Publisher: Valve Software
Developer: Turtle Rock Studios
Genre(s): First-Person Shooter, Action
Players: 8
ESRB Rating: M (Mature)
Release Date: November 17, 2008
Meta Score: 89/100
KKJI Rating: 75/100
Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqv_6oh7-p0
Fight together...or die alone. A new and highly virulent strain of the rabies virus emerges and spreads through the human population with frightening speed. The pandemic's victims become grotesquely disfigured, wildly violent psychopaths, attacking the uninfected on sight. One of the "lucky" few apparently immune to the sickness, you, unfortunately, are also trapped in a city crawling with thousands of the bloodthirsty Infacted. Together with a handful of fellow Survivors, you must fight your way to safety or die alone. A co-operative multiplayer action game from the makers of "Counter-Strike," Left 4 Dead is built atop the most advanced version of the Source Engine and introduces version 2 of Turtle Rock's artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology. [Turtle Rock Studios]
Summery pulled from http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/left4dead .
Just like a lot of my friends, I decided to pre-order the game Left 4 Dead off of steam and just waiting for the game to finally come out. Valve did I nice job advertising the game, I saw commercials and trailers pop up and the wait was horrible. Valve gives out a 6 day demo before the game came out for all of those that pre-ordered the game. I played the demo thinking this looks pretty fun, has some room to get better and lots of room for adding things. Here's a review/diginostic of the game while I played the demo.
L4D Demo Weapons
Pump Shotty: Great gun. On the demo this gun I would take for the first part of the maps. Great at lose range, one shot kill in chest or head. 8 rounds, great damage, not so great for bosses for lack of damage per second (dps). Would not use for long range, it's not like the pump shotty of CSS. This gun is great for turning corners. Would let the leader of the group take the Pump Shotty.
Mac10: Ok gun. High dps, great rate of fire, fast reload, and gets 50 rounds per clip. There are lots of bad things about this gun. Accuracy is pretty bad, runs out of ammo fast! Like really fast. If you were to use this gun stay back in the group and let the others take out the single zombies and wait and use your ammo for the horde. (Horde is the mass amounts of zombies.) Good gun if you know how to use it.
Auto Shotty: This gun is not a starter gun on the demo but it does spawn on a table in the middle of the map. Good gun kills in one shot shoulders and up and at close range chest and up. It gets 7 rounds before reload. I would always keep it reloaded even if it has 6. Good at short range and sucks at long to medium range. I would not switch this gun for the Pump Shotty, but this gun is better against bosses with a faster dps.
M16: Some might mistaken this gun as an M4A1, but with it's recoil this gun is not the M4. With this gun, you can defeat and long range, medium range, and with a spray and pray you can get them at short range. It has 30 rounds per clip and kills at the head and 2-3 to the chest. This is my favorite gun and would recommend it to anyone with a good shot or a noob that just loves to spray and pray. Great gun, probably one of the best of the game.
Hunting Rifle: Great gun if you love to snip. Kills in one shot. Great for those who are great snipers and noobs that love to just pwn everybody. Middle mouse button is to scope and you just shoot. But this game is different... You have a cross hair with your sniper rifle. I would recommend staying in the back or middle of the group with this gun and protect your teammates by picking off the ones attacking them. If you are killing a boss, I would either back up and shoot or take out you pistol and take out the zombies around the boss. This gun is a great support, not a favorite of mine, but can be a great weapon in the right hands.
Pistol: Ok gun. I have survived with just a pistol on advanced but will die fast on expert. Aim for the head, and shoot as fast as you can. This gun is great if you run out of ammo and still want to help the group. Would switch this pistol for Duelies.
Duelies: Best pistols in the game so far. Very accurate, high dps in the right hands and great gun for taking out zombies that are at long range. Aim for the head and chest. Great gun all around. Would pick this gun up whenever i see it.
Note: All pistols have unlimited clips but do need to reload.
L4D Demo Zombies
While playing this demo i got a hole new prospective on the gaming world. I've always played first person shooters, but never like this. The zombies popping out of nowhere. The Hunters jumping down from rooftops. This game keeps you awake and on the edge of your seat every time you play it. Even if it's you 50th time playing that demo map, with respawns in random places, different bosses each time. This game really is a thrill seeker.
The Witch: As she crys and once u hear that cry turn off your flashlight. Don't shoot at her, don't shine your light at her, don't check if she's hot! The Witch can kill you in one shot on expert. The witch is impossible to kill if you are the one being attacked. She does shit loads of damage.
The Tank: The Tank is the buff guy. (Kinda like Skillz but scarier.) With this guy he hides and aggros onto you as you either approach him or walk by him. He does have good health for this game and will take the hole team to defeat him. If you are the only being attacked by him, you can't shoot. You are stunned by his punches and he throws you onto the ground. As your team is shooting at it don't worry about shooting the guy that's being attacked. They made it so that if someone is being attacked, they take no damage.
The BOOMER: A personal favorite of mine, as the boomer surprisingly runs toward you he can either gag or explode onto you. If this happens you or your teammate is covered in a green goo that is almost impossible to see through. What this does is that it aggros most of the horde from about a few yards away. This doesn't seem much, but it's a lot! What I would do it to shoot it right away. Even if there are more people around i would go for the Boomer as my first kill. He does die in one shot with any gun so take him out quickly.
The Hunter: The Hunter happens to be the scariest zombie in the game. He is able to climb building, crouch to avoid fire, run away and wait for you, and drop down from buildings. As he lands on you he begins to tear through your chest and body with much damage. Although he is on top of you teammate, don't be afraid of shooting your teammate. Shot as fast as you can and kill him as fast as you can. This will be a yellow message on the bottom of your screen saying what teammate was attacked and where he is. Best defense in a hunter situation is to listen to his howling and stick together. Never wonder away from the group.
The Smoker: The idea of having a smoker zombie was a great one. His frog like tongue reaches out to grab you and pull you in closer to him. If you get stuck on a car of a wall in his tongue you still take great amount of damage. Best defense against this zombie is to shoot out its tongue and kill it!. As it dies it recesses a smoke. The smoke is not deadly, it only makes it harder to see. Take out this guy in a horde after you take out the boomer, and a yellow message will pop up on your screen if a teammate is under attack.
Now if you read that, you could tell I was excited for the game, and I was but just like most people I was very disappointed.
With the game on release, it seemed unfinished. With only about 5 hours of game play in single player and you can only play No Mercy and Blood Harvest Verses so much. I would say I could only play the game for about 20 hours in 2 weeks max from dealing with rage quitters like no tomorrow and just horrible PUGs. I put the game down thinking it was a waste of $50, and it is. Left 4 Dead is a game not worth $50 but should have been a $20 game only because the amount of gameplay is so slim that everything always ended up the same. Another thing is if you never played the demo of the game look at my old diagnostic and notice how the guns in the game, and the zombies haven't changed at all. The game only has a weapon selection of almost none. Than survivor mode came out, which is they put you in what's called a crescendo (where you push a button or do something to call a horde to your spot) and see how long you survive and earn metals. When this came out, I thought are you serious? Why not just release this when the game came out? I dont know the answers but the fact that valve released an unfinished game. You can only run expert co-op and verses mode so much where it gets boring and old really fast. I also wanted to add that it took almost 6 months for SDK to come out, which just shows how focused they were on the game...
Valve announced the release of Left 4 Dead 2 coming out later this year and the drama already started with the boycott on L4D2 steam group http://steamcommunity.com/groups/L4D2boycott. Lots of people believe that Valve should have focued on getting Half Life 2 Episode 3 out before L4D2 and that owners of L4D should get a discount for buying an unfinished game. I think L4D2 might be a great game if they really do it right and release the game with more gameplay of 5 hours and 10-20 hours of multiplayer and finish the game before you start working on L4D3.
Thank you for reading,
KittyKimJongIl
P.S. I'm still going to buy L4D2 even with the boycott.
Left 4 Dead 2 Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuPBitDgR1c
