Leveling Down

Left 4 Dead isn’t perfect, but it is the best co-op game on the 360

Fresh off writing my expert guide, I figure I’m almost near the end of the game and ready to write my review on it. I like Left 4 Dead a lot. It manages to appeal to both my old school PC gaming skills (Doom 2, Quake, etc.) while at the same time appeal to my MMORPG instance/raid memories (World of Warcraft). It does this by successfully combining the two genres together into a first person shooter based dungeon/raid romp. Obviously there’s no treasure or loot to be found, but the amount of action and adrenaline that it adds instead is more than enough to make it a winning combination. Swap out the fantasy elements for zombies in a modern setting and we have a winner: it’s the best co-op game you can probably play with your friends on the Xbox 360 to date. Unfortunately, it still suffers a bit as an overall package.

Good
- Simple, yet addictive and enjoyable gameplay
- AI director keeps each run fresh and exciting
- Interesting and humorous discoveries in the stages and character dialogue

Bad
- Lack of any sort of stat-tracking or ranking
- Versus mode is not polished enough
- No campaign or story mode so single player is not too great

Intro
Left 4 Dead was originally created by Turtle Rock Studios, the developer responsible for Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and the official Counter-Strike bot. Their longstanding partnership with Valve led to their eventual acquisition by Valve in January of 2008. Knowledge of the Counter-Strike bot also led to the advanced bot programming in Left 4 Dead as well.

Once Valve acquired Turtle Rock Studios and had a controlling stake in the company, a $10 million marketing campaign was pursued, where you would see that left hand with missing thumb plastered on billboards, buses, etc. Left 4 Dead exposure was high and the advertising probably paid off. Valve announced that Left 4 Dead pre-sales outsold their previous release, The Orange Box, by 95%. The game is also one of the only few games I have seen that didn’t just have a strong opening and decrease as the weeks went on. Instead, it’s actually increased in sales from certain week to week indicating very strong word of mouth between friends.

At its heart, Left 4 Dead is still a PC game. It resonated strongly with the shrinking PC gamer crowd as one of the only notable games released this year that wasn’t completely destroyed by various DRM protection schemes like Spore and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. Not only that, with Valve owning the Steam online distribution system, it was easy for PC players to get access to the game and Valve even tracks stats for the game across its Steam network. Combine that with the love that Valve will give it with free updates like the company did with the PC version of Team Fortress 2, and it’s no wonder why it’s beloved on the PC. 360 owners are obviously getting the short end of the stick on this one, as the new content that gets released for the game will most likely be charged for as mandated by Microsoft.

Not much of a storyline in this game – just survive

Storyline and Premise
To the dismay of some, Left 4 Dead has no real storyline. We are not given any sort of background on what has transpired or the deeper backgrounds behind the four characters. All we know is that these four survivors ended up together, and are just trying to make their way to some extraction point. Honestly, they could have simply just been “Player 1″ through “Player 4″ based on how the game treats the characters. Fortunately, instead of giving each of the four characters much of a background, the developers recorded over 1000 unique lines for each character. That serves to really differentiate between them, and actually does a pretty good job of making you resonate with each character more. Several of them have quite amusing lines as well.

The game is split up into four separate campaigns, each touching upon a different theme/setting. The first campaign, No Mercy, involves an urban setting where the four survivors travel through an apartment, down the streets, into a sewer, and eventually through a hospital to get to a chopper on the hospital’s helipad. The second campaign, Death Toll, involves moving through an outdoor campaign in order to hold up in a boathouse before being rescued by a ship. Dead Air has the Survivors making their way to an airport before gassing up a plane and flying away. The last campaign, Blood Harvest, has the group of four also traveling outside in order to make it to a farmhouse before being rescued by the military.

Each campaign consists of five levels, and on the easiest difficulty, probably takes about 5-10 minutes per level. That means going through all four campaigns on the easiest difficulty will take less than four hours. However, by choosing harder difficulties (there are four in total), the amount of time spent shoots up exponentially due to how often you will have to restart. On Expert, it’s not uncommon to restart several times – while it may take an hour to clear a campaign on Easy, simply clearing one level in a campaign on Expert may take an hour.

Some levels are so dark that you will have to rely on flashlights – but watch out for Witches

Gameplay Mechanics

General Combat
Left 4 Dead has a very simple combat system, and since it’s based on the Valve Source engine, anyone that’s played Half-Life or Counter-Strike will be at home. There’s no double jumping, cover, leaning left/right, etc. It’s just run, crouch, jump, shoot, or melee attack pretty much.

The only notable addition in this game is that when a player’s life is reduced to 0, he will be downed. In the downed position, the player can still shoot at anything with his handguns, but he will be on a large timer that slowly decreases. If the enemies hit the player when he is in this downed state, the player’s timer decreases faster. If that downed timer hits 0, the player is killed but if another player can get to the downed player, he can bring him back up. A player that has been brought up from a downed state will start with a little life, but it will decrease over time all the way down to 1 HP. If a player is downed a third time before he uses a med kit, he will be killed. Killed players will eventually spawn in closets/bathrooms later in the level, and can only come out once one of the “alive” players opens the door where they are waiting.

AI and the Director
Left 4 Dead uses AI on both the player and the enemy end. On the player end, there is programming for the Survivor counterparts so that if the player wishes to play by himself, the AI will control the other three characters. The developers have also included a handy “Idle” mode, where if more than one player is playing together and any of them go idle, the computer will take over for that player until he returns.

The AI Director is part of the main reason the game has a lot of replayability. In Left 4 Dead, every playthrough a level is practically different due to how the Director handles it. The AI Director takes various variables into account, such as how you are doing, how quickly you are progressing, etc. before deciding whether to spawn specific enemy types and/or items for you. So perhaps on one run you go through a bedroom and it’s empty, but on a later playthrough you may find various weapons. It’s not completely random, as there are often set locations where items can be (on desks, tables, etc.), but it adds a bit of variability to the game and I feel that it succeeds quite well in giving the game a lot of replayability.

Weapons
You’re only allowed to carry one primary weapon at a time besides your pistol(s). While the pistols have unlimited ammo, the primary weapons are all limited and can only be refilled at ammo piles.

The primary weapons are broken up into two tiers: early and late game. The early game weapons are the SMG and shotgun, while the late game weapons are the assault rifle, the auto-shotgun, and the hunting rifle. The late game weapons are essential souped up versions of the early game ones except for the hunting rifle, which has no early game counterpart and is the only weapon with a scope. The shotgun weapons do a lot of damage up close, while the SMG and assault rifle are best at medium range.

Francis doesn’t look too happy as he prepares to throw his Molotov

Items
Besides the primary weapons, each Survivor is allowed to pickup and carry one first aid kit, a container of pills, and either a Molotov or a pipe bomb. These 3 item types along with the permanent carrying of the flashlight are toggled through the D-pad: hitting Up on the d-pad turns the flashlight on and off, right switches to the first aid kit, down switches to the pills, and left switches to the throwable Molotov or pipe bomb.

First aid kits can be used to heal either the player or anyone else on the team, but their drawback is that they take several seconds to apply. This means they cannot really be used in the middle of combat. Pills give the player a temporary health boost, but slowly reduce over time. They can be used immediately in or out of combat.

The Molotov cocktail and pipe bomb are the two types of portable thrown weapons – the Molotov cocktail sets an area on fire so that any enemy that steps on it will get lit on fire and will die out over time. The pipe bomb emits a loud enough beep that when thrown, attracts all common Infected towards it so it’s useful for clearing out an area of non-special Infected.

There are also several tank types like gasoline tanks and propane tanks that can be found in the environment. When shot, they either light an area on fire similar to a Molotov or create a huge explosion blast, dealing a good amount of damage to any enemies caught in the explosion. These can be carried and used whenever, but carrying them requires both hands so the player will only be able to melee while holding the tank. The tank can be set down whenever the player wishes to fire.

The Boomer vomit is actually able to cover great distances

Enemy Types
There are two categories of enemies in this game: the common and Special Infected. In general, the Special Infected are what the players will fear the most due to being far more unpredictable than the common Infected.

1. Common Infected
Throughout the game, the Survivors will come across hundreds of Infected people that are generally just hanging out in a stupor, but once they spot the Survivors they will come and try to melee attack them. They are easy to kill when singled out, but they are most deadly when they are able to surround the player and melee him to death.

There are even certain times in the game when several dozens of them will just rush the Survivors, and that’s probably the biggest threat they have.

2. Smoker
The Smoker is a Special Infected that can shoot his tongue over long distances to wrap a Survivor and pull him in for the kill. The pulled in Survivor has only a few seconds to react (and either break the tongue or kill the Smoker) before he is unable to do anything and must be rescued by another Survivor.

3. Hunter
The Hunter is a Special Infected that is able to leap great distances to pounce on any of the Survivors. Once on a Survivor, he melees them to death and cannot be attacked or pushed off by his target. Only another Survivor can melee or shoot him off the victim.

4. Boomer
The Boomer is a large Special Infected that can vomit on the Survivors. By doing so, it automatically attracts a horde of common Infected to come and attack the Survivors. Also, if the Boomer is killed close to any of the Survivors, his “vomit” will still explode onto the Survivors and attract common Infected.

5. Tank
The Tank is the most feared Special Infected, as it is a completely steroided up looking Infected that moves quickly, has a ton of health, and can kill you with just a few hits. Each of the tanks swings will knock back the player, and he is able to toss rubble or even cars at the Survivors.

6. Witch
I’m honestly not sure if the Witch is considered a Special Infected or not, because she is very unique compared to the other four Special Infected. The Witch can generally be found just crouched over and crying somewhere, and can be avoided. However, if a Survivor gets too close to one, fires a gun at her, or even shines a flashlight at her, she will quickly awaken and rush to kill whichever Survivor startled her before running off.

Co-op Mode
At its heart, Left 4 Dead is best enjoyed with friends. Valve made co-op quite easy with various inclusions. One example is being able to see which of your friends are currently playing and what room they are in so you can join them if it’s not already full. There’s also 2-player offline splitscreen support, as well as 2-player splitscreen online support so you can play with a buddy split screen with two other guys online. While it would have been nice to see four player offline splitscreen support, apparently there weren’t enough resources to make this possible. But what we got is more than adequate.

Versus Mode
For those players that want a more competitive online mode in Left 4 Dead, the Versus Mode is an interesting feature. It pits four versus four, where each round consists of four players playing as the Survivors and four players playing as the Infected. The Infected players randomly spawn as any of the four Special Infected types and their goal is to prevent the Survivors team from making it to the safehouse. In a sense, the Infected are playing as the defensive team while Survivors are on the offense. Various statistics come into place to calculate the score based on how far the Survivors get, how many make it into the saferoom, etc. Once the Survivors team either makes it into the next saferoom or all die out, the two teams switch so then the original Infected team gets a chance at trying to make it to the saferoom. Scores are kept each level and totaled at the end of the fifth “finale” level.

The spirit of the versus mode is a lot of fun. Two teams trying to outdo each other to get further and score higher with a see-sawing score based on how far each team gets is certainly an adversarial mode that is quite unique and fitting with the spirit of this game. Unfortunately, there are certain problems that come out of it. While there are glitches in the regular co-op game that the players can utilize to make their fight against the AI infected easier, glitches in Adversarial make the game completely unfair and should be fixed. These glitches often involve the Infected players manipulating the environment with obstacles in such a way that it’s basically impossible for the Survivors to continue.

Another issue I have with the Versus mode is that the team that starts as the Survivors always plays as the Survivors first in each of the five rounds. This makes it sort of a disadvantage, as the Infected players playing Defense can see what the Survivors team does and change their tactics accordingly when they play on the Survivors team. It would have been better if it was completely randomized which team spawned as the Survivors first. Finally, while there’s four campaigns in the regular game, why are only two of them playable in the Versus mode? Valve announced that the other two will make its way over as downloadable content, but that means we are most likely going to have to pay $10 to just get the two campaigns that were missing in the first place.

Slightly ironic: a Hunter jumping at Zoey while she is using the hunting rifle…

Achievement System
I was very disappointed that Valve talked up the inclusion stat tracking for the game in previews, but it was actually removed from the game very close to its release. It’s like Valve decided they didn’t want it to be a competitive game any more and wanted to keep things simple. That made it so that to really judge a person’s skill and/or experience in this game, you can only really look at his Achievements. It’s convenient that the progress of the Achievements is tracked in game, but I felt they could have been designed a lot better. I mean, if this is all you have in your game to encourage replayability, might as well go all out in designing them.

There are some pretty cool ones that sort of teach you how to play the game, like lighting Tanks and Witches on fire, and others that are skillful but they aren’t distinguished enough. Practically every skill related Achievement, such as getting through a campaign without being healed, does not have a difficulty associated with it. So what ends up happening is everyone is just running through on Easy difficulty to get these Achievements, and it pretty much defeats the purpose of them. Left 4 Dead is a hardcore PC-based game that requires skill to play, so the Achievements should have reflected more of that level of mettle.

Another big issue I have with the design of the Achievements are the Expert difficulty Achievements. There is an Achievement for beating each of the four campaigns on Expert difficulty level, and that’s pretty much the pinnacle of the game – i.e., I think if you’ve earned that, then you’ve pretty much conquered the game. The big problem with it is that the requirements to getting it just aren’t well planned. Going through a single campaign on Expert generally takes about 4 hours across its five levels. It would have been much nicer for the Achievement relating to beating each campaign on Expert only tracked if you beat each stage or not. That way, you’re not locked into having to play through the game on Expert four hours at a time. It’s just not practical. You’re given the option to start a game on each of the five levels on a campaign but why not simply program the Achievement to do a checklist of each of the 20 stages across the 4 campaigns so that when all 20 are checked, the Achievement is unlocked?

On top of that, people have discovered glitches that allow for getting many of these Achievements in a much easier way. Again, with the game’s longevity primarily focused on Achievements, it would have been nice to see the glitches fixed so that kids without the skill to get the more difficult Achievements are no longer running around with the full 1000. With the legitimacy of the Achievements thrown out the window, it pretty much boils down to the common denominator: everyone might as well glitch to get everything since no one can tell the difference whether you earned them legitimately or not.

Apparently Louis is having a bad day.

Final Thoughts
Like I said in the beginning of this review, I think Left 4 Dead is a great game. It’s probably the best co-op game I’ve ever played on the system – an actual 4-player co-op game that relies on all four players working together to get through. What makes it so different is that unlike the 4-player co-op modes of Halo 3 and Call of Duty: World at War where their difficulties are mitigated by how skillful the best player in the group is, Left 4 Dead’s difficulty is primarily determined by the skill of the worst player in the group. That makes things a lot more teamwork based, as “star players” are no longer able to shine in a game like this since they can’t just run on ahead guns a blazing. This game encourages teamwork and while it’s the best game to play with friends, those playing in random pick-up groups may find it far too frustrating since pick-up players tend to play independently.

I give the game a B+. The core game mechanics are quite enjoyable, but the conscious decision by Valve to remove the stat tracking and instead rely on unoptimally designed and glitchable Achievements really slowed it down. With stat tracking and even a leveling system, fans of the game would probably sink countless hours into the game. In its current state, I imagine they’ll be done with the game after glitching the Achievements and getting the 1000. Combine that with an adversarial mode that needs more polish and you have a game that’s a ton of fun to play with friends, but not necessarily one that offers an overall package better than some other titles this holiday season. It is, however, the best co-op game ever released on the 360 so far and definitely worth getting to play with your friends if you can convince them to buy it as well.