Customer Reviews

Left 4 Dead

5 star:		(152)
4 star:		(56)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Plain and simple, this is the best zombie game to date!

The AI "Director" as it's called creates a different play experience each and every time. Doesn't matter if it's the same level, they'll throw different amounts of the "infected" (zombies) at you, from different directions, at different times, which completely changes the games replay value. And it not only controls the zombies, it also controls music, weapon placement (so certain weapons aren't in the same place each and every time you play), and so on.

And you never know how deformable the terrain is until the Director throws a Tank at you (a really HUGE musclebound zombie that will rip you to shreds). For example I had a Tank come bombing at me, rip a whole in a subway car and just destroy everything around me, including myself...

Now one of the main reasons you should buy the game, the split screen and system link play. You can play split screen with a friend, then hookup online with another friend. Then to take it to a whole-nother-level, 8 player versus mode. Up to four players take control of the Survivors and up to four players take control of the unique zombies (such as Tanks and Smokers) along side of the AI controlled zombies.

The other unique feature the game has are voice commands between the survivors, some are even automatic like when you are reloading, so that the other survivors don't reload at the same time just in case zombies start coming at you. A nice feature that really prevents everyone from reloading at once and getting swarmed.

I would consider this the "must have game of the season" bar none!

Pros:
A completely different gaming experience every time you play.
Play with friends on the same system via split screen, online, or both!
Very tense and suspenseful music and spooky sounds give you the creeps.
TONS of replay value.
Amazing zombie death animations (physics based).
AI survivors will actually heal themselves, heal eachother, heal you, and exchange items!
Never knowing when something really bad is about to come down on you.

Cons:
AI survivors sometimes just stand in the way or don't help you when you are in trouble.

One of my largest criticisms of the video game industry is the real lack of offline co-op and multiplayer games in the next-generation consoles. Pure would've been a great party game had there been an offline multiplayer. Concurrently Battlefield: Bad Company and Far Cry 2, which were awesome single-player games, would have been even better if the game allowed a second player to join in on co-op. There is online co-op with a few games but nothing serious.

Offline co-op is not as popular as it was with the XBox since every video game developer thinks because World of Warcraft has over 10 million subscribers that the vast majority of gamers play online. This couldn't be any further from the truth as the many developers are learning that casual gamers have become the dominating class, which has led to Nintendo's domination in video game sales for the past two years. Most gamers just do not wish to play some random kid in Europe or some 13-year-old kid from Wyoming dropping f-bombs like the Allies in WWII.

And let's face it here! How many times did we wish Resident Evil games were co-op? Especially Resident Evil 4 or the Outbreak series? Zombies are fun to kill (again) and maim but doing it with a friend can be such a (non-gay) bonding moment for us guys.

Enter Left for Dead.

"LFD" was primarily advertised, and hyped at the latest E3 summit, as the great zombie co-op game not just online but offline as well. Based almost primarily on this (that and I love playing as Vietnam veterans), my little brother and I saved up for this one so we could finally kill mass hordes together rather than one at a time while the other sits there patiently twiddling his thumbs. We brought it to our home, put it in and were immediately taken in by the mass sound interacting with our Yamaha home theater. It was, for a lack of a better term, really loud.

We loved the introduction screen, which pretty much summed up the entire game: run, shoot a lot, help others, heal, run some more, shoot a lot more some at special bad guys, revive fallen team member, heal, run a short distance and get to "safe" point and prepare for round 2-4. Simplistic, yet incredibly entertaining. The levels are equally simplistic as the linear environments make the path to follow as easy as the aiming system, which is dead-on accurate. There were many times when zombies would spill through a doorway and were quickly stopped because I took the Microsoft approach of "point, click, and hold" and their advance halted as quickly as it started.

To me, this was a little disappointing as I was hoping for a more Resident Evil experience where you hoarde ammo and supplies in a true survival horror environment. Instead, generic piles of ammo will refill your entire stock as many times as you wish (at least in easy and normal difficulty). Medical kits are a little more sparse and healing requires you to spend about ten seconds without being interupted.

However, this is not to say I did not enjoy it. The gratuitous level of violence, which would make Terrintino retire since he cannot possibly achieve that level of awesomeness, was entertaining. It was also great to see who got the most head-shots and did the most damage to the special villains. The sounds and asthetics also stayed true to survival horror as you could hear the groaning of nearby zombies and the crying of special villains known as witches. Be weary of them as they are NASTY.

LFD's greatest plus is the promotion of team work over one-man-army super soldiers. More often than not, first-person shooters promote the one-man-army mentality by having one person go up against legions of bad guys and emerge victoriously without so much as a scratch. There have been very few (Brothers in Arms, Full-Spectrum Warrior, Conflict: Desert Storm, etc) that promote team work over solo runs but LFD makes, what I see, at the largest leap forward. There are monsters that will lunge one allies and another person must "save" them by fighting off the monsters either on top of them or dragging them off. Other times an ally is required to either revive or pull another ally from dangling over a ledge. Unless the player is unprecedently good, a player cannot survive without help from his/her allies.

The teamwork AI is balanced very well as allies will call enemies as they appear, provide fairly overlapping fields of fire, and assist you when possible. There are some glitches where they will not help you but the majority of the time they will. Co-Op wise, this really promotes teamwork and communication. While playing with my little brother, I would make sure our fields of fire would overlap and we'd cover each other as we'd move. He'd be on point with his shotgun on the left while I provided automatic fire one step behind on the right.

Now, this game does have one or two flaws.

1: The co-op was, initially, a pain to set up. Took us five minutes to set up but after that, no biggie.

2: There are some glitches pertaining to jumping. There were some times, when we were supposed to jump over obstacles but could not due to getting stuck in the environment. We have, so far, managed to get out of every one of them but when you're being swarmed by literally over three dozen zombies it becomes a matter of life and death.

3: There are some serious glitches pertaining to saving your allies. While fighting on the roof of the hospital my character was thrown by a "tank" character and left hanging over the ledge, awaiting for an ally to rescue me. HOWEVER, it was at the very beginning of the level where you are to jump off and not get back up so you could not retreat further into the level. Unfortunately for me, my friends had already jumped down leaving me stranded and waiting to die. Fortunately, a spwan point for survivors was nearby so they could instantly respawn me. This happened one more time to another ally. Such glitches should be avoided.

All in all, LFD is a great offline co-op. I always thought blowing up zombies would be a great way to promote family values such as friendship, loyalty, togetherness, and love of infinite ammo. :)

A solid 95%. 5% docked for glitches, lack of a backstory, lack of a Resident Evil experience, and lacking weapons. They needed way more weapons.

If you think about it, the zombie survival genre has a lot in common with first-person shooters (FPS). Granted, it didn't start out that way - Night of the Living Dead was more focused on the survival than the zombies, and with slow-moving zombies our protagonists could run right past the hordes of undead. With fast zombies all the rage, most prominently on display in the remake of Dawn of the Dead, the distinction between zombies and hordes of mooks is even less apparent. Its surprising it took this long for someone to finally make a FPS that's just about killing zombies.

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"I'll see peace back on Earth if I gotta murder every one of these bastards with my bare g-ddamn hands!"--Bill
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Left 4 Dead takes the FPS genre one step further and makes it a four-player team (the "4" in the title is no accident) that can be played co-op, online, or even multiplayer teams of four survivors vs. four player-controlled zombies. Divided into chapters and presented like a movie, the action starts immediately with four zombie survival stereotypes: the combat-weary war veteran (Bill, voiced by Jim French), the white collar black guy (Louis, voiced by Earl Alexander), the tough-as-nails biker dude (Francis, voiced by Vince Valensuela), and the hot chick (Zoey, voiced by Jen Taylor). Their goal is simply to survive by fighting their way through wave after wave of zombies, with the occasional super-zombie thrown in to spice things up.

That's it. That's all there is to Left 4 Dead.

And yet that simple summary doesn't do the game justice. Just as Gears of War revolutionized how cover and reloading was handled in FPS, Left 4 Dead is first and foremost a perfected multiplayer experience.

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"Look on the bright side; even if you guys die, I'll still be really handsome!"--Francis
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Friends can take over one of the four characters at any time, and if they're idle too long, the computer takes over. Players vote on everything, including when to skip boring sequences like summaries. And yet combat summaries are there if the group is so inclined, ranging from headshots to number of zombies killed to the amount of damage taken.

For the players who are fond of running off and being a hero, Left 4 Dead forces group teamwork: Smoker and Hunter zombies pick off loners and are a death sentence for the victim unless comrades come to his aid. Idiots who run off by themselves are dead meat. Witch zombies, which attack whomever disturbs them, forces the team to stop and think about what they shoot. Even death isn't permanent - players reappear in safe houses as survivors (who just happen to be exact copies of the original cast) so that everyone can get back to doing what they love most: killing the killed.

Left 4 Dead is light on back-story, but that's not important to the multiplayer genre either. There's enough graffiti on the walls to figure out what happened, which in case you didn't guess already, involves people getting infected and becoming zombies. What makes Left 4 Dead even sweeter is how it embraces all its zombie tropes, from the levels (escape from a hospital, from a cabin in the woods, from the top of a skyscraper) to the characters (are all reminiscent of zombie movie tropes), to little touches like how the perspective shifts to black and white when a character is about to die - shades of Night of the Living Dead!

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"Mister, if one of us gets killed out here, I'm gonna shoot my way in there and beat you to death with my gun!"--Louis
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Even the zombies themselves behave like bad actors. Although they can move fast when they sense prey, they die in all kinds of glorious and inglorious ways, stumbling as they lose unlife and limb. They can't even open doors, instead tearing at it with their bare hands.

The voice acting is superb, including the refreshingly confident yet feminine voice of Cortana from Halo 3, Jen Taylor. The dialogue is hilarious - Zoey's rant about "fast-moving zombies" is priceless. And there's even a Game Master-like AI Director who determines when and how to ramp up the tension against the players, precipitated by the appropriate horror-style music.

Left 4 Dead is so good that it's replaced my weekly Gears of War 2 games as the co-op game of choice. Look for Talien if you want some help surviving the zombie apocalypse.

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"I just can't get over how FAST they all are, it's not even fair. I'm calling zombie bull$#!+ on that, you know? They're not...ALLOWED to be so fast." --Zoey
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Yeah, if you like zombie movies or zombie anything, this is what you're looking for. You won't be disappointed. Very nice job to the makers of this one. When is Left 4 Dead 2?


Pros:

-Literally like watching Dawn of the Dead except you are in the movie
-If you liked Dead Rising way back when you'll love this even more
-AI is superb, different every time you play
-Multiplayer is the BEST! You MUST work as a team or you die. That simple.
-Never felt my adrenaline flow like in this game.

Cons:

-I'd like to see more maps.
-Could use a little more variety in infected. Only one tank.

This is one of the few games that I have bought and since I had 1 game to pick for Christmas I decided to go with this one. My 1st thought is if I was not on XBOX live I probably would not have wanted this one just for single player. Even though I found I liked the single player its more getting from point a to b (like multiplayer) with no story and no side anything so its escaping from locations. Even though the single player is fun I just don't think I would have spent 60 bucks for just single player unless I can get a lot of hours out of it. I don't get to play on Live except usually weekends and a couple week nights but I think its great being on teams and everyone taking care of each other, usually anyways. I love co op so this game really appeals to me and split screen makes it even better.

The graphics are fantastic and crisp and gameplay is absolutely fun with zombies running at you it reminded me of Counter Strike with crazy zombies which I guess makes sense given the company that made it. The sound is great and I like the way the characters tell you when they are healing or reloading to let you know who to watch after. Just the sounds the creatures make are great and a good job has been done with this game. The single player A.I. bots are kind of annoying simply because I found they didn't act too much like a real player which is a minor unless you play single all the time.

This game is more a love or hate since I have not heard too many in betweens. Renting is actually what I recommend to do 1st for any game unless you know for a fact no matter what anyone else says you will like it.

This is probably one of the best multiplayer co op games I have ever played. Its just plain fun and usually unless you are in an annoying group, people play all the way through the campaigns and stick together. This is from what I have seen even though I am sure people do skip out when they die or something but this is what I have seen when I am on Live. I found it lots of fun to set up in a location like a house or building fighting off the horde and sometimes it can get hilarious with your companions. The infected fall into overuse in campaign mode and it can get tiresome fighting the same enemies over and over but the so called director usually keeps it fresh. The only bad thing is just same enemies all the time and the horde of zombies are overly simple to kill. I laugh a lot when someone disturbs the witch and she chases them down but thats just me. Another great mode is versus, though it can be annoying to where the infected can spawn to attack the people pretty much anywhere nearby its still great fun. I like to play serious when I play but I also have fun so the game modes thrilled me to play. I hope there will be downloadable levels and stuff later b/c I don't know how long this game will keep me in the current modes. Its fun but I don't know how long the same enemies and same levels and choice of weapons (which there aren't many) over and over will last.

I don't really use the mic so much on XBOX live but I enjoy listening to people talk and since I tend to have more a quiet nature. I do talk during this game since I found it is kind of essential to do so and it tends to be more fun that way. I also like to find people who play as a team so when I played with this one person who kept running ahead of the rest and dying I got pretty annoyed.

Me personally I will say don't miss this one but the hard thing about games is what I love you may hate.

Left 4 Dead is probably the best original game to come out in a while. At first when I played through it I didn't really appreciate how smartly designed this game was. I also didn't realize what Valve had created as far as an infinitely replayable FPS.
Shooting zombies is almost guaranteed fun, just look at World at War's 'zombie' variant and its popularity. But unlike Dead Rising, Resident Evil or World at War, this game's premise is truly fast gameplay against a clever "director" that can alter enemy placement, musical cues, item placement and your bot allies actions. A formidable accomplishment on its own.
This game, unlike most FPS, truly rewards teamwork. You cannot beat this game without your teammates. And you'll be hard pressed to succeed unless you actually talk to your teammates about your status or what you see/know. And the great thing is that this incentive for cooperative play is a natural byproduct of the tense "survival" style of the game.

I would recommend anyone who plays this game (and likes it) to try the developer commentary option (click on "extras" on the main menu). You get to walk through the No Mercy level and hear the developers explain how and why they made Left 4 Dead like they did. A great bonus that I hope other developers include in their games.

I've played quite a few first-person shooters over the years and have experienced few games that revitalize the genre as 'Left 4 Dead' has.
I'll try to be concise: L4D is fun. It's entertaining to play alone, but to get the full experience, you really need to play with friends.

This isn't a game like Gears of War or Halo -- as good as you get, you still won't make it without your comrades backing you up, as you can easily be overhwhelmed by zombies at any moment... especially the 'special' zombie varieties (of which there are 6) capable of incapacitating your character (pinning or constricting you and draining your health) until a teammate comes to revive you.

The best feature of the game is definitely the 'Versus' mode, where up to 8 players can face off in two teams of four, alternating between Survivors and Zombies. As survivors, you find yourself beset not only by the zombie hordes, but the players on the enemy team who constantly spawn as 'special' zombies.

The tension of playing through each round in Versus as the survivors is offset by the opportunity for your team to play the zombies and work strategically to distract / disorient / disable your opponents.

As survivors, you work your way through the map, aiming for the safe house that marks the end of each round (there are 4 safe houses in each campaign) -- you're constantly blasting away zombies and using the landscape to your defensive advantage.

As zombies, you're suddenly given new abilities to lasso and strangle the survivors, mark them as targets for hordes of normal zombies, or tackle them and claw their faces to shreds -- but as a lone zombie, you'll be easy prey for the survivors' team. You'll be challenged to work with your zombie teammates to break down the survivors' formation and mutual support, leaving them vulnerable to an ambush that'll hopefully incapacitate or kill all the survivors.

While there are only 4 campaigns -- only two of which are playable in 'Versus', though that's going to be remedied in a forthcoming free-of-charge content download -- the gameplay is dynamic and the challenge is never the same, as each play-through boasts randomly generated encounters and power-ups / weapon locations. While it's not the same as having a dozen different maps to explore, the random enemies and items, combined with the thrill of working with your friends as either survivors or zombies will keep you entertained for a long time.

If you're a fan of Horror or FPS games and have friends to play with, get this game!

You better not be squeamish, there is a lot of blood, gore, and vomit in this game, but it has tons of action. I also like that it isn't totally linear, many of the buildings have a bunch of rooms and halls to go down, and you have choice of weapons and ways to fight.

I hate it when finding a witch, her crying creeps me out, but that adds to the feel of the game. Very fun, I've replayed several times already.

SOME PEOPLE DIDN`T LIKE THIS GAME I DON`T KNOW WHY. MY EXPERIENCE IS GOOD ONLINE IS THE WAY TO PLAY THIS GAME NO SOLO. IF YOU PLAY SOLO YOU ARE GOIN TO GET BORED. BUT IN THE OTHER HAND IN CAMPAING MODE ONLINE NEVER IS THE SAME TWICE , OK MAYBE YOU GET TO A ROOM ONE TIME AND YOU FIND THAT THERE ARE NO ZOMBIES IN THERE. THEN YOU PLAY AGAIN AND OH THE ROOM IS INFECTED WITH ZOMBIES. I PLAY A LOT ONLINE AND I NEVER GET TIRED OF IT. IS THE BEST ZOMBIE GAME OUT THERE RIGHT NOW. IF YOU LIKE ZOMBIES LIKE I DO DON`T LOOK OTHER WAY THIS IS THE GAME.JOIN XBOX LIVE AND LOOK FOR ME D12Blade THAT MY ONLINE NAME THERE AND KILL SOME FREAKIN ZOMBIES.

Try before you buy. Don't just read the hype.

First, let me say that I have the xbox Game of the Year Edition, I have downloaded everything I could find for the game from xbox Live, and I have played the game a several times solo and with split screen 2-player.

Whether or not you will like this game depends on the style of play you like in your games. Some people might like this type of play, but I didn't. I've enjoyed playing everything from the Evil Dead games and Dead Rising to Resident Evil 1 & 4 and a bunch of other "zombie" type games. The issue I have is that Left 4 Dead doesn't play like how it feels like it should play - or it feels one way but plays another way. Left 4 Dead feels like it should play like a tight strategy game of team tactics and smart game play - hardcore Zombie Apocalypse survivors: The smart & the dead, ... but it isn't, it just isn't. I'll get back to the game play in a minute.

A lot of the game looks OK at first (maybe "Good", but nothing "Great"). The graphics break-down badly when you are getting stomped on by zeds (any time you are on the ground, or when zeds are too close to you) and when you get dragged by Smoker zeds it gets really glitchy. And the fire effect (i.e. from molotov cocktails) is awful. But, for as flawed as some of these things are, I wouldn't necessarily say that they detract too much from the game play.

The areas/maps aren't very open; there is a definite "tunnel" feel to the game. Which, given the nature of the objectives, is probably unavoidable. Yet some of the tight tunnel areas, like the ones that are outside, do provide an illusion of openness, which is nice. But, what this all means is that, game play is relatively linear; the route to a destination is pretty tight, and your style of game play will be pretty much forced upon you. So all that turn-off-your-lights and sneak-around-the-witch dialogue is garbage - she's either in your way or she isn't - anyhow, you just shoot her either way.

And, now speaking of that game play, it's just an ammo-burner game. You have limited ammo for your "special" weapon of choice (shotgun, assault rifle, Uzi, whatever), but unlimited ammo for your pistol(s) - and you go through a lot of it really fast. Forget about S.W.A.T. play, forget about being a ninja, forget about sniping to clear a path ahead; just forget about stealth and efficiency.

You shoot, you run and shoot, and you shoot and run some more. Lingering around areas, being cautious and thorough, will only get you more encounters with randomly generated zeds. There is not a general fixed number of zeds in an area, the game will spawn more zeds (crap-loads more) when conditions are triggered. This is a game of "whatever" (like "get from Point A to Point B", or "stand on a rooftop/Lighthouse") that is punctuated by random "Special Zed" appearances and waves of rushing zed hoards. Pointless wave after random wave of rushing zed hoards. A Run-n-Gun (or a Stand-n-Gun).

So the best tactic is to just run through an area until you hit a Special Zed, or a good vantage point, and then turn around and deal with everything in a hail of blazing lead (or a pipe bomb - they're magical zed magnets). Seriously, it works best that way; you'll save ammo, and time, and deal with less crap. Because, when you trigger a zed rush, they will spawn and come running at you from all directions: from the empty rooms you just swept clear, from the dead-end halls you just swept clear, from anywhere and everywhere they will magically appear to come charging at you. So forget your Spec-Ops mentality; it's pointless. And there is no meaningful stealth action. So just forget about "INTELLIGENT" game play, unless your idea of strategy is to back yourself into a closet and fire outwards. Don't just listen to the masses of circle-jerk fan-bois. I find this game about as tactical as the video game Gauntlet.

Now, maybe everything I have complaints about is just the way the game is supposed to be? Maybe I'm whining about would'a, should'a, could'a, and crying about stuff that I want to have that just shouldn't be a part of the game? I keep wondering about that myself. But then the heavy-handed teamwork elements keep running up to me and smacking me in the face.

This is a total "buddy system" game. You aren't going to get anywhere without someone else there to pick you up-off the ground. It is FORCED upon you through the games mechanics. There is no running ahead and going solo because everyone else is cramping your style. This is a game about teamwork, team tactics, teammate support and assists. It is a key element in the game - there are several Achievements based off of this. It's good and it's bad; I'm still on the fence about how I feel about it. In some ways I do like it, and in other ways I think it totally hamstrings game play.

You are the "I've fallen and I can't get up!" lady. If you are grabbed: you are helpless until someone else assists you. If you are on the ground, no matter how much health you have: you are stuck on the ground until someone assists you. If your whole team gets knocked down, no matter how much health everyone has, or how many health packs everyone has: it is Game Over because no one is left standing to assist anyone else back up. And Survivors WILL get knocked-down and dragged-around (and probably bitten and mauled) a lot.

With this sort of forced and required team-play element, the game feels like it should be more at a level of SOCOM, Call of Duty, Ghost Recon, Halo, or even Splinter Cell or Tenchu; demanding a higher level of tactical style and strategic "cover your, and your teammates, butts" type of game play - but it's not. It's a sloppy trigger-happy fire-fest. This is not a game of clean shots and efficient kills, there is no "Go ahead, I've got you covered" stuff; Spec-Ops style tactics (or any thoughtful or cautious efforts) just don't have any credit here.

Fast zombies or slow zombies, infected or undead; I don't really have a preference, but I thought the "Special" zombie types in this game were kinda lame. Puker/Exploder fat thing stereotype. `Roid-Rage Tank stereotype thing. Leaper/Pouncer zed. Sniper-Tongue smoke-exploding (?!?) zed. "I just want to cry and I hate the light" emo Witch zed. I just don't think any of them are really cool or inspiring. Really stupid stereotype concepts better suited to alien creatures (like The Flood, in HALO) than zombies.

I can only rate this game a 2 or 3 stars. The only recommendation I can make is: Try before you buy. Don't just read the hype.