Negaview

Left 4 Dead is Valves most recent game and their first foray into zombie action.  It is also the most heavily co-op dependant game i’ve played in quite some time.  The game itself was great when it first came out last year.  However, it did have 1 serious issue.  It was extremely light on content.

My friends and i were able to finish all available scenarios (on normal) within 4 or 5 hours.  Granted the harder difficulties do make the game longer, and each time you play weapons and ammo and zombie attacks are at a different time or place (thanks to the AI director).  But it’s still the same maps, over and over again.  Finally they’ve fixed this (somewhat) with the new survival pack.

The new survival pack is priced to perfection (meaning it’s free) and add’s a new game mode called survival to the game as well as 1 new survival map called Lighthouse.  With 4 human players survival can be very tense, action packed, and fun.  However, Valve has stated that they did tons of research on the game to make it difficult but fun.  That’s bullshit.  There were times when 2 smokers and 3 hunters hit our group simultaneously thus incapacitating us all at once.  Or how bout when 2 specials and a tank all attack at once?  FUN!  Basically it just feels like they ratcheted the AI director up on meth and let it throw everything in its arsenal at you.

Here’s the thing with Left 4 Dead also.  If your teammate falls, even if it’s far from the rest of you, you have to go rescue them.  1 extra gun is worth the risk that everyone takes.  Granted it’s kind of hard to run out into that mess of zombies to save your friend… but it’s necessary.  We learned this the hard way when a smoker dragged a friend off and he said ‘my life is low anyway don’t bother saving me.’  He was probably just saying that to be nice but when i looked back the rest of us were all just standing there unwilling to run out to our deaths.  Which reminds me.  Friendly fire can be a friendship ender in the harder difficulties :-p.  Actually, the entire game can be a friendship ender. It just sucks to get pulled by a smoker and nobody comes to save you. We did finally acheive a gold medal survival time (11 minutes), but it was after quite a bit of 2 - 3 minute rounds. Chances are you’re going to spend longer setting up then actually ’surviving’ the first few games.

So in general, the survival mode is much more difficult than the rest of the modes, almost to the point of frustration.  However, if solid co-op play is what you’re looking for this free download has it in spades. By the way, just something odd i noticed. The tank always seems to go after Louis… maybe it’s just in my mind, but it feels a lil racist :-p.