On Left 4 Dead

If ever there was a game I shouldn't be writing about on here, it's probably Left 4 Dead. This blog is meant to look at the element of story in video games; Left 4 Dead's story can be summarized in two words.

ZOMBIES! RUN!

This leaves me with precious little to analyze. But I feel the need to say SOMETHING about the game, and since this is my own personal venue for video game-related rants and raves, I might as well put it to use.

The very first thing I want to recognize is that Left 4 Dead is a good game. It's an enjoyable experience, as are a lot of things as of late that have come from Valve, and they've certainly done many right. My problem is that I don't feel the same sense of divine revelation at its release that every other person on the goddamn internet seems to feel. My concerns with it are all pretty much gameplay-related, and most of them probably a little nitpicky.

I broke in the game with three friends at a LAN party on release weekend, which is how I feel this game SHOULD be played. I greatly appreciate the focus on co-op and looking out for your teammates, and there's an added dimension you get from knowing and being in the same room with the other three people. But after just a few marathon sessions of the game, I began to feel concerned about its replayability, in a number of ways.

Though each character is different, and has some personality of their own, they are functionally identical. From a gameplay perspective, it really makes no difference who you play as, except in a social sense (my group, for example, have all settled into our own characters whom we always play as). Therefore, there's no incentive to play through a campaign again with another character as there might be if they had different proficiencies. Maybe Zoey is a bit faster than the rest and is really accurate with pistols, and maybe as the grizzled vet Bill is better with an assault rifle or is a better sniper than any of the others. Valve has said something to the effect of wanting to make the characters individual and unique, like characters in a zombie film, and I think there's a missed opportunity in not creating each with their individual strengths and weaknesses. That sort of thing would lead to an even stronger sense of teamwork, as you each cover the other's weak points and allow someone whose character is better at a task take the lead when it's called for.

The campaigns themselves are great fun...the first time through. Even with an AI director entity who randomizes the zombies and weapon/item locations, they start to feel a bit stale by around the third playthrough, to me. Considering there's only four to choose from, this limits the game's replayability quite a lot. I love the idea of the climaxes, holding off a horde of undead while waiting for rescue to arrive, and as promised it's intense and requires tight teamwork. The final stage of Blood Harvest, which requires the defense of a farmhouse, is one which my group has tried and failed at enough times to develop a working strategy down to a science. But once we were victorious, the subsequent victories don't yield the same sense of elation as before. If the technology could be developed to allow the AI director to not only randomize the undead but also the very layout of the map, allowing for a different route every time, that would contribute a lot to replayability. The environment also feels rather static and uninteractive to me - the cornfield on Blood Harvest is little more than flat sprites that look like something appropriate for a game from eight years ago.

One other area where I feel Valve dropped the ball is the Versus mode, which I was very excited about. Back when the game was still in heavy development, I heard tell of a mode where another player could take the place of the AI director - control the zombie hordes, choose their placement and timing, and so on. I loved the idea of this. I wanted to scare the living shit out of my friends with a well-placed horde of zombies when they least expected it. Even after it became apparent that this wasn't happening, and that you'd only get to play as the boss infected, I was still looking forward to it. As a veteran of multiplayer Aliens vs. Predator who always played as the Alien, I wanted to try the hunter's wall-climbing and leaping. In practice, the infected don't control particularly well and are difficult to play as, and I get frustrated by constantly dying. I especially dislike not being able to choose what type of infected to spawn as. Versus mode feels unfinished and tacked on.

Don't get me wrong, the idea of a game based around teamwork with the look and feel of a zombie apocalypse film is just awesome. I hear that there will very soon be downloadable content, which may in fact alleviate some of these concerns. I appreciate what Valve has done.

I just wish they could've done it MORE.