2008’s Under-Hyped: Left 4 Dead

How can I begin describing Left 4 Dead? Well, for starters, it’s a survival-horror first person shooter. Nothing special there. It’s a cooperative game, where 4 players work together to shoot their way through set levels, killing zombies, called Infected, in order to achieve their goals. Still nothing all too new. Four opposing players will play as the Infected team, using the environment, and control of an armada of undead to make sure the Survivors don’t see the light of day. Piquing your interest? Wait till you hear what these brain-eaters can do.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you were still a bit confused – the premise behind Left 4 Dead is unusual. So far, it’s been implied that the Survivors’ goal is many-fold: they will have to ultimately make it through a series of levels or maps, having side-missions to do along the way, such as rescuing helpless and trapped NPCs, maybe obtaining a particular weapon or item, and so forth. The Infected team are allowed to get a little creative, and use their special abilities to stop you by any means possible. That means, split you up, single you out, distract and devour you.

The key to playing on the survivor side is self-explanatory: stick together, cover each other’s asses while reloading, share your items and ammo with those in need, and all of you should successfully make your way through the game’s run-down cityscapes, disturbed rural towns, and eerie forests. As the Boss Infected on the other side (no pun intended), coordinate attacks in order to counteract all those principles listed above: divide and conquer, take advantage of weak moments, and even find ways to turn the humans against each other. You can do all this with these gruesome powers.

The Boss Infected:

The Boomer: Picture the guy who died from eating nothing but BK and Taco Bell for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now picture his fat ass back from the grave, with an upset stomach. The boomer is a fat sack of shit (figuratively), who vomits blood on the survivors (literally), causing wave after wave of bloodthirsty zombies to relentlessly draw upon his blood-covered victims.

The Smoker: Think Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. He has a long prehensile tongue, that he uses to ensnare a survivor from distance, choking him while pulling him away from the safety of his (or her) teammates, effectively breaking up the band like Yoko.

The Hunter: An agile free-running zombie, who can easily scale the heights and depths of each level, lurking and lunging at unsuspecting players, pinning them to the ground and ravaging them until survivor teammates work together to get him off.

The Tanker: If the Incredible Hulk were to die, and then … un-die …. he’d be the Tanker. This mofo has the ability to tear up the asphalt and toss it a la Bruce Banner at survivor players, hurting them, separating them from their teammates, or just wreaking all around havoc.

It all sounds very immature: fat zombies vomiting blood, shotguns and chainsaws mutilating zombies into a pulpy mess. But if designed properly, there may be a surprising level of depth to be found here – for both teams. And despite the fact that very few gory details have been revealed about Left 4 Dead, the developer and publisher of this game are more than enough to entice me into preloading my copy. That’s right, I said preloading; It’s available on Steam, and it’s being developed by Turtle Rock and Valve.

Wanna get infected? Check out the Left 4 Dead Official Site