The “Break it Down” Blog

I got an early copy of the Left 4 Dead demo from GameStop today.  The demo is slated to hit the Xbox Live Marketplace sometime next week, but with a pre-oprder at GameStop you can get it now. I was expecting a horror game, but really it is an action game with a horror/zombie setting. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it because I don’t generally like horror games. A large part of that enjoyment was playing co-op with 3 friends, but also the non-stop action was a lot of fun.

The game’s AI is remarkable.  Both you’re teammates AI when you don’t have friends playing with you, and the enemy AI is some of the best I’ve ever seen.

You’re AI teammates are careful not to shoot you or cross your shooting lines. They heal you when needed and watch your back pretty well. The enemies are mostly not real bright and just charge at you once they’ve noticed you, but the unique enemies (Tanks, Hunters, Witches, Smokers, etc) all act really uniquely and are quite smart.  Each has a unique attack and they are smart enough to use it on the most appropriate team member.  For example, Smokers will pretty much always pick off stragglers that are not near the rest of the team.  If you’re team can’t get back to help that person quickly there is a good chance the one the Smoker got will be dead before they get there.

The game is controlled by what they’re calling the AI Director. The Director controls what enemies come at you and when so no two times playing are the same. The Director also makes sure the action keeps coming. There is no place safe until you reach a designated safe room at the end of the level. The demo has 2 of the 5 levels out of one of the 4 “Movies” that will ship with the game. Both were unique and pretty cool to work through.

The first time we played through we played on the Normal difficulty. Really, it was not that hard. Even when we did stuff like accidentally alert huge hordes we had little trouble killing them all. The second time through we played on the Advanced difficulty setting. On Advanced we had to be a lot more careful with protecting each other because enemies did a bot more damage and took a little more to take down. Plus, there is limited health throughout the level. Most likely you’ll only have one health pack for a whole level.  If we had been playing on Expert we would not have made it to the end of the second level.

I really like the ways that the game encouraged, even requires, teamwork. Some of the enemies knock you to the ground and a teammate has to punch or shoot them off you. If you’re downed to long then you have to be revived to move again. While down you can shoot your pistols, but not move. Also, the game makes it easy to give your health packs and pain pills to your teammates when they’re low. You definitely don’t want to only have 3 people because there are more than enough enemies for 4 people to deal with. So, sharing the limit heath packs is a must.  Another little thing that seems small but made a big difference was that when you get hurt pretty bad you start to limp.  This causes you to walk a little slower and makes you an easier target.  If you’re teammates don’t heal you it is really hard for you to keep up.  Teamwork is such a major part of Left 4 Dead that even the Achievements encourage teamwork.

Being a Valve game, in addition to great core game play the game it has a lot of cool little things.  When you’re playing co-op if you need to stop for a minute you just hit start and choose the option to take a break for a minute. The AI automatically takes over your character and the game never even pauses while everyone else keeps playing. Once you’re done on the phone or whatever it was that called you away you smoothly jump right back into your character. This is a really nice touch for those of us who have constant distractions.

Another thing I really like is that right on the main menu there is an option to see all of your friends that are playing L4D currently. It shows what level they are playing, what difficulty, if it is join-able or not, and how many people are in that room. This makes it really easy and painless to find people to play with.

If you’re a fan of action games, zombie games, or playing co-op I’d recommend Left 4 Dead for you. Personally I don’t like horror games normally but this one is quickly moving up my list of games to get at release.