Left 4 Dead UK Review

UK, November 18, 2008 - The title's all wrong. Not just because some befuddled fool is bound to wonder how they missed Left 3 Dead - the film The Madness of King George III being retitled the Madness of King George for just that reason remains one of modern cinema's finest facepalm moments. It's also because 4's ultimately the wrong number. It's not a four-player game, not really. Yes, there's an extensive four-player co-op campaign, which offers a good eight hours of slaying zombies in their thousands. And, incidentally, we really mean thousands – your kill count will comfortably hit five figures within a week or two of regular play. 

Left 4 Dead's real game though, is its eight-player mode. This features one-to-four human Survivors going up against that same army of murderous Infected - the latter aided and abetted by four human-controlled super-zombies. The flurry of L4D play that kicks off at launch will be primarily four-player to start with, as everyone learns the ropes of its very particular brand of teamplay and enjoys the simple pleasures of mowing down a record-breaking number of deadheads. By the end of the week, though, chances are most of L4D's players will be playing L8D. 
 

For that reason, what superficially seems like a bold new step for Valve actually ends up being surprisingly close to two of their previous finest hours: Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2. Not that this is any way a cop-out or a rinse and repeat job: Left 4 Dead is an absolute triumph of teamplay, and of zombie apocalypses. Its ongoing success – which is all but guaranteed – will be because of the war without end that we're so familiar with in other team games, not because it redefines co-op play. 

Having said that, it does redefine co-op in a certain way. Or, at least, it admits what co-op's really about, underneath all the superficial buddy back-slapping, and makes a bigger deal out of the underlying selfishness. When you play a co-op game you're still playing to win, still playing for your own ends. What Left 4 Dead does, at least when you're playing as the human Survivors, is make your survival absolutely, 100% dependent on your companions. You protect them not because you want to protect them, but because you want to protect yourself. Just one survivor couldn't survive against the constant horde, no matter how fine a mouse-jockey they are. The common Infected aren't that much of a problem, being a issue of numbers rather than toughness, but the Specials... now, they're a problem. 

There are six ultra-zombies in Left 4 Dead, five of which you get to play as in the so-called Versus team deathmatch mode. They're each deadly-dangerous in their own distinct way: the Smoker's 50-foot tongue can drag a survivor away from their allies and gradually choke them to death; the Hunter can pin a man down and dish out extreme damage; the grotesque Boomer summons a horde of zombies onto anyone he vomits or bleeds on; the Tank does what it says on the tin, and the Witch – well, just don't startle the Witch. It's not so much that this weeping dervish of destruction usually means a fatality for whoever wakes her up, but rather that she forces torturously circuitous paths around the level to avoid her, making it harder to dodge the other baddies and putting everyone hugely on edge. 


Which is another thing L4D really gets right: bickering. Sure, on the easier difficulty levels not that much goes wrong, but hit the high settings and a lot goes wrong. Of course, it's everyone's fault but yours. L4D styles its campaigns as zombie flicks, complete with credits and glorious B-movie posters on the loading screens, but the element of Dawn of the Dead et al it mimics almost perfectly is the way the survivors' alliance is always a fractious one. Unless you're a really practised, super-slick squad, you'll all end up whining about being in each other's way, being tight with the health packs or using the wrong weapon in the wrong situation. Things can turn from bad to really, really bad in an instant and no-one wants to take the blame for that happening. So you bicker, and you lash out, and you behave exactly as zombie movies depict how rag-tag groups of desperate, terrified survivors behave. Still though, there's that absolute dependence. When you use your own healthpack – a rare resource – on a comrade, it's not because you care. It's because you need them to be alive so that they can keep you alive. Philanthropy be damned.