Left 4 Dead is a new game that will be released on November 18th. It is a zombie game created by Valve. The same people who brought us Portal, Team Fortress 2 and the Half Life series. If you have ever seen the movie, 28 Days Later, you will feel like you are in the movie.
Much like Spore, I am going to try and not rehash what has already been written over a thousand times. However, I do want to give my insight as an online first person gamer. Warning: I have only tried the single player and have only played as the survivors.
What you do in this game is you and three other ‘survivors’ whether they are played by the computer or other players, must make it from 1 point on a map to another by avoiding the zombies. The zombies are all crazy and just lunge at you straight out of the movies. There are a few special zombies but all in all the horde is quite daunting. You can also play as the zombies but i have not tried that yet.
I love the fast pace of the game, the sounds and really spooky ambiance of the maps. Another favorite of mine is the gore. I get to shoot and kill non stop. The computer AI does a great job of making the hordes very random and coming at you at different ways every time you play.
What concerns me is the possibility that this will get stale. I prefer to log a minimum of 40 hours online and 4 hours in a single player game. The key for me is the online portion and I am still not convinced that this game will give me that longevity. I’m afraid I will get bored with it. The reason for this is the only thing that can change each map (besides the placement of the zombies) is the map itself. Couple this with the lack of variables (only a few weapons, only 4 in a group, always going from point a to point b.)
I only have a few hours logged and will wait a few weeks to try it again. I will definitely try it again unlike Spore.
Quick update 11/21/2008: Can’t even get the demo to work now in steam for the past few days. It says it is pre-loaded and will only allow me to purchase the full game. Quite disappointing.