hunger to beat it. Of course, with the way the game is, I can’t beat it alone. Read on for my experiences and impressions of the retail version of the 360 game.

The game seems to be broken up into 4 “movies”, consisting of five zones each. Each zone is separated from the next by a safehouse, which not only loads the next zone, but allows you to fill up on ammo, life, and weapons. The zones in each movie are about 10 minutes long, and the final zone generally consists of holding out for X number of minutes until you are rescued while the game throws hundreds of zombies at you. Doing the math, it seems about right that it takes about an hour to clear each of the four movies, for four hours total if you’re looking at it purely from a “how long does it take to beat” standpoint. There’s no storyline for each movie or background info on any of the characters – they’re simply placed into a different setting whether it’s a city, a forest, etc.

While the game obviously appears to be very short, its length depends on what difficulty you play at and how often you enjoy blasting through the levels over and over. The thing about this game is that its value seems to exponentially increase based on how many of your friends own the game. Currently, I’m the only one of my group that has it, so it hasn’t been too enjoyable. The computer AI is actually decent at low levels of difficulty but cannot handle the tougher modes due to the specific positioning and strategy that is required.

I’ve also tried a few online co-op rounds on varying difficulties. The first session I played actually turned out all right. This was on the Advanced difficulty (second hardest). My teammates talked, and after wiping on the third time at the last point where we were holding out in a farmhouse, we started talking strategy. The tank coming into the house was killing us every time, so I suggested that we jump out the window, and kite the tank around in the field. The other guys agreed that it was a good idea so once we put that plan into effect, it was golden. We survived and beat that “campaign”.

The second session I played was a total disappointment. I played through the first act on an Advanced game with guys that didn’t talk at all, and were clearly not Advanced level players. It was annoying to see myself at half my life and no medkit, but one guy who was at 90%, used his medkit, and grabbed the only one left on the table. Then the other two were just not talking because they were playing split-screen. While it’s pretty cool that you can play split-screen online, it’s just not effective at more difficult levels of play because you need all four players communicating to get through. Split-screen players tend to just talk between themselves, since they’re sitting right next to each other. In any case, after wiping a couple times on the first zone, I left the match after we finally hit the safehouse. This group was clearly not ready for Advanced.

What I don’t understand is how there’s Matchmaking, and that there are stats that roll at the end of a movie (you get to see how you performed compared to the other three guys you just beat it with), but there’s no persistent stats. The game is smart enough to track everything from accuracy, number of headshots, damage done to particular zombie types, etc, but it’s only kept for that particular game and not uploaded to a central server. It would have made the game a lot more public friendly if each player was ranked in some manner based on how they played the game.

I would have liked to see something almost like difficulty tiers depending on your level. For example, maybe Level 1-10 players could only play on the easiest difficulty. Clearing a campaign gives you a certain amount of experience, with any positive actions you performed giving you bonus exp (such as healing partners, etc.), while negative things (friendly fire) penalize your experience points. That forces everyone to play on the easiest difficulty settings first, and earn their way up, so then you’d only be able to play Normal difficulty if you were Level 11-20, Advanced if you were Level 21-30, and Expert if you were 31+. It could have been set up this way for Public matches, and Private matches could remain allowing you to pick any difficulty you wanted.

I would have loved such a system, as I would have been playing hour after hour in the game hoping to make it up to be able to find other Expert level players. Instead, I’m reduced to trying to find good players through online forums as my main course of action. I was able to find a few guys on Cheap Ass Gamer to party up with, and that turned out all right.

There were four of us, and we were playing Expert difficulty. It was actually a lot of fun, even though it was extremely difficult. I enjoyed it a lot because all four of us were talking and using strategy to try to get through pretty overwhelming odds. It took us three hours just to beat the first two parts of the campaign we were on, and by then I had to call it a night. There was no way we could clear the next three parts if we spent 3 hours on the first two. On Expert, regular zombies hit you for 20 HP a shot, and the moment you hear any special zombies you get pretty scared. I learned a lot from the experience though, and am actually pretty eager to try it again. Of course, with differing schedules, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to match up with the guys I just played with unless we do some coordination.

My general thoughts so far? Not worth the $60 price – $30-$40 is the sweet spot if you have friends or can make friends to play it with. The game is fun, but with Gears of War 2′s Horde mode and Call of Duty: World at War’s Zombie mode as additional modes to their main games, Left 4 Dead seem a little less worth it considering both of those two games offer a more total package. If you’re the type of gamer that just wants to play through a game and beat it on Normal difficulty, this game is not for you.

I think the meat of the game (and what makes it worth playing) comes from trying to get good enough at the game to beat it on Expert difficulty, which will take dozens of hours and is definitely one of the more difficult and respectable 360 Achievements to get. I have a lot of pride in being able to beat the hardest difficulty on many games, but this is the first game I’ve played where it requires 4 players to all work together to beat the hardest difficulty. I’m no longer a one man army, but need dependable and skilled backup.

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