Left 4 Dead is a First Person Shooter consisting of 4 campaigns, each clearable in a little over an hour, with 10 weapons at your disposal, two of which are grenades, one that is your melee attack, one that is a fixed minigun and another that is for all tense and purposes, useless.  You can choose from four characters, which all have no differences other than aesthetics.  There are 6 enemy types.  It costs fifty bucks retail.  Turned off?  Well don’t be, because like a good plate of nachos the Gestalt concept can be applied here, being the whole is greater than its individual parts. And that is thanks mostly to how the game’s ingredients are applied and served in a dynamic manner that will have you returning to multiplayer mode like a crack addict to his glass pipe.

     I said multiplayer mode because for its price, unless you are a Zombie film fanatic, the single player mode just isn’t worth the price of admission.  Now if you are one of the capital-H, ‘ardcore individuals whose antisocial personality extends even into the faceless, persona heavy environment of internet gaming do NOT dismiss this game just yet. I myself care little for online multiplayer gaming, especially tournament heavy FPS’s.  I do however make exceptions for say, something as grand as a LAN game of Supreme Commander and Left 4 Dead.  This is because there is a distinct difference in atmosphere and teamwork that this game offers compared to others of its ilk.

The game is set in the zombie apocalypse setting familiar to those who have seen 28 Days Later and George Romero’s popular “Dead” series.  The majority of the population in the world has been transformed into zombies and widespread murder and destruction has ensued.  You are one of a group of four survivors and in each scenario must fight your way through the zombie hordes and reach some sort of rescue.  The first scenario starts in an abandon apartment complex, then to a sewer system, up into various buildings and finally onto the streets until you reach a hospital which you must massacre your way through hordes of hospital employee zombies and oddly, patients who all have major hospital robe crack to the point of embarrassing even the most portly plumber.  Finally, you must call for a helicopter via radio, after which you fight off wave upon wave of undead in a defensible structure, complete with loads of ammo, grenades and a mounted mini gun, whilst you wait for your rescue to arrive, upon which you will make a hopefully coordinated, but usually chaotic, sprint for the helicopter as the final rush of undead is the most frenetic and deadly of them all.  Each campaign has a similar end scenario, but with a different possible defense option and rescue method.  The second campaign, my favorite of the bunch, starts on a road in the woods as you make your way to a tunnel in the road, down into a sewer system up and across a highway bridge, back into the woods until you reach a large cabin surrounded by hills and a lake from which will come your rescue in the form of a boat.  The third campaign contains a romp through a greenhouse, some city streets, a warehouse and finally a large airport where upon reaching your terminal, will fight for survival until a plane arrives.  The last campaign, and arguably the most difficult, has you traipsing through heavily forested areas, where zombies are much harder to see and therefore you and Co. are easier to ambush.  It features a terrifying corn row maze near the end, and its end structure, an abandon farmhouse, is inadequate defense against the insane horde you have to mow down at the end.  The worst part of these final zombie rushes is that they contain multiple, boss-type zombies that appear with less frequency during the first parts of the campaign.

      Obese and deadlier because of it, the Boomer is a massive blob of undead putrescence who belches and gurgles his way around the mean streets of Zombie-town.  Hearing his gibbering is cause for dread, as if he gets a clean shot at you, not only will you find yourself covered in his projectile of choice: puke, you will become a zombie magnet, being rushed by around a dozen of the goons before your vision clears and the viscous, green goo is off you.  Also, make sure he is a fair distance from you when you shoot him, as the resulting explosion of gore is also infused with zombie attractant.  It’s funny how the Director AI (the name of the system that spawns zombies and weapons in each scenario, which by the way changes every time you play it) manages to fit these corpulent zombies in the tightest spaces and around the most annoying corners for maximum spew possibility.  In fact, the Director AI is uncanny at placing all of the boss type zombies for maximum annoyance, whether it’s an unavoidable Witch, or a Hunter in the middle of a deadly rush.

     The Hunter is a nimble zombie, sporting combat boots and a hoodie, who can leap what seems about 90 feet, in a single bound.  He does this, landing on a character, who he immediately begins to pummel and claw with frenzied speed.  The incapacitated victim depends on his teammates to bail him out of this situation either by pistol-whipping the undead punk by right clicking, or by shooting the Hunter dead, often with plenty of friendly fire added as payment for the good deed.  Not that your pal will care.  Heck, friendly fire is fairly common in a game with intensely frantic situations that pop up relatively frequently.  There is a great relief that comes from being bailed out of trouble in this game, from the terrifying claws of the hunter, and even sometimes even more so from the grasp of the Smoker.

     Smokers are tall glasses of bubbly faced brain eaters who strike from afar with ridiculously long tongues, pulling their victims in for the kill.  They must be shot, vaporized in a puff of green, choking smoke either by you in the first couple seconds of the attack, or thereafter by your friends.  Even once saved, if the smoker struck from far enough, you may find yourself needing to be saved again as you may be surrounded by undead, far from your companions, and by possibly other boss-type zombies.  You see, unlike many other games, in Left 4 Dead, to be split from your team is to be utterly doomed and it won’t be long before everyone playing the game will realize that to go into the night alone is sheer folly.  You must be coordinated and in constant contact with your squad.  Playing LAN with a buddy all night I found myself hoarse from shouting suggestions(“This way! Through here!”), warnings of danger (“Shit! Boomer, around the corner!”), requests for aid (You will hear “Smoker!! Heeeeeelp” a ton”), locations of weapons (“Two pipe bombs, in here!”) and least favorite of all, the plea to leave me to my death, because the cost of my rescue was far too high (“I’m done for! Run! Leave meeeee!”).  Yes, emotions run high in this game, even though death carries a fairly painless penalty, being locked in a room(usually not far from your place of demise) until your pals come and find you.  This intensity of emotion shared with all I have played this game with is testament to the pace, atmosphere and immersion of this game.  Even the death of the entire party results in restarting at the last checkpoint, of which there is four in each campaign, giving a safe room to regroup and rearm in.  Full party death seems to happen most often at the end of the campaign during the final rush, or during a Tank attack.

     The Tank is an ass-kicker through and through, whether he’s punching one of your pals off a rooftop with his metre thick arms, or using those same ridiculously proportioned appendages to tear hunks of concrete from the street and hurl them at your face.  I thought he was bad ass enough, knocking my pals around, sending them flying tens of feet through the air.  I mean three of those hits and you’re dead. Cornered?  I mean that’s it. Game over.  Not to mention he can take more damage than a thousand run of the mill type zombies.  Yeah, I thought he was tough enough, then one night, while me and my friends were heading through a warehouse, I spot a Tank down on the other end of a corridor of stacked crates.  I shout “Tank!” to my comrades and the usual reply of, “Shit! Where!?” follows.  One of my friends assumes a position next to me, and seeing the tank rushing us from the other end of the corridor says coolly, “Don’t worry, we got him.”  You see, we are quite pleased as the usually savvy tank didn’t take a different route, as just six feet or so in from of us was a forklift, seemingly blocking him from us.  My friend and I opened up, he with his shot gun, I with my assault rifle, pouring rounds into the zombie’s VW Bug sized torso through the open cockpit of the forklift.  Our team mates turned from their position of guarding the door into the warehouse just in time to see that forklift slam into our stunned faces, sent by the Tank’s punch, killing us both.  Yeah, so I guess he can punch vehicles at you too.  If it’s any solace, you know he’s coming because the music becomes a sinister concoction of horns and pounding drums.  The screen shakes too.  In fact, all of the boss-type zombies have sounds that warn they are near.  You’ll learn them all very fast, too. The Boomer has its aforementioned gurgling and belching, the Hunter snarls and growls, the Tank roars and has its entrance score and the Witch cries from afar, like a lost, helpless child.  Her wailing would pull at your protecting, parenting side, beckoning you to her rescue, except for that you know what she is and that knowledge turns the sorrowful, vulnerable weeping into a funeral song that sends chills of stark terror through your spine.

     The Witch is arguably the deadliest of all the special zombies, but for that there is a chance she won’t even be a threat.  She sits at a predetermined location on the map, a lithe, female zombie with gray hair, a tank top and granny panties, crying her sad song, until someone gets too close for too long or God forbid shines a flashlight on her.  Do either of those things and she will stare at the offender with eyes glaring with red ire and rush them with superhuman speed, flooring them on contact, and then shredding them to pieces in seconds with her foot long claws.  She can’t take as much punishment as the Tank, but she can take a hell of a lot, and of all the Witches I’ve encountered, I’ve only seen one not kill at least one person before dying, and we started that party off with two molotov cocktails and a heavy concentration of fire from a single point, well a ways away from the crazy bitch.  It’s a good thing you can turn your flashlight off.  The real problem comes when the computer places the Witch in a corridor or other tight section of map, forcing you to fight her, and all but guaranteeing you’re going to lose one comrade in the ensuing battle.  The Witch is actually so powerful, she is the only zombie that the players can’t control in the game’s versus mode.

     Versus mode is a total blast in Left 4 Dead for all involved, whether you’re spending your time as the hunted and terrified survivors or preferably, as the night vision endowed hunters: the undead.  There is nothing quite like sending an opponent across the map while controlling the Tank, or sniping a straggling survivor with the Smoker’s tongue.  The computer assigns which player is given control of which zombie randomly, so the fun is spread around and eliminates fighting for who gets to be who.  One bummer is that only two of the four campaigns are available in Versus.  And as with all games, good and bad, there are a few more bummers to discuss.

     My least severe gripe is with the weapon selection.  You start the map with a choice between an Uzi and a shotgun.  The Uzi is inaccurate but hits from afar and the damage, though weak, is sprayed out in great quantity.  The shotgun does whopping damage, has pathetic range (though not as bad as in most shooters) and takes a long time to reload and must be reloaded often.  Wee. So from the start you have two types of characters based on your selection.  Later in the campaign you will find the upgrades of these two weapons, as well as a third type, the hunting rifle. The hunting rifle is for a sniper type player, but the accuracy of the Uzi’s upgrade, the assault rifle, pretty much turns it obsolete particularly since it is useless in any other role.  The shotgun is upgraded to the fantastic auto shotgun, which gets a clip upgrade and adds rapid fire to this already devastating weapon type. Just make sure whoever has it, hits his/her targets, as every round from the still-small clip counts and the friendly fire damage is brutal.  The assault rifle is basically the Uzi with a bigger clip, better damage, and the much needed addition of accuracy, making head shots from afar a snap.  There are also two grenades.  One is a Molotov cocktail that covers an area in flame for a period of time and the other is a pipe bomb that attracts regular type zombies to it in a crowd and then explodes.  Also, there is a mounted minigun that is found in fixed locations: usually at a point where an intense fight is found and always at the end of the map.  It only has a 180 degree range of pivot though, so you’ll find yourself jumping off it from time to time when the action gets too thick for your teammates to protect you.  The final of the counted ten weapons is the right clicking rifle butt I mentioned earlier, which is useful if you are swarmed or have to help a teammate pinned by a Hunter.  Or I should say, “help your dumb ass teammate” if you are playing single player.

     This is a Steam game, which means you’ll need to be online to activate it and will have to download the patch before you play it (Dial-up players are rare but I know they are still out there, so take heed, you’ll need a good eight hours of being online before you can play this one offline).  The cool thing about Steam games is that they make playing LAN a breeze. Except for this one.  If you want to play this with others on or offline and have one copy of the game in a LAN setting, I direct you to the Left 4 Dead forums to a thread called Fixed: LAN.  For those who are running Vista or XP and are having trouble playing offline LAN games, I have typed out how to do this at the end of this review, so you don’t have to spend the first two nights you had planned to play this game with your friends figuring out how to get it set up.  This LAN difficulty was a real bummer.   The most fun I have had playing Left 4 Dead is in a room full of pals, screaming commands, warnings and what not, fighting off the insane undead hordes of an apocalyptic world gone mad.

     Though there are some obvious flaws, this game is the true multiplayer experience on every level. Competition is simulated through end game stats and who saves who the most while camaraderie and replayability is found in gameplay that is cooperative like no game in this genre before it. I wouldn’t recommend it as a single player game except to the most fanatic of Zombie movie fans, but for those looking for the most intense multiplayer experience around, this is the place to get it.

                                                                       -jr

SCORE: 9 Exemplary

     To play offline LAN games: Obviously you hook up your systems with an Ethernet cable, and make sure all are visible on the Network.  If you can’t do this, then you need to learn your OS a little more and find help in general LAN forums.  Following now is step by step instruction for Vista OS on how to play an offline LAN game with everyone having a copy of the game.  It may work for one copy but I am not sure. Also, XP will differ slightly, but as long as you know how to get the host’s IP addy, the rest should be pretty much the same.

1.Host and Joiners: Launch Left 4 Dead in offline mode and go to Options, Keyboard and Mouse and enable “Allow Developer Console”.  Quit the game.

2.Host: Go to your start menu and type in “cmd”. Under programs you will see the search found a prog called “cmd”, open it.  A DOS box will open and a prompt should be displayed next to C:\Users\(your pc’s name). Type “ipconfig”.  This will display your IP. Write it down.  It will be the number displayed in this format: 109.254.79.87. Close the cmd box.

3.Host:  Launch Left 4 Dead and type the “~” (tilde) key and the developer console will open.  There will be a field to type in at the bottom next to a “submit” button.  Type the following into the space “sv_lan 1”. Include the space between the “n”and “1”.  Then hit submit.

4.Host: Type "sv_allow_lobby_connect_only 0" (space between y and 0) and hit submit.

5.Host: Type "net_start" (some of these will be auto filling to help you) and hit submit.

6.Host: Type “map” and a list will appear.  Arrow down to select. The map order is hospital, smalltown, airport, farm.  To do a full campaign start at the first map in a campaign. After this, you will be in the game.

7.Joiners: Launch Left 4 Dead and hit the tilde key to open the command console. Type “connect (the host’s IP addy from step 2 that you wrote down here)”.  Don’t forget the space between “connect” and the IP. (e.g. connect 109.254.79.87)

8.Have a shitload of fun and don’t leave diamond formation unless absolutely necessary.